Jarl Mohn is just two weeks away from the anniversary of getting the top job at NPR. For this week’s Friday Conversation, he talks about his first year at the network, what he learned from running E! Entertainment television, and how he hopes to position NPR in a radically changing media landscape.
Interview Highlights: Jarl Mohn On...
…what surprised him during his first year on the job:
“I think more than anything, maybe it’s not a surprise but a validation of something that I thought was really important, and that’s how important the kind of journalism we do in public radio, what you do at KERA and what we do here at NPR, is. Across the country all the communities that we visited, the amazing commitment to local journalism that our member stations have."
…how he’s trying to change the relationship between network and stations:
“What I’m attempting to do, what I’m trying to do, and what we’re trying to do across our whole organization is the one-on-one relationships. You can’t replace those, if you don’t have that, the rest of it is kind of difficult to do. So I spend half my time, every other week is on the road, in radio stations, just trying to find out what’s important, what’s going on in that market. And every market is different, the issues and the challenges of each market are very, very different.”