Plenty of people are paying attention to Rachel Maddow right now. They're not all happy with her, but they're paying attention.
Coverage of the Chris Christie Bridgegate scandal on The Rachel Maddow Show has put her at the center of a ready-made modern media scandal, complete with leaked emails and video press conferences.
The ratings for her program on MSNBC, The Rachel Maddow Show, are now rivaling those of her Fox News timeslot rival, Megyn Kelly. Clips of her segments on Christie have been making the rounds online. She's also now a columnist for The Washington Post.
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Conservative media has taken notice, with an article from The National Review claiming that Maddow controls the editorial direction of the channel, and The American Spectator highlighting Maddow as the drive under which "MSNBC has become everything liberals once claimed to deplore."
While Christie endures a new wave of scandal — this one featuring the mayor of the New Jersey city of Hoboken — another of Maddow's targets made headlines.
Bob McDonnell, former governor of Virginia, and his wife were indicted on a series of charges including wire fraud and illegally accepting gifts that included trips, luxury clothing and golf outings.
Maddow did not break either story, a fact she brought up in an interview with Mashable. But she did recognize in each case a story that was almost hard to believe. And with McDonnell, it was a scandal she felt was not getting the appropriate coverage.
"[McDonnell] was one of those stories where it wasn't getting any national attention," she said. "There was certainly good local coverage from the local Virginian reporters at The Washignton Post that kept getting scoop after scoop.
"We covered [the Christie scandal] not so much as a big story but more as a 'Ripley's Believe It or Not.' It was so strange," Maddow said.
Those instincts turned out to be right, at least for now. While her show's coverage has helped keep the affair in the spotlight, Maddow has taken heat for positing a theory that the traffic jam caused by Christie staffers was retribution over a battle with New Jersey Democrats over state Supreme Court justice nominations. The idea has been denied by a prominent New Jersey Democrat.
The ratings growth is nice, Maddow said, but had little impact on the show's editorial direction. The numbers support her claim — while the Christie scandal has coincided with higher ratings, her show got little traction during the McDonnell scandal. MSNBC is also now tasked with holding off a rejuvenated CNN.
Asked if the attention to her Christie and McDonnell reporting had swayed the show toward more of a focus on scandal, Maddow stressed the need to provide quality content regardless of whether that involved political scandals or small issues, such as her coverage of water contamination in West Virginia.
"Every day it's the same challenge, which is to look at the universe of available news and reporting and to figure out what is the most important stuff to talk about and what we can contribute the most in terms of people's understanding," she said.