From a recent Rolling Stone profile:
Maddow's talent is explication, of rendering complex topics clearly, and so her show, uniquely for cable news, reserves the first 18 minutes of airtime for a lengthy essay, a deconstruction of a single political topic, usually some obscure conservative shift in a state legislature, or some ripple in the foreign-policy universe that has gone unnoticed. Most political talk shows are filmed so tightly that the heads of their hosts fill the screen, so that the host's personality is front and center. The Rachel Maddow Show uses a far wider shot, so that Maddow herself occupies a smaller part of the screen, off to the side. The shift is subtle, but the message is starkly different. Bill O'Reilly, on Fox News, is a combatant and a champion. Maddow is a guide. O'Reilly's show says, Look at me. Maddow's says, Picture this.(Video: "She's America's leading lefty wonk, complete with chunky glasses, Ph.D., and a deep faith in activist government. But Rachel Maddow is also, a little unexpectedly, totally into guns. Which is how come she ended up at the Westside Pistol & Rifle Range in Manhattan for a recent Rolling Stone photo shoot," via Rolling Stone.)