"Jim Lehrer Stepping Down From Regular Anchor Role on PBS NewsHour" by Simon Marks, PBS Newshour 5/12/2011 (includes video)
Excerpt
Some news today about the PBS NewsHour...
Jim Lehrer has announced that he is taking another step toward ending his 36 years of anchoring or co-anchoring our daily public television news broadcast.
Lehrer said, effective June 6, he will no longer be part of the regular daily anchor rotation team, but he will still appear on many Friday evenings to moderate the weekly analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Lehrer said he will also remain involved in the editorial direction of the PBS NewsHour and the program's producer, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.
The decision announced Thursday is part of the program's latest evolution, a process that began in December 2009 with the successful transition from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to the PBS NewsHour. That move created a multi-anchor team that featured Lehrer plus Senior Correspondents Gwen Ifill, Judy Woodruff, Jeffrey Brown, Ray Suarez and Margaret Warner. That team will continue hosting the broadcast on a rotating basis.
The broadcast began in 1975 as The Robert MacNeil Report and went through several transitions to its current form.
Lehrer said his decision was based on:
-- The complete integration of the NewsHour's on-air and online operations, which has been accompanied by measurable growth in the program's broadcast and digital audiences.
-- His complete confidence in the current NewsHour team, both on-and-off-camera, to continue producing the nightly program and its companion website as a haven for "MacNeil/Lehrer Journalism": serious, fair-minded daily reporting steeped in the traditions of the broadcast's co-founders.
In announcing Thursday's decision, Lehrer said: "I have been laboring in the glories of daily journalism for 52 years ... 36 of them here at the NewsHour and its earlier incarnations ... and there comes a time to step aside from the daily process, and that time has arrived."
Such is life, the universe is change, but I am sorry that Jim is slowly moving on. I was just as sad when MacNeil left. The Newshour is REAL journalism.
'I Am Not in the Entertainment Business' and Other Rules of MacNeil/Lehrer Journalism (link above in article, excerpt) aka Bible for Journalism
JIM LEHRER: People often ask me if there are guidelines in our practice of what I like to call MacNeil/Lehrer journalism. Well, yes, there are. And here they are:
- Do nothing I cannot defend.
- Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.
- Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.
- Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am.
- Assume the same about all people on whom I report.
- Assume personal lives are a private matter, until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise.
- Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything.
- Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes, except on rare and monumental occasions.
- No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously.
- And, finally, I am not in the entertainment business.
Here is how I closed a speech about our changes to our PBS stations family last spring:
"We really are the fortunate ones in the current tumultuous world of journalism right now. When we wake up in the morning, we only have to decide what the news is and how we are going to cover it. We never have to decide who we are and why we are there."
That is the way it has been for these nearly 35 years. And that's the way it will be forever. And for the NewsHour, there will always be a forever.
PBS Newshour 5/13/2011
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