On Wednesday, Kim Godwin, an executive at CBS News, was named as the next president of ABC News, a rival network. She will replace James Goldston, and be the first Black woman to run a broadcast TV news division. As word of Godwin’s move went around, we also learned that Susan Zirinsky, her boss at CBS, would be stepping down. Zirinsky plans to stay at CBS in a production role, but she will be replaced atop the news division by two new hires—Neeraj Khemlani, currently an executive at Hearst Newspapers, and Wendy McMahon, of ABC News. Between them, as the result of an internal restructuring, the two will oversee both news programming and local CBS TV stations. McMahon, who oversaw ABC’s local stations, was reported to have been in contention for the president job there; she and Godwin are now swapping companies. And McMahon was not the only high-profile leader to leave ABC News yesterday: Michael Corn, the senior executive producer of Good Morning America, is also on the way out. Variety described his departure as “abrupt.” The carousel may have spun especially fast at CBS and ABC this week, but they weren’t outliers in the world of media. In recent months, there has been lots of turnover in journalism’s top jobs. It started in earnest late last year: in December, Norm Pearlstine stepped back as executive editor of the LA Times and into an advisory role, and MSNBC named Rashida Jones as its new president, making her the first Black woman to lead a cable-news network. The... Continue reading at 'Columbia Journalism Review'
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2021-04-16 12:27:30 UTC ]