Maddow on Obama’s 100 Days, Ratings and More

After her show Monday night, I talked to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for a mediabistro.com “So What Do You Do?” Q&A. She gave her take on the performance of the media during President Obama’s first 100 days in office, the future of Air America (and radio in general) and what job she “can imagine” leaving broadcasting to do.

We also asked about how much ratings impact The Rachel Maddow Show. “We pay attention to the ratings, certainly,” she said. “Every day when they come out at 4 o’clock, everybody checks their email at the same time to see what they are. We’re interested in them, but we don’t plan the show around them.”

After being a driving force behind the teabagging jokes last month (“It was a self-inflicted wound,” she said) she talked about the humorous tone of her show. “Our brains are wired in a way that we tend to remember and absorb punch lines almost better than we do to remember thesis statements,” she said. “So I try to do both, and I try to mix them up. And I always try to tell the stories that we’ve decided to tell that day in the most effective way.”

• WebNewser has more on why Maddow credits original reporting on Websites and how the Web has helped her career.

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