At PBS’s NewsHour, Departures, Questions and Complaints

It’s never good when a news organization loses its political editor just a year before a presidential election. But in the next two weeks, “The PBS NewsHour” will say goodbye not only to its political editor, David Chalian — he is becoming the Washington bureau chief for Yahoo News — but also its managing editor for digital news, Maureen Hoch, who is headed to the World Bank.

They said separately that they were leaving for new professional challenges. But the departures, announced last week, come on top of other changes at the show’s parent, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, where in recent months both the president and the head of fund-raising and marketing left for other jobs.

In addition, the show’s main corporate underwriter, Chevron, will bow out at the end of the year, leaving a hole of just over $2 million in the $27 million annual budget. A long-planned effort to raise money from wealthy supporters, which was to start last month, has been delayed until the new president of the production company starts in January.

Even Mr. Lehrer’s continuing role on the air with the show that he and Robert MacNeil began in 1975 has become a question.

In June, Mr. Lehrer, 77, cut back to anchoring one night a week, Fridays, although he has been absent recently while promoting his book “Tension City,” a personal look at the history of televised presidential debates.

In an Oct. 27 press release, the show said Mr. Lehrer, who remains executive editor, would retire permanently from appearances on the air in December. But in a telephone interview, he said he was not going anywhere.

“In the course of the last several weeks, I just felt, maybe I’ll do it a little longer,” Mr. Lehrer said. Partly, he said, “I still enjoy doing it.”

But he also acknowledged that he had heard complaints from some PBS stations that the program’s new format — in which a different pair of “NewsHour” senior correspondents anchors each night — was confusing viewers.

The show drew 10.7 million total viewers in September, down 11 percent from 12 million a year ago, according to ratings provided by PBS. Viewers who do watch are doing so more frequently, PBS said; visits to the show’s Web site are up significantly from year to year, and a new live stream online is growing quickly.

“There are always going to be some dead-ender television types who believe there has to be a strong anchor system. We decided to go a little different route this time,” Mr. Lehrer said, by rotating among Gwen Ifill, Judy Woodruff, Jeffrey Brown, Ray Suarez and Margaret Warner.

Many viewers, he added, “love that there are different voices, different faces. It isn’t the voice of God. I see it as a positive thing, but I realize that not everybody does. That’s one reason I’m maintaining my presence for a while.”

Mr. Lehrer said, however, that he would not be anchoring PBS’s coverage of next year’s political conventions, where he has been a fixture.

With the departure in September of Simon Marks, the president of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, Mr. Lehrer and his business partner, Mr. MacNeil, are bringing in Boisfeuillet Jones Jr. to oversee the company.

A longtime friend of Mr. Lehrer’s, Mr. Jones, 64, is a past publisher of The Washington Post and currently vice chairman of the Washington Post Company.

“He knows about the business of journalism, which is what we need now. We’ve got to create a new way of funding the ‘NewsHour,’ ” Mr. Lehrer said, adding that the show needed to appeal more directly to the public.

Mr. Jones declined to talk about specific recommendations he would make until he starts the job, but commented on the broad challenge he faces, saying, “You grow your digital business and your mobile; it’s important to do that, but at the same time, you don’t want to neglect the core journalism.”

An immediate priority is to replace the underwriting from Chevron, the energy company, which in September was criticized by the PBS ombudsman, Michael Getler, for what he said was a misleading sponsorship message.

Brent Tippen, a Chevron spokesman, when asked about ending the underwriting after four years, said in an e-mail: “We constantly review which media we use to reach our target audience given our yearly budget and specific goals,” adding that “we hope that we will be able to partner with them again at some point in the future.”

“That’s a blow, there’s no question about it,” Mr. Lehrer said of losing the money. He predicted it soon would be replaced, but one foundation that was approached for support earlier this year turned down “NewsHour.” The Knight Foundation helped finance the overhaul of the show’s Web site in late 2009, but declined this time.

Eric Newton, senior adviser to Alberto Ibargüen, the foundation’s president, said in a telephone interview that Knight was “interested in the leading edge.”

“I’m not trying to cast any indictment on the quality of the news report,” he continued, adding that Knight wanted to help preserve high quality journalism.

But, he said, “our issue with it is that it’s what they usually do. We’re interested in new and different ways of doing things, because one thing you can say about the future of news is it’s not going to be the same. Folks who can be nimble and change are going to do better in the future than those who are slow to change.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9bb89ed64f8b27cf2cb336e318a2af52