Thomas Evans got here to NPR a yr in the past to launch its editorial evaluate desk. He will lead the newsroom beginning in October.
University of Rochester
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University of Rochester
NPR is poised to call a new news chief at a second of uncertainty for the community, when it should alter to the tip of federal funding for public media on Sept. 30 — a transfer introduced on by the Trump administration and Republican allies in Congress.
NPR has tapped Thomas Evans — extensively known as Tommy — a veteran of NCS’s international protection who reported on conflicts for greater than twenty years. He arrived at NPR a yr in the past to launch its editorial evaluate desk. The desk is charged with serving to the newsroom be certain that its reporting is truthful, correct and contextual — in each story on air and on-line, and within the full weight of NPR’s protection.
“I had a lot of respect from beforehand, but these are really the best journalists in the country, if not the world,” Evans says in an interview. He says CEO Katherine Maher had charged him with sustaining the community’s core journalistic mission and ensuring “that won’t be lost in the mix of just dealing with all the other maelstrom that’s coming at us.”
He says NPR must hold innovating in the way it shares its journalism. But Evans says NPR ought to “lean into its strengths,” amongst them the deep topic data of its reporters, hosts, producers and editors, its international protection and its time-proven capacity to inform tales compellingly.
Evans is to succeed NPR Senior Vice President and Editor in Chief Edith Chapin on Sept. 15. Chapin will keep on for a couple weeks to make sure a clean transition, Maher says.
In saying her intention this summer time to step down, Chapin said she wanted a break from operating the newsroom and serving as NPR’s performing chief content material officer on the identical time. She mentioned her determination was not influenced by NPR’s monetary considerations. NPR has indicated it intends to rent a full-time chief content material officer however the job has not but been posted.
Chapin and Evans first intersected a technology in the past, once they each labored at NCS. She was a managing editor based mostly in New York; he was a junior journalist who lived close to Ground Zero of the Sept. 11 terror strikes in New York. Evans lined the aftermath of the assaults on foot for NCS; he was capable of get near the location as a result of he was a resident of Lower Manhattan.
Suddenly, Evans says, NCS cared about his grasp’s diploma from the University of London, as his dissertation was centered on Al Qaeda. A profession in international journalism was born.
Financial challenges at NPR observe political anger
Evans’ arrival at NPR final yr got here within the wake of public and political outcry triggered by an essay critical of NPR’s news coverage. Uri Berliner, then a senior enterprise editor on the community, wrote it for The Free Press, a news outlet that argues the mainstream news media has develop into biased.
While conservatives have periodically questioned the necessity to fund public media all through its many years, Berliner’s essay offered a new rallying cry. Republicans on Capitol Hill attacked Maher – who had simply develop into NPR’s chief govt – for her outdated social media posts. The NPR job is her first main a journalism group.
While she was introduced in to NPR to form a new technique tailor-made for a digital age of listening, studying and viewing on demand, a lot of Maher’s time has been consumed by the fallout of that article and the assaults on public media funding which have accompanied the return of President Trump to the White House.
Chapin had lengthy needed to place in place a system of editorial checks much like that at NCS. She seized the second to rent Evans, who assembled a workforce of editors to evaluate each piece of NPR news content material and to watch the bigger thrust of protection.
At the outset, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting helped to pay for the initiative, although the funding quickly waned. The CPB is a privately integrated nonprofit with a Congressional constitution to funnel federal tax {dollars} appropriated for public tv and radio stations. PBS has sometimes obtained 15% of its funds immediately from federal sources; NPR sometimes acquired between 1 to 2% of its cash that method. Local stations, on common, have been larger beneficiaries of federal {dollars} by way of CPB.
But all of that’s going away on Sept. 30. At President Trump’s urging, Republican leaders in Congress pushed by way of what’s known as a rescission, taking again $1.1 billion already put aside for public media (together with NPR, PBS and native stations). CPB has introduced it’s shutting down.
