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Former NPR chief government John Lansing died Wednesday at his lakeside dwelling in Wisconsin, simply six months after relinquishing his position on the community and simply two weeks after turning 67 years previous. His explanation for demise was not instantly disclosed.
Lansing, beforehand admired for an extended profession in broadcasting and cable tv, stepped down this previous spring from NPR after a turbulent four-and-a-half 12 months stint.
At NPR, Lansing tangled with titans, stored the community’s reveals on the air throughout a worldwide pandemic, navigated intense social headwinds, oversaw an bold growth of digital ambitions and steered NPR by means of what he outlined as an “existential” monetary disaster.
His successor, NPR CEO Katherine Maher, stated Lansing rose to the second.
“He had an amazing affect on NPR’s office tradition, understood the significance of NPR’s mission to assist democracy by informing the American public, and led the group to rise to the problem of an unprecedented world pandemic,” Maher informed staffers in a observe.
Regardless of layoffs and buyouts of 10% of the workers in early 2023, Lansing earned reward from an sudden supply: the newsroom union’s chief.
“I believed he did job,” Pat O’Donnell, government director of SAG-AFTRA Washington-Mid Atlantic native, stated after Lansing introduced he would retire. “He did the very best he might. Disaster after disaster — oh my God.”
The union chief cited Lansing’s fixed communication with workers throughout the pandemic, his conciliatory method to negotiations, his emphasis on range, and his willingness to make sure the community provided laid-off staff extra beneficiant severance phrases than required beneath the prevailing contract.
Lansing obtained his begin in journalism on the age of 17 as a studio technician and digicam operator for an area tv station in Paducah, Ky. He quickly turned a videographer and rose by means of the ranks of native TV newsrooms, as a information director and finally a prime official for E.W. Scripps Co. over the native stations. He later turned president of the Scripps Networks, which owned such stations because the Meals Community, HGTV and the Journey Channel.
In 2015, he turned the chief of the U.S. Company for World Media, the federal government outfit that oversees such federally funded worldwide broadcasters because the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.
When Lansing arrived at NPR in 2019, he got here with an ethical crucial that concurrently served as a enterprise technique: the necessity to diversify the workers, its programming, its story choice and its audiences to higher mirror American life. He referred to as it his North Star.
Lansing elevated feminine hosts’ salaries to assist them preserve tempo with their male counterparts — after which turned personally concerned in contract negotiations after a number of distinguished girls hosts of colour left the community.
That resulted in important half from the elevated emphasis peer information retailers, together with the New York Instances and CNN, are inserting on audio — creating a much more aggressive market for expertise than Lansing’s predecessors confronted.
Lansing’s North Star led to a major shift in workforce hiring and notable modifications in demographics for NPR’s workforce and management workforce. It has not but been accompanied by anticipated enhance or concomitant diversification of the community’s audiences.
He made the pitch and the push from the outset, months earlier than the social justice protests that swept by means of U.S. streets, workplaces and even newsrooms beginning in 2020 after the homicide of George Floyd.
But the initiative finally turned wrapped up in a nationwide debate over NPR, when then senior enterprise editor Uri Berliner accused the community beneath Lansing of failing to contemplate viewpoint range even because it pursued larger racial and ethnic illustration.
Lansing replied: “The philosophy is: Do you wish to serve all of America and ensure it seems like all of America, or not? I might welcome the argument in opposition to that.”
Lansing didn’t shy from arguments. In January 2020, when then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo falsely accused All Issues Thought of host Mary Louise Kelly of mendacity to listeners, Lansing publicly defended her and the community, on the document.
“Mary Louise Kelly is without doubt one of the most revered, truthful, factual, skilled and moral journalists in america,” Lansing informed Morning Version’s Michel Martin. “And that is recognized by the whole press corps. And I stand behind her. And I stand behind the NPR newsroom. And the assertion from the secretary of state is blatantly false.”
