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| Edith Chapin |
NPR top editor and interim chief content officer Edith Chapin is planning to exit later this year, according to a report in the New York Times. Chapin’s decision follows the decision by Congress to cut all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports NPR, PBS and their member stations. While NPR relies on direct federal funds for only a small portion of its budget, many of its member stations are more dependent on funds received from CPB. The Times report says that Chapin notified NPR CEO Katherine Maher before the budget cuts were approved. While Chapin’s departure will leave two of NPR’s top roles vacant, she says she will remain at the organization through the transition.
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| Jonathan Capehart |
The Washington Post, which is refocusing its opinion section on “personal liberties and free markets,” loses yet another member of the section’s staff as Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Jonathan Capehart takes a buyout. Capeheart’s decision comes in the wake of a steady stream of exits from the paper, the most recent including “Federal Insider” writer Joe Davidson and reporter and writer Philip Bump. Post CEO Will Lewis recently called on veteran staffers to take a voluntary buyout if they weren’t “genuinely enthusiastic about the new direction and focus” that have been set by owner Jeff Bezos. Capehart will continue to co-host MSNBC’s “The Weekend” and serve as a political analyst for PBS.
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Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong plans to take the paper public during the next year, he said in an interview on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” Soon-Shiong said the move would let the TImes “be democratized and allow the public to have ownership of this paper.” He bought the LA Times, San Diego Union-Tribune and several community newspapers in a $500-million deal with Tronc (formerly—and currently—known as Tribune Publishing) in 2018. He offloaded the Union-Tribune to MediaNews Group in 2023. The Times reportedly lost $50 million in 2024, laying off more than 20 percent of its newsroom staff. Soon-Shiong has not provided information on how the deal would work.
McClatchy, which owns 29 daily papers across 14 states (including The Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star), launches a wave of layoffs that extends to at least 13 of those papers... The Toledo Blade, which was founded in 1835, is set to shut down on Dec. 31, unless owner Block Communications manages to find a buyer for it... A bill awaiting approval by California governor Gavin Newsom would give local newsrooms a boost. 
Fox News Media issued a pretty sparse release to announce the departure of one of its stars. “Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media,” it reads.
Brunswick Group partner John Simons has joined CNN as senior director of business & media. He held top jobs at Time and the Wall Street Journal.
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
Boston Globe Media acquires InstaTrac, a company that provides subscription-based services aimed at making government information easier to find, track, and understand... AARP names former New Republic CEO and publisher Michael Caruso as its SVP and chief content officer, unifying the organization's portfolio of media, live events and digital platforms... The Fund for American Studies, an educational nonprofit, awards its inaugural Journalism Excellence Fellowships.
