Jennifer Palmieri was speeding through the Atlanta airport that day on her way to Laredo, Texas, when she stopped to make a remark. “I mean, the world is passing by,” she said, speaking by phone. “Why don’t you try to understand?”
Palmieri helps us do just that. The former White House communications director under Barack Obama, as well as Hillary Clinton’s communications chief in 2016, has taken on an ambitious goal: helping TV viewers learn about the nuances of the political South.
She and Pod Save AmericaCrooked Media is producing a six-part documentary television series called Long play, Hollywood Reporter I’ve learned. The show aims to expose underlying issues and profound transformations in a way that daily news coverage does not. Palmieri brought with him former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and veteran journalist 19yEditor-at-Large Erin Haynes as co-hosts, each bringing their experience to bear on the reality show.
Crooked Media, co-founded by former Obama speechwriter and Palmieri colleague Jon Favreau, will executive produce the show, as will Favreau; They will help with its marketing and distribution. Long play It will also live on YouTube.
Palmieri believes the series could serve as a tonic for ailing political journalism.
“There’s a lot of resignation about the district — you hear Democrats say, ‘Don’t bother with the South, you can’t win there,’” said the media personality, who spent several years hosting Showtime. Circus Later in her career. “The truth is, it’s much more complicated.”
To uncover this complexity, the trio will use Rolodexes to get powerful people to speak while also attending rallies, interviewing voters and giving a general A-Z perspective.
Georgia power players Stacey Abrams, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Brian Kemp have already been interviewed for the first Georgia episode, which is expected to hit the internet next week. The Texas episode will focus on James Tallarico’s rally in Laredo and go from there.
“Every place is great in its own way and has its own dynamics. Georgia, where we were, was the cradle of civil rights but it’s also a very conservative state,” Palmieri said. “I really think there’s an appetite for this type of content.”
Other states include North Carolina and Oklahoma, with the remaining two states to be determined.
“People in the South feel like they’ve been really misunderstood — left behind, looked down upon — and they want to explain that to someone,” Landrieu says in the trailer. (You can watch it below.)
The producers also brought in some other cultural heavy hitters, with the music of singer-songwriter and liberal activist Jason Isbell appearing in multiple episodes, and the Bitter Southerner magazine also providing creativity. The show is produced and financed by Left/Right Productions, which produced it circus (Besides Mob wives).
Long playHowever, it does not aim to chronicle the week in politics as the circus an act. Instead, as the name suggests, it will take a longer look at the forces shaping each country.
Palmieri said she feels more optimistic than many of her peers about the possibility of forming new alliances and new forms of unity, regardless of recent evidence indicating widening divisions even within political parties.
What can seem like division may just be confusion, a communications expert says, a confusion a political show can help address.
“we He thinks “The country is very divided but that’s not what’s happening in my opinion,” she said. “Look at the Republicans. Because Trump is not ideologically conservative, many people do not know where to go after he is gone. “It’s really a jump ball.”
Palmieri does not attempt to describe a partisan strategy, although she is aware of the type of information Long play Offers can be used in this way. She also recognizes that all three directors are Democrats (Landrieu was also the infrastructure implementation coordinator under Biden) but says she believes people will listen from across the spectrum.
For all the ways politics pervades modern life, political depth on television is actually rare, limited to occasional documentaries or long-form news stories. However, it remains to be seen what viewers’ appetite will be at a time when social media algorithms are fueled by political information (and anger) 24/7.
Palmieri continues a trend of former high-ranking White House officials carving out a place for themselves in the political news firmament — a trend that extends from Obama adviser David Axelrod on CNN to Trump’s first-term figures Kayleigh McEnany and Larry Kudlow on Fox News to Joseph Biden’s communications chief Jen Psaki on MS Now. Palmieri believes this pattern is not accidental.
“There’s a lot of noise, so people are hungry for inside information,” she said. “With Mitch and Erin, that’s what we’re going to try to do.”
