Will there be another stimulus? Lansing: They were for general. So at the end of the day, its a commitment, but this also has to be accountability. John F. Lansing (he/him) oversees one of the country's most iconic news organizations, whose rigorous reporting and unsurpassed storytelling connects with millions of Americans every day on the air, online, and in person. I can't speak for other people, CEOs. Podtrac, which measures the audiences of podcast publishers, has consistently placed NPR at the top of its monthly rankings. I just started in May. NPR plans to lay off about 10% of its current staff due to the soft ad market and a drop in revenue from corporate sponsors, as well as uncertainties in the global economy overall. What steps does NPR still need to take in this area? And I was very proud of the progress we were making. NPR strives to create a more informed publicone challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas, and cultures. If you had to create a podcast, what would it be about? Doing that just requires that were putting more emphasis on the diversity of our decision makers, our leadership, our story selection, our source selection. Because when you're all at work, you're all at work, and you go home to your individual situations. NPR Names John Lansing President And CEO : NPR - NPR.org hide caption. In May 2020, four NPR female hosts of color Garcia-Navarro, King, All Things Considered host Ailsa Chang and Weekend All Things Considered host Michel Martin sent a letter to Lansing . Weve seen a gradual comeback. We'd like to revisit a story that first broke yesterday and . I think you have to be willing to take hard questions. He joined NPR after serving as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. "The challenges he will face at NPR are not dissimilar to challenges across the media landscape as a whole," said Sheikholeslami, who will soon take up the CEO job at New York Public Radio. "Your mobility becomes extremely important to be involved and connected to audiences that are mobile and that tend to be, frankly, younger and, as we think of it at USAGM, future leaders, who can influence the rise of free and open societies.". Current (https://current.org/2021/02/ceo-john-lansing-discusses-nprs-diversity-efforts-budget-deficit-and-growing-podcast-competition/). The first pillar is to expand the power of the national-local partnership into the on-demand future. And it gives the lie to NPRs claim, through disclaimers, that it is simply reporting on its own the implication of the disclaimer being that there is no editorial control or direction from the CEO. It puts a filter on that helps us explain even unpopular decisions, how they link to our mission. When asked about his priorities, Lansing invoked what he has called the network's "North Star'' since his arrival in the fall of 2019: a push to ensure the network has a bigger and broader audience base, rooted in younger and more diverse listeners, readers and consumers. Lansing: When I came in in 2019, my earliest observation was that our biggest issue was the lack of diversity in our audience, and I felt that we needed to double down our efforts in DEI throughout our organization in order to fulfill the promise to reflect the entire American public in terms of what America looks like. NPRs search for a new CEO is finally over! NPR Selects Voice of America Boss as Its New Leader, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/business/media/npr-john-lansing.html. All of those underlying effects generally lead to whatever effects were going to have in corporate sponsorship. America needs public radio more than ever. When you first got to NPR, what did you think? And its where our focus needs to be right now. Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world. Lansing, who is 62, is. But we felt like it was an important investment to make in our member stations to support them during the pandemic. I thought, wow. Mohn fired head of news Michael Oreskes on Halloween 2017. Were certainly not over, were not at a finish line. Mr. Lansing, who began his career as a teenage cameraman at a television station in Kentucky, spent two decades at Scripps Networks. Essentially, the success of the company falls in your hands. Pack then took a number of actions that raised fears about the independence of the agency, which includes Voice of America. That's something that perceptive journalists should be able to pick up pretty quickly. Lansing: I guess my head turns first to the journalism of our member stations. August 20, 2022 August 20th is National Radio Day. So we took that very, very seriously. The agency has an annual budget of $808 million. We collected a lot of data and we have a lot of good follow-up opportunities, and Ill continue to offer myself up as a direct resource in that pilot project. That survey happened in the fall of 2020. advanced degree - political agility. September 5, 2019; Washington, D.C. The NPR Board of Directors announced today that it selected John Lansing to become its next President and Chief Executive Officer. Mayor is said to be staying on at the network as a top executive and deputy to Lansing, retaining the enhanced portfolio she took on after Mohn's health crises. It is intended to align the strategy of its often fractious member stations with one another and NPR itself and to allow NPR, for the first time, to raise money digitally from its audience in concert with those stations. "I want to hear the ideas that are bubbling underneath right now and what people are excited about, what they're looking