“There isn’t a single program on ABC News that doesn’t bear the imprint of David Westin,” Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz said to begin a segment on recently retired ABC News president David Westin on his his CNN show yesterday.
Mr. Kurtz asked his panelists if they thought Mr. Westin was pushed or nudged Read More
After more than 13 years leading the division, ABC News president David Westin announced his resignation in a memo to his staff Monday night.
Mr. Westin wrote that he was leaving to pursue other professional opportunities. “I’ve always admired those few who know when it’s time to move on. This is the right time for Read More
Today, ABC News announced that is has teamed up with New York based company Daylife (creators of a publishing platform once described in The Observer as “Huffington Post in a box”) to boost its digital reporting with some 70,000 topic pages.
“Topics include everything from Tiger Woods, to Apple’s iPad,” an ABC Read More
In the end, perhaps somewhat predictably, David Westin went with the biggest star.
Today, Mr. Westin, the president of ABC News, officially announced that the network had hired Christiane Amanpour as the new anchor of the Sunday public affairs program, This Week.
The high-profile D.C. gig has been vacant since the fall when George Stephanopoulos replaced Read More
On Tuesday afternoon, ABC News President David Westin wrote a lengthy memo to his staff detailing the network’s plans to significantly reduce its work force in the weeks and months ahead. We’re still digesting much of the memo, but one sentence immediately caught our attention.
“Our programs are stronger today than they were ten Read More
On Tuesday afternoon, ABC News executives informed their staff that the division will be undergoing a major transformation. Mass buyouts will be offered. And several hundred staff members (up to perhaps one-quarter of the 1200 to 1400 total individuals in the division) are expected to lose their jobs.
In the wake of grim Read More
For weeks, ABC News has been awash in anxiety about a round of looming cuts that are expected to significantly effect the entire division. Today, network executives made the bad news official.
This afternoon, ABC News President David Westin sent out the following memo to staffers:
Over the past several years, we’ve seen a lot Read More
Among the many anxieties that hound a broadcast news division president in 2010 (the dangers of Afghanistan, the steady sucking away of viewers to cable TV, the heckling from Jon Stewart, etc.), the cries of media bias from conservative critics remains a constant irritation. Playing defense against allegations that so-and-so has lost his objectivity and Read More
“Old anchormen don’t go away, they keep coming back for more,” Walter Cronkite said in his last broadcast, as the Observer‘s Felix Gillette reminded his Twitter followers this morning.
And so, here comes Ted Koppel. Maybe.
Politico reports that Mr. Koppel–who friends say would prefer to be secretary of state–is in talks with Read More
Once upon a time (at the zenith of 20th century analog media), maintaining an on-site, in-house library crammed full of archived periodicals and rows and rows of hefty, solemn reference books, was all the rage at large media organizations.
In 2009, not so much.
Today, yet another bricks-and-mortar media bibliothèque fell victim to the digital Read More