Maher has mentioned as many as 70 to 80 stations might shut; others might consolidate. And that may have an effect on the power, attain and resilience of the bigger public radio system — now some 240-stations robust — and NPR itself. The community receives about 30% of its annual budget from charges native stations pay to run NPR’s applications.
A murky monetary future
Asked about whether or not finances cuts might be crucial on the community, Maher demurred, saying she is to current a finances for the upcoming fiscal yr, which begins Oct. 1, to NPR’s board of administrators at conferences this week. The board is scheduled to vote on it on Friday. Maher has mentioned publicly that NPR will write off about $8 million in charges from the stations within the best monetary hazard, however she says that is not a finances reduce. NPR’s annual finances at the moment stands at about $300 million yearly.
Maher additionally mentioned she is selling NPR’s senior vice chairman for presidency and exterior affairs, Marta McLellan Ross, to be her chief of workers.
McLellan Ross has been praised by public radio station officers for galvanizing the marketing campaign in search of to persuade lawmakers to protect federal funding for the general public media system, although it proved unsuccessful. Now, she is to assist Maher and the senior management workforce execute a new technique for the present second, although Maher has not but revealed what it’s to be.
NPR officers say they don’t seem to be but sure of the total impact of the federal funding cuts on NPR member stations and the way that, in flip, will have an effect on NPR’s funds. Many station managers say they obtained a increase in contributions from listeners following Congress’ rescission vote. But they don’t seem to be satisfied that degree of giving will maintain over time.
A journalism profession constructed world wide
In interviews, Maher says Evans brings an understanding of NPR’s community — but has contemporary eyes for the way it may evolve.
“As the network and system for public media changes, the ability for us to change with that moment is going to be really important,” Maher says in an interview. “High quality, high integrity journalism is table stakes. But it is beyond that important to know what differentiates us, what makes us unique.”
She says Evans will assist guarantee NPR offers authentic and distinctive reporting throughout quaint platforms and new ones.
“This is somebody who had a good sense of where we are strong, a good sense of where we might grow, a good sense of what makes us different, and a good sense of where we might lean into that in the future,” Maher says. “He is unafraid to identify what it is at NPR that we should celebrate and invest in — as well as what we are going to need to change about ourselves in order to move into the next phase of what public media will become.”
After the Sept. 11 assaults, Evans’ profession took off. For years, Evans reported on main developments all through Europe and the Middle East, touring to locations like Iraq. Then he coordinated that type of protection as an international news govt for NCS based mostly in London.
He rose to be NCS’s vice chairman for newsgathering liable for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. He was additionally London Bureau chief. He has led reporting on tales together with Brexit, the British royals and terrorist strikes in Europe, as nicely as ongoing tensions within the Middle East.
Before that, Evans had helped NCS arrange bureaus in Kabul and Baghdad through the American-led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq within the aftermath of the September 2001 terror assaults on the U.S.
“I have always thought of him as a tremendous leader and somebody whom I could go to at any time, with any question, and know that he is a valued adviser,” says Laura Bernardini, former head of world planning for NCS.
Bernardini says she first met Evans in New Orleans twenty years in the past, the place he was producing tales for Anderson Cooper concerning the flooding and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“Every day they would go out and find a new story,” Bernardini says. “Each was more incredible than the last — and it would capture where the city was at that moment.”
Evans’s father was within the import/export enterprise; his mom was an antiques seller. He was born in Singapore, grew up in Thailand, and went to high school in India, although he additionally hung out within the States.
Evans graduated from the University of Rochester in upstate New York and obtained a grasp’s in international politics from the University of London. His work at NCS has received quite a few outstanding recognitions, together with Emmy, Peabody and Edward R. Murrow awards.
Disclosure: This story was written and reported by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik. It was edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editors Gerry Holmes and Vickie Walton-James. Under NPR’s protocol for masking itself, no news govt or company official reviewed the story earlier than it was posted publicly.