aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Friday, March 07, 2008
Troubles at NPR?
In an announcement that surprised staff, NPR’s board of directors said Thursday that CEO Ken Stern is leaving after 10 years at the network. [...]
Many staffers in NPR’s Washington headquarters were stunned - and confused - by the announcement.
One source familiar with the situation said Stern was leaving because of board criticism over his management style. Another source said the board concluded Stern was not the right person to lead a creative media company forward.
Stern arrived in 1999 as the network’s chief operating officer. Since then, NPR’s weekly audience doubled from 13 million to 26 million as it launched new programs and became a leader in podcasting.
During his tenure, Stern had pushed the radio network to expand into digital news. In an increasingly competitive media landscape, he often told staff that NPR had to find new ways to reach its audience or it could become irrelevant.
A third source said - though - that Stern had never articulated how NPR’s hundreds of member stations would fit into that multi-media future.
Stern declined to speak on tape.
Uh, to the average Joe, that sounds like a pretty successful tenure.
People at NPR said, however, that Stern and the organization’s 17-member board had clashed repeatedly over several of Stern’s initiatives, including NPR’s expansion into new media. Those initiatives often riled station managers, who saw them coming at the expense of serving the hundreds of public stations that pay dues annually to NPR. [...]
Stern is the latest in a recent string of high-level departures at NPR. Bill Marimow, who had been NPR’s vice president for news, left the organization in late 2006 to become editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer after serving only eight months in the top editorial job. Jay Kernis, who developed several NPR shows over two long tenures, left in January to become managing editor of CNN. And Barbara Rehm, NPR’s managing editor for news, announced her resignation in July.
It’s true. Why put up with, why pay for, those legacy stations when we can go straight to the podcast. Capitalists talk the talk but are not so big on walking Joseph Schumpeter’s creative destruction walk (even if they are state-sanctioned Kroc-Granted non-profits).
I will be eager to read more about this story.