forward to developing," Lansing said Thursday. Lansing: We arent in a position to answer that until we know for sure when the pandemic is going to subside. Podcasting in particular allows NPR to reach audiences that are not necessarily tied to a radio., Paul Haaga, the chairman of NPRs board, said in a statement that Mr. Lansing was a listener and a collaborative leader with a passion for our public service journalistic mission who will help us continue to expand the audience for our storytelling.. "Jarl would be the first to say that it is the area where he feels that his work was not complete," Sheikholeslami said. You can't escape that. During 2021, we worked on that with Keith and with Diversity and Inclusion Manager Whitney Maddox. Today is a good day to remember the vital role public radio plays in providing the information we all need to fully exercise our rights in our democracy. Current: Last year, the SAG-AFTRA union called out NPRs previous failures on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion and asked management to commit to accountability measures. We established the top priority [a.k.a. One thing I would say is, research the places you're looking at to either begin your career or advance your career and understand where they are on these issues. There are over 1000 NPR Member Station signals broadcasting across the United States An NPR spokeswoman said final decisions on which jobs will be eliminated should occur by the week of March 20. I think leaders are accountable for walking the walk, for doing what they say they're going to do. He defined NPR's mission as "serving the public with information and an excellence and quality about it that makes it 'must see' on a variety of platforms.". An open letter to NPR President John Lansing: Racial justice - Current Lansing: About 11 months ago, in February, a pilot group of 15 stations got together and put together an 18-month plan to begin the process. Let's say, I was walking out of high school into college, I had no idea what I was going to do. I joined in October of '19. As President, he held strategic and operational oversight of Scripps Networks Digital division and Scripps Networks Interactive, which includes six cable networks: Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel, DIY, Cooking Channel and Great American Country. Were still looking at a deficit, but were hopeful that by the time we get into March, well have a pretty clear-eyed view of how the year is going to end up. NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. NPR's president of operations, Loren Mayor, was the leading internal candidate for the chief executive position. During the Donald Trump administration, he held roles in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and was acting Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Community Planning and Development. We are not just putting out regulations or policies and paperwork. Then I moved on to manage TV stations and cable networks. At the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Lansing championed a free press even as leaders of many nations move against it. Its pretty clear to me that the ratings decline in radio is driven by commuting patterns. "The combination of his health issues plus the situation with Mike Oreskes did derail his plans.". Fear drives their path. Obviously, this job that you have as a CEO of NPR is a really huge responsibility. We established management commitments to the women of color so that we address specifically their concerns. Just be tuned into our folks. Lansing said in an interview with Current Thursday that one of his first observations upon joining NPR was that we needed to double down our efforts in diversity, equity and inclusion. NPR hosts' departures fuel questions over race. The full story is Leading the organization through it all is CEO John Lansing, a longtime media executive who has been on the job since October 2019. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Lansing, 62, praised NPR as a home of high-quality journalism and audio production, and said that in addition to supporting traditional radio broadcasting he wanted to help NPR further its expansion into areas like podcasts, where the radio network has already been a leader. He soon made DEI the top priority at NPR. NPR's New CEO Is Veteran Media Executive John Lansing : NPR - NPR.org He held off a push by House Republicans to spin off Voice of America into a nongovernmental broadcaster. Now Lansing says he wants to draw on the intellectual and creative impulses of his new staffers as he leads a domestic journalistic powerhouse with an international reputation and reach. That said, Mohn set higher annual expectations for the network in fundraising and agreed to be co-chairman of its 50th-anniversary capital campaign. During the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, NPR was at risk of laying off staff when sponsors canceled their spots on the network, said John Lansing, NPR's chief executive. Last year, however, the U.S. Agency for Global Media came under fire when it emerged that it had bought Facebook ads targeting American citizens, in violation of laws meant to protect Americans from domestic propaganda. It really stretched me to understand that flexibility is a good thing. We discovered in our most recent climate survey that that was an area that we needed to put more effort into. This is essentially the DEI work writ large, but also our culture of respect, safety, upward mobility, training and making NPR a world-class organization for which to