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Jason Zinoman, who has been the comedy columnist for The New York Times since 2011, stumbled into his role by accident.
“It was just dumb luck,” said Zinoman, then a freelance theater critic for The Times who had just published a book on his longtime passion, the modern horror film. “But in retrospect, it makes sense to me: There are a lot of theatrical elements to comedy. And there’s a really fine line between horror and comedy.”
Now, nearly 15 years after being approached with the offer to become a comedy critic for the paper, his beat has broadened: He joined The Times’s Culture desk full time in 2022 as a critic at large, covering movies, books, theater and of course, all things comedy. He has since written about naked stand-up comedy, Jewish artists wrestling with antisemitism and even the political power of former Vice President Kamala Harris’s laugh.
“When I can find a theme that can tie together all these different cultural threads, that’s really satisfying,” said Zinoman, who has also written books about the comedians Dave Chappelle and David Letterman, whom he grew up watching on NBC.
In a recent interview, Zinoman reflected on the evolution of comedy over the last decade. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.
You are The Times’s comedy columnist, but you’ve also written about theater, film, politics and even sports. How would you describe your role as a critic at large?
I see the job as an act of translation. I want to understand and try to explain, contextualize and critically engage with a cultural world that an expert can respect, but in a way that a broad New York Times audience will understand.
Which do you enjoy more: Finding a new angle on a well-known figure, or introducing readers to an unfamiliar subject?
I take more satisfaction in writing about somebody who nobody knows about. One of the great things about this beat is that you spend time in improv houses and clubs, and you get a sense of who is going to break big in the future. I remember seeing Hannah Gadsby at this tiny theater. I was like: This is going to be a big part of the discourse, and it’s engaging in some really provocative ideas. Being the first critic to see her show in America and introduce her to readers was really satisfying.
At the same time, I think one of the jobs of critics is to say, “Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s good.” These people who are not getting the spotlight are often some of the most gifted artists.
How has the comedy landscape changed since you began covering it nearly 15 years ago?
Increasingly, there are artists doing work on TikTok and Instagram that we need to do a better job of figuring out ways to recognize. For a lot of teenagers, their introduction to comedy isn’t like mine. Their first experience with comedy isn’t watching late-night talk shows. Their first stand-up comic is probably going to be on social media. So we have to meet people where they are.
How much live comedy do you see nowadays?
I go out three or four times a week. When I started covering comedy, I went out to clubs a lot more, probably four or five times a week. I still go out a lot, but less. There’s two reasons for that: One of the reasons I go to clubs is to see new people. Once you get a sense of who’s out there, there’s less of a need to go as often.
But the bigger reason is the bounty of comedians online. When I started this job, I saw covering comedy as akin to covering theater; before I wrote about someone, I wanted to see them live. But increasingly, the way that most people are consuming comedy is through social media and streaming platforms. So now I spend more and more time looking at comedians online and listening to podcasts.
Are you someone who laughs out loud at shows?
I suffer from the same thing that most comedians do, which is that, if you see as much comedy as I do, you laugh less — though that doesn’t mean I enjoy it less. I’m not someone who laughs a lot in an audience. Sometimes that makes me self-conscious, because if I’m in a room with very few people, it has a big impact if no one’s laughing. So I’ve even found myself at times fake laughing, just to not distort the room, or because I feel it’s almost rude not to. But I try to be honest with my laughter.
Do you consider yourself a funny person?
I don’t consider myself a comedian-level funny person, but I think I have an OK sense of humor. I have zero interest in doing comedy, and that was one thing I knew when I took the job. I was like, I will never write the story where I try stand-up, and I realize: Oh, it’s hard. I’m never going to do that again.
Comedians have their job; I have mine. They’re totally different.