Howard Stern does not know it, but we have had a one-sided beef since 1997. This dates back to his obnoxiously crude days, when I covered a remote news conference announcing his then-terrestrial radio show’s debut on a local York, Pennsylvania, station. Stern, talking to us via satellite from New York, discovered I was a young Black woman and demanded that the men in the room determine if I was hot (they said I was), asked me graphic questions about whether Black or white men were better lovers, and then queried the next female reporter at the microphone if she would make out with me. By that time I’d already fled for my car, but let’s just say these were not ideal working conditions.

If you’d told me that three decades later the provocateur and former Fartman would have an insightful and informed sit-down with a different woman of color who happened to be running for president, I’d have thrown my reporter’s pad at you. Yet here we are in 2024, finding that not only has Stern evolved, but the way candidates — or Vice President Kamala Harris, at least — approach the media has, too.

Bravo.

I wrote a column in August about how Harris had not yet done much press, and I didn’t blame her. Some members of that very press were not happy with me, but the truth is that much of my industry spent time playing games about whether she was qualified to lead the nation, or expecting her to play defense against the increasingly violent and nasty things her opponent says about her.

I am positive the VP’s current strategy of mostly avoiding your CNNs and your “Meet The Press” shows in favor of less formal outlets has nothing to do with my advice, but it’s working. Harris has had surprisingly in-depth conversations with former shock jock Stern, “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper, late-night staple Stephen Colbert, and Whoopi Goldberg and the ladies of “The View,” covering topics like policy, the threat to democracy posed by her opponent, her political and personal background and more. This is the kind of stuff voters want to know, but that she’s not been asked in detail.

Most importantly, Harris got her message to crucial demographics that simply don’t watch traditional outlets enough for appearances on them to make a dent. Of course, those traditional outlets are, as the kids say, big mad. NBC News commentator Andrea Mitchell was pointedly salty on last Sunday’s “Meet The Press” about how Harris isn’t polling well with either white or Black men because she won’t “double down on more interviews and serious interviews.” This comment, mind you, was one day before Harris and running mate Tim Walz appeared on “60 Minutes,” which as far as I know is a campaign standard for candidates that’s taken very, very seriously.

Let’s be real, folks. Mitchell’s real issue is that Harris isn’t talking to her or the rest of the gauntlet of self-appointed kingmakers who consider their programs and pages mandatory coronations for candidates. When Harris doesn’t bother with them, this makes them less important. They make demands of her time and attention, accusing her of running to friendly softball outlets. But they don’t seem to have that same smoke for her opponent, who canceled his own “60 Minutes” interview and has mostly stuck to Fox appearances, like the one during which Laura Ingraham kept trying to get former president Donald Trump to say he wasn’t really going to prosecute his political enemies and he could not do it.

That means Harris doesn’t need to jump through hoops, or fulfill a longtime outlet’s definition of what a tough or serious question is. I watched “60 Minutes” interviewer Bill Whitaker grill Harris and then talk over her answers. Stern asked her similar questions about things like Israel and the economy without being combative. It was loose and relaxed. Was it friendlier? Sure. Stern literally said he was going to vote for her.

But before you get up in arms, I’d like you to tell me truly that Fox interviewers aren’t voting for Trump, and that he knows it. Stern’s questions aren’t any less legitimate because the word ”news” doesn’t appear in his bio. Honestly, if you compare the interviews on outlets the two opponents have spoken to, Harris’ are much more diverse and unpredictable, and led to more interesting and thoughtful answers.

She spoke to Cooper, whose show is massively popular with young women, about men not knowing anything about female bodies while demanding legal rights over them. They also discussed whether having biological children is the only thing that keeps one humble, as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested. (Harris doesn’t aspire to humility, thank you very much.) Harris and Stern spoke earnestly about her plan to help Americans care for their aging parents, and later, with Colbert, passionately decried Trump’s politicization of hurricanes. “Have you no empathy, man?” she asked.

You tell me that these questions and answers are less substantive than dangerous, racist tirades about immigrants eating cats and dogs and poisoning the country’s blood. Tell me that finding audiences that might be persuaded to vote for her who may not have previously considered doing so — like Stern’s blue-collar male listeners or Cooper’s young female ones — is not a good plan. Certainly preaching to the same old jaded choir with a xenophobic melody isn’t any better?

We have less than a month to go before the election, and I’m sure Harris is going to keep doing unexpected things. We live in wild and unprecedented times, and that calls for a candidate who operates outside of the usual boxes. And if it shakes my media colleagues up, that’s an added bonus.