work. For two years, he served as the president and CEO of a cable trade group called the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing. (On NPR's radio side, advertising takes the form of underwriting, as corporate sponsors are not permitted to call for listeners to purchase goods or services.). John Lansing, the chief executive officer and director of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, will become NPR's CEO in mid-October. Lansing: I guess I would comment just as a citizen watching from outside. Current: NPR and a group of stations started a pilot project around collaborative fundraising in 2019. Lansing says he remains committed to podcasting "1,000 percent," as well as the network's hallmark news magazines, such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Instead, Whitney really helped us to buckle down with discipline, understand what's going on, and meet with women of color [in the organization], as we're doing tonight in our executive committee meeting, which we do regularly now. At the center of a graphic is our commitment to DEI, and all of our work in that circle is surrounded by four pillars. Scripps Company, Held senior management positions at Scripps-owned affiliates, including WEWS TV in Cleveland, Ohio and WXYZ TV in Detroit, Michigan, Early in his career Award-winning Photojournalist and Field Producer, Assignment Manager, Managing Editor, and News Director at several television stations. It didnt begin in the summer it accelerated in the summer. NPR Start Date: Mid October, 2020 John Lansing is taking over for outgoing CEO Jarl Mohn, who has led the organization for . Required fields are marked *. Within a few weeks, Lansing became convinced that projection would be unreachable. What advice would you give to young journalists of color when navigating these white spaces, but attempting to make a change? John Lansing, CEO, photographed for NPR, 22 January 2020, in Washington DC. John Gibbs is an American far-right political commentator and politician. Unlike some predecessors, Lansing doesn't face a particularly fraught political landscape. All of that is to say that coming out of the reckoning of Memorial Day 2020 was for us and for me, in particular, a call to action internally at NPR to hear and reckon with our own issues internally. Current: Do you have any examples of how digital operations would be integrated into divisions throughout the organization? Talk about a force of nature. "Bloomberg Opinion" columnists offer their opinions on issues in the news. John F Lansing, National Public Radio Inc: Profile and Biography - Bloomberg Markets Live Now Bloomberg TV+ Bloomberg Daybreak Middle East Bloomberg Daybreak Middle East. Trump has notably praised authoritarian figures, including the leaders of North Korea, the Philippines, Russia and Turkey and has waged his own fight against journalists. The emphasis, he says, must be on drawing in "the future audience to make NPR sustainable for the next 50 years. But after the pandemic hit in mid-March, we got together with our cohort and said, Why wait 18 months? Weve had a couple of significant anonymous gifts that have helped shore up our forecast for the coming fiscal year. John Ten Eyck Lansing Jr. (January 30, 1754 - vanished December 12, 1829), a Founding Father of the United States, was an attorney, jurist, and politician. You go to college and all the sudden you're like 'wait a minute, I've got to do something when this is over.' Last year brought a host of challenges to NPR: a multimillion-dollar deficit, calls for changes in its workplace culture and a hit to broadcast listening. I think there's an awareness, like in the way you asked the question about 'our North Star.' John Lansing Jr. - Wikipedia He is credited with restoring morale, in part by naming a noted journalist as head of the Voice of America: Amanda Bennett is a former top news executive at the Philadelphia Inquirer who previously held senior newsroom jobs at Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal. I will say in the last three or four weeks weve seen a little bit of an uptick in a positive way on corporate sponsorship. "However, when you think how we look out longer term, right, not just for 20 years, but several years out, it's really about building a sustainable financial future for NPR.". Pompeo Interview Dispute With NPR Sends Conflicting Message on - VOA So were now into the new fiscal year. Did you plan for this or did it kind of just happen? ", "I am thrilled to work with NPR's exceptional management team, staff and journalists," said Lansing. I had no idea what was out there. So its an ongoing effort. We are different from other federal agencies, said Grant K. Turner, the agencys chief financial officer. Last summer, we definitely had a racial reckoning. So I wouldn't create a politics podcast because there are too many, and we have the best one of many already. Current: What challenges have you faced in implementing your DEI plans? But my goals also go to all of my direct reports. And the work goes on. During that financial crisis, NPR shut down shows and laid off scores of people. Since then,. That content executive position has not yet been filled; its creation led to the departure of then-NPR chief news executive Nancy Barnes. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Current is an editorially independent, nonprofit service of the American University School of Communication. Its something that we certainly support. And weve seen that really help them grow. And so that was the way I looked at the future for me.