NPR information chief Nancy Barnes will leave the network in November. She introduced her departure on the identical day that NPR mentioned it will rent a chief content material officer to oversee each information and programming.
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Wanyu Zhang/Wanyu Zhang
NPR information chief Nancy Barnes will leave the network in November. She introduced her departure on the identical day that NPR mentioned it will rent a chief content material officer to oversee each information and programming.
Wanyu Zhang/Wanyu Zhang
NPR’s chief information government, Nancy Barnes, mentioned Friday she could be leaving the network, prompted by NPR CEO John Lansing’s resolution to create a brand new government function above her.
A brand new chief content material officer will oversee NPR’s information and programming divisions, which have steadily collaborated and virtually as steadily clashed over assets and priorities.
“As many of you have noted to me and others, there is increasingly overlap between the News and Programming divisions,” Barnes wrote in a memo to workers Friday afternoon. “Now is the right time for me to pursue some other opportunities.”
The growth means NPR, considered one of a handful of important gamers amongst nationwide information organizations, shall be trying to find two high executives over information on the identical time.
Barnes referred to as her resolution “bittersweet,” however wrote that she supported Lansing’s resolution and requested that the workers give him their assist as properly: “NPR is a national gem. The work we do is critically important, now more than ever.”
Barnes wrote that she would keep till at the very least late November. Both Lansing and Barnes declined to remark for this story.
NPR’s management in podcasting has made the favored audio kind one of many network’s rising sources of audiences and revenues in recent times. Yet that has come below duress from competitors from different public radio gamers and, extra not too long ago, for-profit outfits–main to arms races for expertise, audiences and income.
Barnes and NPR’s senior vp for programming and viewers growth, Anya Grundmann, typically disagreed on which podcasts or improvements to pursue. (Grundmann didn’t reply to a be aware searching for remark.)
According to a number of colleagues, Barnes was shocked to be taught what number of podcasts stemming from clearly journalistic efforts had been below Grundmann’s management, similar to Planet Money. (Some of them in the end had been positioned below the steerage of each executives.)
Lansing’s remarks in an preliminary memo to workers concerning the new government job launched Friday morning forward of Barnes’ revelation steered that the network’s seek for a brand new chief content material officer was pushed by strategic goals and monetary pressures. It mirrored the altering nature of the media enterprise, and the necessity to struggle for audiences.
“We are funneling our international, national and local journalism into all available platforms to reach younger and more diverse audiences where they are,” Lansing wrote. “We are also facing unprecedented competitive pressures from commercial media in all those spaces and the reality of our limited resources as a non-profit.”
NPR faces elevated competitors from industrial shops
According to the latest figures, relationship again to spring, NPR has 24 million listeners of its broadcast reveals, 8 million listeners of its podcasts and 16 million distinct guests to its web site each week.
Lansing introduced a nationwide seek for the chief content material officer, led by NPR Chief People Officer Selyn Hong with the search consulting agency Russell Reynolds Associates.
The transfer represents a back-to-the-future method. Lansing’s predecessor, Jarl Mohn, dispensed with the position in 2014, saying he felt the chief on the time was giving up too readily on NPR’s promise in broadcasting amid adjustments in viewers habits. Mohn argued that NPR ought to stretch its ambitions on all platforms.
There is a philosophical in addition to bureaucratic rigidity at play: NPR at instances alternates between contemplating itself one of many nation’s main information organizations that additionally provides music and humor, and a media firm with information as one key a part of its model and mission. (NPR provides the comedy present Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, YouTube movies of “Tiny Desk Concerts” and music podcasts of Alt.Latino, amongst many different initiatives.)
A newspaper veteran, Barnes inherited a newsroom scarred by #MeToo scandal
Barnes arrived at NPR in fall 2018 after main the newsrooms of the Houston Chronicle and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, two main regional information organizations with sturdy information of enterprise reporting.
She discovered herself confronted with the problem of serving to to restore a workers still shaken by the behavior and departure of her predecessor Michael Oreskes. He had been compelled out a yr earlier over a number of accusations of sexual harassment through the #MeToo second.
Barnes helped NPR News obtain substantive accomplishments in a interval buffeted by exterior crises that the network had to each endure and canopy. She accelerated NPR’s investigative and enterprise reporting efforts; helped map out reporting on the pandemic and the battle in Ukraine; and broadened the network’s protection of problems with race, id and social justice.
In addition, she oversaw a extra aggressive stance in reporting on the rising menace to democracy from supporters of former President Donald Trump. Barnes additionally established a extra muscular presence for the network in masking local weather change. The newsroom continued to garner main accolades, profitable its first Pulitzer, in collaboration with two member stations, and changing into a Pulitzer finalist a number of instances.
Under Barnes, NPR News embraced analytical instruments in serving to to decide what tales to cowl, in what method, and on what platforms whereas nonetheless searching for to fulfill the network’s said public service mission. Those instruments had been additionally deployed to observe extra totally hiring practices and the variety of the individuals NPR interviews in its tales and applications.
Lansing referred to as Barnes a “strong partner” in a be aware to workers saying a nationwide seek for her alternative.
Even so, the newspaper veteran’s early tenure proved shaky and onerous to surmount. Barnes took important time to stand up to pace on the imperatives and rhythms of broadcast, the complexities of coping with the lots of of member stations that make up the general public radio system, and the more and more restive newsroom workers. Some public radio station executives felt they didn’t totally perceive her priorities.
An early slight of protection, and later issues over distinguished departures
One instance: an handle to public radio station executives concerning the want to ramp up reporting on points germane to individuals of coloration included the comment that NPR’s protection was “more lacking than we realized.” That was taken as a slight by the network’s Code Switch workforce, which had been established in 2013 and launched a podcast three years later. (She hailed its work when Apple named Code Switch the podcast of the yr in 2020.)
In one other occasion, Barnes announced she would be making targeted layoffs to redirect assets towards her priorities; after an outcry, most of these affected, together with longtime correspondent David Welna, landed new positions at NPR.
She didn’t strike a robust public presence as a journalism thought chief, as Oreskes had performed; and Barnes was additionally characterised by many colleagues as aloof from her newsroom, although over time she weighed in with prolonged and laudatory notes to the information workers. The distance compelled by the pandemic solely accentuated that notion.
Last winter, unease erupted into public view over the departure of 4 feminine NPR hosts of coloration – every to different alternatives. Their selections had been influenced by frustrations over compensation, alternatives and assist. Several mentioned they’d discovered negotiations with the network troubling or offensive. Barnes’ high government over information magazines left the network a number of months later. Even so, hiring of individuals of coloration spiked upward at NPR and inside NPR News throughout her time.
Friday afternoon, Barnes shared a warning at the same time as she struck a collegial tone in her be aware to the newsroom.
“We serve the public at a time when journalism is under attack and Americans cannot always agree on a shared set of facts,” Barnes wrote. “We also know that countries such as China, Russia and Iran foment disinformation as a way of destabilizing the United States. We need to stand strong as a trusted international journalism organization.”
Disclosure: This story was reported by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Chief Business Editor Pallavi Gogoi. No senior information executives or company officers had been allowed to see this text earlier than it was posted publicly.