And that's not just meant for the producers at "NewsHour" and executives at PBS. When things are as bad as they are now at the "NewsHour," it's time to look in the mirror. So, I am not going to lie and be nice any longer about this program.
Thank God for the Kroc hamburger money and a successful squeeze-the-local-stations business model that has allowed NPR to grow a worldwide news organization at the same time much of the rest of the mainstream media was just trying to hold on. The media landscape had changed radically and not nearly enough of those foundation folks who look down their noses at corporate journalism were willing to put their money where their mouths were and seriously fund the "NewsHour" so it could have the reporters and producers needed to actually cover the news once the corporations stopped picking up the tab. Having a real newscast costs money, folks, real money - the kind of money it takes to have an infrastructure like CNN, which featured two correspondents and two crews on the ground in Turkey Tuesday bringing us live coverage of what looked like it could be a cultural revolution. It wasn't the fault of Winslow, but for all the good intentions, what she and her team were mostly offering the last four years was some analysis and lots of high-sounding talk - blue smoke and mirrors instead of original reporting. They could shuffle the anchors, and move Lehrer finally toward retirement all they wanted the problems ran far, far deeper than that. Some nights, when they tried to re-purpose a piece that had run previously by giving a new introduction, it was just plain embarrassing. Forget the world, they couldn't cover stories down the street in Washington on their own most nights.
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In fact, I held off saying it for some four years out of, if truth be told, probably affection and even prejudice for the values Lehrer and Winslow tried to represent in TV news and journalism.Īfter a couple of months of closely watching the show following that 2009 piece, I became convinced Winslow no longer had anything close to the horses needed to do a real newscast.
"I remember having a staff meeting last May, which was the first I've ever had to have, to explain to people that we were freezing salaries and eliminating the company contribution to the 401(k) plan, and travel was going to be something they needed six signatures to certify that it was absolutely necessary." "The NewsHour started feeling this incredible financial pinch exactly a year ago," Winslow says. And yet, she, Lehrer and their team of journalists and technicians have just come through their hardest year ever in terms of funding. As financial and technological pressures radically alter the landscape of commercial TV news providers, the NewsHour becomes more important than ever as a source of information that citizens can trust. Linda Winslow, executive producer of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, is one of the producers trying to do more with less. in Baltimore for the annual PBS Showcase conference, they face what could be the most challenging time in the history of American public broadcasting. As programmers and public broadcasting executives from across the country come together.
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