ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Some sad and personal news for us here today at NPR. Our former CEO John Lansing died on Wednesday, just months after he retired from the network earlier this year. The cause of death was not disclosed. Lansing led NPR during a time of upheaval and crisis, and he inspired many of our colleagues. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik is here with us to remember John Lansing. Thanks for being here.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Of course.
SHAPIRO: He was CEO for a more tumultuous period than I've ever lived through - 4 1/2 years that included the pandemic, racial upheaval in the United States, an economic downturn that led to layoffs at NPR. How did he lead the network through it?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, I think his hallmarks would really be, I think, by almost anyone's characteristic, a degree of openness and an effort to retain the human element in decisions he made, not shying away from decisions he thought were necessary but figuring out how to incorporate colleagues' thoughts of how best it could occur and to ameliorate what the effects might be on them.
You know, I'll take, for example, the economic downturn he - that we went through. He flagged it for us in late 2022 but said, guys, this could get worse. Right now all I'm going to do is really cut back travel and hiring. A few months later, he said, this is an existential crisis, and we're going to have to lay off 10%. There were layoffs and buyouts at that level. And yet, he did so in a way that ultimately earned him the thanks and admiration of NPR's newsroom union chief. I've never really seen that in any other institution.
SHAPIRO: Yeah, I found him to be incredibly empathetic and an outstanding listener. He often spoke to the staff about what he called the North Star, as he sought to diversify NPR staff, its programming and its audience. What did that tell us about his leadership and values?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, both in his public statements and in talking with him privately, it was clear to him that this was both a - what shall I say? - a moral imperative and a business strategy. And as a moral imperative, you know, NPR really has significantly diversified its staff and it - the ranks of its upper management, as well. You know, he - this was not a minor move. And let me just flag for folks, this was many months before the huge social justice movement, you know, erupted in late spring of 2020 with the murder of George Floyd. He brought this...
SHAPIRO: Like, he was not being reactive.
FOLKENFLIK: Not at all. He brought this in, and this was, like, one of his main plays, not as a cynical gambit, but he's like, I think this is what we need to do. Now, let's be clear and be fair to the record, which is it was not accompanied by what he anticipated - at least not to date - with a concomitant rise in our audiences and a concominant, great diversification of those audiences. That's not reflected there. But Lansing still, even as, you know, this came back in controversies that happened earlier this year over NPR and the national conversation - he said, this was important to do, and it remains important to see through.
SHAPIRO: He stood up for journalists, including those of us at NPR, in ways that we all saw. That, at some point, got national headlines. Can you remind us about a couple of those?
FOLKENFLIK: Yeah. There are two that really stand out to me. Early on in his tenure, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo basically falsely accused our colleague Mary Louise Kelly of lying about an interaction they had during an interview. She was right. Pompeo was wrong, but John Lansing wanted to make sure that he had her back. And so he went publicly and talked about the importance of the journalism she did and the solidity and the firmness - the way in which it is grounded in fact.
He also stood up for NPR when Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, now known as X, basically said he was going to designate NPR the same way he designates propaganda outlets for authoritarian regimes abroad. And Lansing said, you know what? I'm going to consult with my colleagues, but we're going to pull our accounts from X, from Twitter, because I'm not going to do business in an ecosystem that any way denigrates the journalism that they do.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik remembering NPR's former CEO John Lansing. Thank you, David.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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