Brett is Executive Producer of Reveal — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
Brett Myers: Reveal is a weekly investigative show. The aim of the show is to reveal truths previously unknown; to go deeper than any other outlet is able to do on a topic that is underreported; and to bring accountability and improve the world, to be honest. We aim to create impact, to change laws, to bring scrutiny to issues that need it. It’s an ambitious mandate, but that’s who we are.
James Cridland: So, Reveal - which is on more than 460 NPR stations around the country - your parent organization merged in February 2024 with Mother Jones. What did that mean for you and the show?
BM: It was like a rebirth in a way. The show has always been a part of an organization called The Center for Investigative Reporting. It’s one of the oldest investigative reporting news organizations in the country - it has been around for longer than I’ve been alive. In 2022, the organization hit financial challenges. For a year and a half, we were living in a really stressful environment. A lot of people worked very hard to put this merger together quickly: it usually takes much longer to, to make a merger like that happen. I think the accelerated nature of it just led to questions wondering will this work? And it’s worked really beautifully.
By the time the merger happened our newsroom was pretty lean. We had gone through two rounds of layoffs. We had lost a lot of really talented reporters and editors, and we merged into a newsroom that’s full of incredibly talented reporters and editors. So there’s just a wealth of stories that we can bring onto the show, tell on the show, explore on the show. A incredibly savvy business operation, which after having gone through what we had gone through was great. And a respect for what we do. Mother Jones wouldn’t have merged with CIR if they didn’t really believe in it, and they saw Reveal for all of the value that it was bringing. My colleagues brought this tremendous respect for the product and what we do but they also, um, pushed us to see it in new ways.
Before the merger, we were a lumbering newsroom, and by design - we would do big, slow, very ambitious investigations that take as long as they take; and we would then release them into the world. Sometimes, not infrequently, it would mean that we would say “Here it is, world!” but the world was very focused on something else at that moment. It made the show feel a little detached from the news of the day in a way that I think wasn’t terribly helpful for the show. And so we’ve worked very hard to do more topical reporting, and context behind the news to understand what’s happening.
We need to meet the moment as a newsroom, and that means moving faster. So we’re really trying to do a blend of these deeper investigations when they matter, when nobody else is doing them; and context to understand this moment that we’re living in more, more topical content.
JC: What did you do to the Reveal show, to the podcast, to the radio show? What were the changes that Mother Jones helped you make?
BM: One year ago, March 5th, 2025, we launched a separate podcast within our feed called More to the Story. It’s an interview-based podcast, with Al Letson interviewing a thinker, a politician, an academic, a newsmaker, about the biggest issues of the day. It’s much more topical than Reveal had historically been. And Al is front and center. Al’s an incredible interviewer. If there’s one thing I know about our audience from all of the audience surveys we’ve done in the eight years I’ve been here, it’s that our listeners love Al - so creating a space where he can really be front and center more has been just really good for our listeners, really good for our downloads, really good for the brand. That drops every Wednesday. More to the stories, fresh episodes every Wednesday.
Two is that we have Reveal, our one hour long investigative show that drops every Saturday. And we’ve changed that too. Some of those changes were like long in the making. Things that as a team we’ve been talking about for as long as I’ve been here, and some of them are changes that we had never really gotten around to doing - inertia is a lot of it, to be honest, so this was kind of kind of a clean reset. Some of the changes we made to the show are really trying to meet our stations as best as possible and serve them as best as possible.
JC: There’s an awful lot of bad news out there, and certainly an investigative podcast doesn’t necessarily lend itself to some of the more lighter things as well. Is that something that you have been aware of, and something that you’ve tried to change?
BM: Yeah, 100%. It’s our biggest challenge. Our mandate is big and serious, and oftentimes that means we’re looking at big, serious, and sometimes depressing topics. But we’ve made really meaningful strides, to what we refer to internally as tone, to make it as listenable a show as possible without losing the fingerprint of what we’re really about.
JC: So, you’ve been changing the tone of the show, you’ve added More To The Story, you’ve been looking at wider varieties of stories as well. And of course you’ve got a much larger newsroom to work with as well. What has that done to your download numbers? What has that done to your revenues?
BM: Our revenue model isn’t based on ad sales. But, we have way more real estate on our podcast to sell ads now because we’ve doubled the amount of offerings. So, we’re doing better that way. But our real goal is to basically serve our listeners better. Our downloads are up nearly 70% since the launch of More to the Story. That 70% boost in download shows that our listeners signed up for a one-hour investigative show, and we’re adding on this new product, and they’re liking it. They’re responding.
It really helped to have new ears weighing in on what it is we do and make. Our new Mother Jones partnership really helped us reassess who we are and who we want to be. When you’re making a thing as a career, week in and week out, you know the things that feel routine, based on muscle memory. I think that’s a really good indicator of a space that, like, is maybe ripe for reinvention. If you’re turning to muscle memory too often, then it’s probably a place where you could iterate and reinvent a little bit. And it’s going to be more interesting for you too, as a maker.
JC: Reveal is a co-production of the Centre for Investigative Reporting and PRX. Brett, where would people go to learn more about you and your work?
BM: We’re at revealnews.org, but even more simply, you can follow and subscribe on all the major platforms, Apple. Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.
JC: And you should also hunt it out on your local NPR station and support them, too. Brett, thank you so much for your time.
BM: James, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.