Harris Campaign Says She Will Meet the Press (on Her Terms)

The vice president, who has granted few interviews as the Democratic nominee, is now ramping things up. But she is likely to focus on local outlets and nontraditional venues where voters get their news.

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Vice President Kamala Harris speaking last month at the Democratic convention in Chicago. Her campaign’s media team is particularly focused on local TV and radio stations in battleground states like Pennsylvania.

She has hosted a convention, weathered a debate, held her first sit-down interview with a major television network.

Now the question for Vice President Kamala Harris’s media strategists is: What should she do next?

With no more mass-audience events remaining before Election Day, and former President Donald J. Trump declaring, for now, that he will not submit to another debate, Ms. Harris must determine the best way to keep introducing herself to voters who still have questions about her policies and plans for the nation.

During her 2020 campaign and early in her vice presidency, some of Ms. Harris’s biggest missteps came during unscripted encounters with journalists. To avoid taking chances, she has granted only six interviews in the 58 days since President Biden withdrew from the race, three with friendly radio hosts. Even the press-averse Mr. Biden took more questions in the final two months of his campaign than Ms. Harris has in what is nearly the first two months of hers.

Her team says this is about to change, promising a series of appearances across an array of media venues, including local and national outlets, podcasts, radio stations and daytime talk shows.

On Monday, she recorded an interview with Stephanie Himonidis, a Spanish-language radio host known as Chiquibaby whose show is syndicated on more than 100 stations. On Tuesday, Ms. Harris will be interviewed by three reporters at a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists, the same forum where Mr. Trump, in July, faced some of the toughest questioning of his campaign.

“If you want to know the kind of things we plan to do, look at the things she was doing all year before the ticket switch,” Brian Fallon, a senior adviser for Ms. Harris’s campaign, said in an interview, referring to Ms. Harris’s regular media appearances before she succeeded Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket.

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