The Alums Behind The Daily Come to Barnard!
Join Us
Launched in 2017, The Daily has been downloaded over three billion times and is the most-listened-to news podcast in the country. Founding Producer Theo Balcomb ’09 and current co-host Sabrina Tavernise ’93 return to Barnard for a conversation about the role journalism — and audio journalism, in particular — plays in helping us understand our most pressing challenges.
The conversation will be moderated by Umbreen Bhatti ’00, Constance Hess Williams ’66 Director, Athena Center for Leadership, and followed by a Q&A with the audience.
The event will be livestreamed starting at 1:00 PM EDT
This event is sponsored by the Athena Center for Leadership, the Sloate Media Center, and the Departments of Political Science and English.
Open to all.
For more information email fbertoli@barnard.edu with questions.
Theo Balcomb '09
created The Daily at The New York Times in 2017. Under her leadership, it grew to an audience of over four million listens a day, won a duPont Award, and was part of multiple Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning submissions. She also brought The Daily to over 200 public radio stations. Before "The Daily," she was the supervising producer of "All Things Considered" at NPR (the youngest person to hold that role).
Sabrina Tavernise '93
She started at The New York Times in Moscow in 2000 and spent her first 10 years as a foreign correspondent, based in Russia, Iraq, Pakistan, and in Turkey, where she was the Istanbul bureau chief. In Iraq, she covered civilian casualties and documented the lives of ordinary Iraqis from 2003 to 2007, and was one of the first to identify sectarian cleansing in 2005.
Before joining The Times, Ms. Tavernise was a freelance writer in Russia for publications including BusinessWeek. From 1997 to 1999, she worked for Bloomberg News in Moscow.
In 2010, she became a national correspondent covering demographics and was the lead writer for The Times on the Census, capturing major demographic shifts underway in the United States, including in mortality and fertility, race and ethnicity.
Ms. Tavernise grew up in a rural town in western Massachusetts, where she picked blueberries for summer work. She went to Westfield High School and graduated from Barnard College in 1993. She moved to the eastern coast of Russia in 1995, to a town called Magadan, where she helped run a United States Agency for International Development-funded business training center.
She is now based in Washington DC.
Covid-19 Protocols
All guests must wear masks indoors on Barnard’s Campus. All non Barnard and Columbia ID holders must follow masking requirements and other College policies including but not limited to completing a full 10-day isolation period after a positive COVID test, meeting the College's COVID-19 vaccine/booster requirement and attesting to that by completing the Visitor/Vendor Health Screen form before coming to campus.