New York Times hires NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro to host podcast

The New York Times has hired longtime broadcaster Lulu Garcia-Navarro away from NPR to host a podcast for its Opinion section, the company announced on Thursday. 

Garcia-Navarro previously hosted NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday” and its morning news podcast “Up First.”

Her new podcast at the Times, which has not been named, will be explore “the personal side” of what the Times’s Opinion desk covers, the company said. 

“Imagine a guest essay, but for the ears,” the outlet said in the announcement of Garcia-Navarro’s hiring. 

Garcia-Navarro’s poaching from NPR comes as the Times makes a push toward audio journalism and subscription-based newsletters. The Times announced last month it would roll out several new subscription-only newsletters and make a handful of existing newsletters available only to paying subscribers this fall. 

“Lulu brings to Times Opinion years of experience interviewing world leaders, authors, artists and people living on the front lines of a changing world,” the Times said. “She has trekked through the Amazon to talk to environmental vigilantes, traveled to multiple war zones to interview militants and sat with asylum seekers on the U.S.-Mexico border.” 

“I am delighted to be joining the Opinion section of The New York Times and to be heading a show which will be exploring the place where lived experience and opinion intersect,” Garcia-Navarro said in a statement.