the kicker

Extreme Makeover: NewsHour Edition

May 12, 2009

A team in need of a “livelier look?”




Well, Bus driver: Move! That! Bus! because PBS’s The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer is being made over “to bring it more fully into the digital era, give it a livelier look and nudge it, however slowly, toward the day when its longtime anchor [Lehrer] decides to retire,” reports the New York Times.

What will the New NewsHour look like? While the big reveal will come in September, the Times reports that the show will have a new name, PBS NewsHour, “and return to a two-anchor format, which it had until 1995, when Robert MacNeil left…Having two anchors will ‘shake things up a little bit,’ Mr. Lehrer said.” (So, maybe more tweak-over than makeover?)

Also, the program will hire

a correspondent to read the day’s news summary, now read by Mr. Lehrer, and anchor daily Webcasts from the newsroom in an effort to knit the program’s online and broadcast presence. NewsHour will merge its online and broadcast news desks, make its reports more easily distributable on digital platforms and send the correspondents Margaret Warner and Ray Suarez into the field more often.

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This new hire will need to be, NewsHour‘s producer tells the Times, someone “both new-media savvy and ‘a credentialed journalist.’”

Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.