John Lansing, who as NPR’s CEO from 2019 till early this 12 months guided the broadcaster via a world pandemic, an exploding media panorama and widening political polarization that referred to as into query a few of its journalistic rules, died on Aug. 14 at his dwelling in Eagle River, Wisconsin. He was 67.
An NPR consultant confirmed the loss of life however didn’t give a trigger.
Mr. Lansing, who has been within the information enterprise since he graduated highschool, arrived at NPR with a mission to broaden their attain past conventional radio into media resembling podcasts and newsletters.
He additionally introduced what he considers his “north star”: a dedication to increasing NPR’s viewers to incorporate a youthful and extra numerous demographic, and a parallel dedication to range, fairness and inclusion in its protection, sources and the workers.
His adjustments included documenting range of sources, introducing unconscious bias coaching and hiring folks of coloration for each on- and off-air positions.
“I felt that we wanted to redouble our efforts at DEI throughout our group to ship on the promise of reflecting all the American public by way of what America appears to be like like,” he advised the Present, magazine covering public media in 2021.
Mr Lansing began as CEO of NPR in October 2019 and was nonetheless settling into the function when the Covid pandemic hit. That presents a really totally different problem: Radio listenership has plummeted with the shift to telecommuting, and NPR has run a $25 million deficit as companies pulled sponsorship {dollars}.
Mr Lansing was advised it could take six months to change to completely distant operations; below his management, the method was accomplished in every week. He froze dues and costs for NPR’s a whole bunch of member stations and instituted weekly Zoom chats for all workers to maintain morale up.
The financial echoes of the pandemic continued to wreak havoc on the media within the following years, together with NPR. In an effort to keep away from layoffs, he slashed prime executives’ salaries, together with a 25 % reduce to his personal, and later imposed a hiring freeze.
Nevertheless, this was not sufficient and in 2023 he laid off 10 percent of NPR’s workforce — about 100 positions — and stopped manufacturing of 4 podcasts. He maintained shut contact with SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents nearly all of NPR staff, and earned reward for his transparency and even-handedness.
“He was the calmest individual within the room,” Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s “Morning Version,” wrote in an e mail. “He simply by no means misplaced his cool that I noticed. He was pleased with his background as a working journalist and introduced that have to his work as an government director.”
NPR’s difficulties had been greater than financial. Because the nation’s main public tv community, it has change into a lightning rod throughout and after the Trump administration, and Mr. Lansing has emerged because the group’s chief advocate.
he he defended himself loudly All Issues Thought of host Mary Louise Kelly in 2020 after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused her of mendacity to him in an interview. And after Twitter defined NPR as a “state-linked media” organization in 2023, he ended all new posts to his 52 feeds on the platform. (NPR receives lower than 1 % of its funds from federal funding.)
“It could be a disservice to the intense work you all do right here to proceed sharing it on a platform that associates the federal public media constitution with an abandonment of editorial independence or requirements,” he wrote in a memo to NPR workers.
Mr. Lansing introduced in September that he was stepping down as chief government, however that he would keep on till a successor was discovered. His final day was March 22, three days earlier than Catherine Maher, the brand new chief government, succeeded him.
Lower than a month later, Mr. Lansing was within the information once more after NPR’s senior editor, Uri Berliner, wrote an article for The Free Press criticizing himpartially, for observing a decline in “viewpoint range” at the same time as Mr. Lansing leaned towards race and identification.
Mr. Lansing refused to budge.
“The philosophy is: Do you need to serve all of America and ensure it feels like all of America, or not?” he told NPR in response to Mr. Berliner’s article. “I’d welcome an argument in opposition to that.”
John Francis Lansing was born on July 31, 1957 in Minneapolis. His father, William, was in gross sales and his mom, Catherine Ann (Cavanaugh) Lansing, was an administrative assistant. When John was 5, his household moved to St. Louis and later to Paducah, Kentucky.
Two days after graduating from highschool, he received a job at an area tv station. He was employed as a studio technician at minimal wage; his first job was portray the outside of the station.
He quickly moved as much as operator, then moved on to more and more senior positions at stations within the Midwest, together with Louisville, Kentucky; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Minneapolis; and Chicago.
Whereas at Louisville, he enrolled at Bellarmine College, however left in 1985 just some credit in need of graduating. He returned many years later and acquired a bachelor’s diploma in communications in 2009.
Mr. Lansing married Jean Rausch in 1993. She survives him, as do their youngsters, Alex, Jackson, Jennifer and Nicholas.
Mr. Lansing spent about 20 years as an government at EW Scripps, first in a job overseeing native stations after which as president of Scripps Community, answerable for cable channels together with the Meals Community and HGTV.
In 2015, he turned head of the Broadcasting Board (now the US International Media Company), which oversees government-sponsored media resembling VOA and Radio Free Asia. He remained there till 2019, when he joined NPR.
When an NPR reporter asked about his impression after he arrivedhe replied, “I assumed, wow. How cool is it to be on NPR?’
