Michael Barbaro

Michael Barbaro (born c. 1979) is an American journalist and host of The New York Times news podcast, The Daily.

Barbaro grew up in North Haven, Connecticut. His mother, Jean, worked as a library media specialist at Anna Reynolds Elementary School in Newington, Connecticut, and his father, Frank, was a New Haven, Connecticut city firefighter. Barbaro has an older sister, Tracy Barbaro, who works at Harvard University as a research lab coordinator. Both Michael and Tracy attended Hamden Hall Country Day School in Hamden, Connecticut.

High school and college journalism

In high school, Barbaro wrote for Hamden Hall's official newspaper called The Advent, and he – along with classmate and future New York Times colleague Ross Douthat – also co-founded and ran the school's underground newspaper, La Verite.

He graduated from Yale University in 2002 with a bachelor's degree in history. While at Yale, he reported for the Yale Daily News and later became the editor-in-chief, overseeing a staff of nearly 100 student writers.

2002–2016: Reporter

After his graduation from Yale, Barbaro joined The Washington Post in 2002 as a reporter covering the biotechnology industry. In 2005, he joined The New York Times, where he first covered Walmart extensively until 2007 for the Business section. Next, he covered New York City Hall and the American retail industry. Later, he became a national political correspondent for the Times. During the 2016 United States presidential election, Barbaro frequently wrote front-page articles and became one of the most prominent Times reporters covering Donald Trump and the election.

2016–present: Podcast host

The Run-Up

In August 2016, The New York Times launched The Run-Up, a twice-a-week political podcast hosted by Barbaro, that aired for the final three months before the presidential election in November.

The Daily

In February 2017, The New York Times released The Daily, a new news podcast hosted by Barbaro and the Times' first podcast to air five days a week. In its first year, The Daily attracted an audience of one million listeners a day. The podcast, which has 20–30-minute-long episodes, has experienced tremendous success and was one of Apple's most downloaded podcasts in 2017 and 2018. Despite The Times' several other podcasts, most of the newspaper's audio revenue is from The Daily, which attracts several million listeners every month.

Barbaro's success and appearance lead many to frequently compare him to Ira Glass, host and producer of This American Life. In the past few years since the podcast launched, Barbaro has received significant media coverage. He has made sold-out public appearances around the country, and a wide range of media outlets have featured or interviewed him about The Daily, journalism, and politics – including on television shows such as Late Night with Seth Meyers, CBS This Morning, PBS NewsHour, in forums such as South by Southwest (SXSW), as well as on Vox's Recode Decode podcast and NPR's talk show 1A. The New Yorker also ran an article entitled: "An Appreciation of Michael Barbaro and The Daily."

In 2018, Barbaro won the duPont-Columbia Award, one of the most prestigious awards in journalism, for his work on The Daily. Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which administers the award, called The Daily "one of the signature achievements in podcasting this year," and said that the podcast is "raising the journalistic bar and inspiring a wave of imitators."

In June 2019, Barbaro gave the 2019 UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism commencement speech.

He was ranked No. 67 on Vox's Recode 100 and has also been featured as one of People Magazine's "15 Sexiest Newsmen Alive".

In October 2014, Barbaro married Timothy Levin, a fellow Yale graduate. Levin, eight years Barbaro's senior, is the founder of Bespoke Education, a tutoring and test prep company. In July 2018, it was reported that Barbaro and Levin had since divorced. In a June 2019 interview with Evening Standard, Barbaro mentioned that it "wasn't a coincidence" that he and his husband broke up shortly after The Daily launched. He said: “[The show] was a massive change, and it exposed things to me about my life. It made me reflect on who I was. Anytime you go through a major life change it tests every relationship."

He has since been in a relationship with his coworker and The Daily executive producer, Lisa Tobin.