Equally, Lansing withdrew all of NPR’s formal feeds on X, previously Twitter, after new proprietor Elon Musk moved to designate the community “state-affiliated media,” the identical time period it makes use of for propaganda retailers in Russia and different autocratic states.
Musk later revised the label to “government-funded media.” (NPR sometimes receives lower than 1% of its $300 million annual price range from the federally funded Company for Public Broadcasting.) However Lansing had seen sufficient. He stated he was defending its credibility and its potential to provide journalism with out “a shadow of negativity.”
Later evaluations discovered no considerable impact on the community’s on-line audiences from the establishment’s withdrawal from the positioning.
NPR’s chief communications officer, Isabel Lara, wrote Lansing had led the community throughout a few of its hardest years as a corporation.
“I realized a lot about management from him; he simply made you wish to do your greatest,” Lara stated. “He liked journalism and was proud to defend our editorial independence when it was attacked.”
Regardless of masking the rising risk of Covid-19, NPR was not ready for the pandemic, which reached the U.S. simply months into Lansing’s tenure.
Lansing later stated he was suggested by prime aides it’d take NPR one other six months to construct again full broadcast functionality remotely, with hosts working stay from dwelling studios. They obtained it accomplished in per week.
The choice to carry weekly all-staff conferences “was the glue that held the tradition collectively throughout a time when the mission had by no means actually been extra vital,” Lansing stated.
NPR obtained non-public and public funds to cowl the struggle in Ukraine and has maintained a powerful presence there.
In late 2022, the wheels regarded as if they’d come off, nonetheless; Lansing initially warned that each one hiring could be frozen and all however important journey curtailed; early in 2023 he revised his projections far downward, saying that the networks’ underwriting revenues had imploded for podcasts.
Lansing was initially condemned for failing to see the price range disaster coming.
However NPR proved to be on the slicing fringe of a media collapse, as company advertisers slashed budgets forward of a recession that has not, to this point, transpired. Different main information retailers have been hit even tougher. The Washington Submit laid off or purchased out about 13% of its workers final 12 months. The Los Angeles Instances has reduce a couple of third of its workers over the previous two years. New York Public Radio simply introduced job cuts of 8% of staffers — on prime of earlier reductions final 12 months.
Finally, many staffers concluded Lansing had dealt with that comparatively humanely, with fixed updates about price range realities, alterations to satisfy staffers’ issues and voluntary buyouts.
In quest for brand new revenues, NPR expanded its entrepreneurial efforts, for instance placing a take care of Amazon Music to run the Man Raz podcast How I Constructed This solely for per week earlier than it’s launched to the general public. Equally, NPR has now licensed its Tiny Desk Live performance format in South Korea and Japan.
Lansing additionally pushed a larger integration with NPR’s tons of of member stations all through the nation, creating what he referred to as the NPR Community.
In March 2021, Lansing took weeks off to recuperate from a coronary heart surgical procedure to restore and substitute a coronary heart valve and a part of an aortic artery. On the time, he informed staffers he had been knowledgeable there was no signal of coronary heart illness.
Colleagues recalled Lansing in a private means within the wake of the announcement of his demise.
“John was a real pal who led a lifetime of integrity and love,” stated Keith Woods, NPR’s chief range officer. “He made me wish to match his conviction and his particular potential to maintain the issues that really mattered — his household, his pals, the individuals he served as a journalist and a pacesetter — on the middle of his universe.”
In her observe to staffers, Maher wrote that she had solely met Lansing simply as soon as.
“We broke bread collectively and I pestered him with my rudimentary questions,” she stated. “He was beneficiant together with his perception and optimistic about our future. Later when issues had been troublesome in the beginning of my tenure, he made a degree of reaching out to cheer me on. It meant lots to listen to from somebody who had sat within the chair earlier than, and I want we’d had extra time collectively.”
Lansing is survived by his spouse Jean, and their kids Alex, Jackson, Nicholas, and Jennifer.
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Underneath NPR’s protocol for reporting on itself, no company official or information government reviewed this story earlier than it was posted publicly.
