Klose to NPR   

Long-time Washington Post staffer takes the reins.

The big difference between National Public Radio 's former president and CEO, Delano Lewis , and its new pick, Kevin Klose , is summed up in one word: journalism.
Lewis, who resigned in August after four years at the helm, is a lawyer and former telephone company executive. Klose, who was director of the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau, has grown up on newsprint and broadcast feeds. His parents produced radio shows in the '30s and '40s, broadcasting one out of their home in Red Hook, New York. His grandfather was the editor of a now-defunct daily in St. Louis.
Before Klose's April 1997 start with the IBB, the global radio and television network, he was president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and a reporter and editor at the Washington Post . His 25-year tenure at the Post, where he served as a bureau chief in Moscow and Chicago, began in 1967.
``I'm not sure we had anybody [among the candidates] who had that full range of journalistic and broadcasting and management [experience]," says Kim Hodgson , general manager of WAMU-FM in Washington, D.C., and chairman of the NPR board. ``And A-No. 1 on our list...an absolute gut feel for public radio."
Klose, 58, took over December 8. ``It's great to have a journalist and a broadcaster at the helm of a journalism and broadcasting organization," says Jeffrey Dvorkin , NPR's vice president for news and information. The appointment is ``a very popular decision in the news department."
Though Klose says it was difficult to leave the IBB, which oversees government-formed broadcasting organizations including the Voice of America, Worldnet Television and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, he has a true affinity for NPR. ``It's a remarkable amalgam of national programming and local stations, which makes it a distinctive, fundamentally important information source," Klose says.
He doesn't have grandiose plans for NPR just yet. ``I'm eager to learn and meet the membership stations. I'm eager to be a part of all the discussions...that occur here at headquarters," Klose says. ``And of course I want to learn as much as I can as quickly as I can about financial support issues."
He touches on two big hurdles of his job: both uniting and distinguishing among the 604 member stations, and raising funds.
``I think he's got a tough challenge," says Laura Walker , CEO of member station WNYC Radio in New York City. She says the relationship between member stations and NPR could use some work. NPR, Walker says, must ``understand stations as individual stations" and develop ways ``to build together stronger news and stronger programming."
Klose began his effort to get to know member stations early: He attended a fundraising gala for WNYC November 23. His presence at the black-tie affair, Walker says, showed a ``sensitivity to...what's important for his member stations."
Klose calls fundraising ``a major component" of his to-do list. While NPR has moved away from a dependency on congressional dollars, he says Congress' support is valuable.
Many in the media have cited Klose's lack of money-making experience, but Hodgson says such talk is ``really overblown." NPR has a top development director, Barbara Hall , he says, and ``Kevin's job is to...convey his enthusiasm for public radio." Plus, Klose worked hard on advocating funding in his previous two positions.
Executive Vice President and COO Peter Jablow , who served as acting president and CEO, handles the day-to-day operations at NPR, while Klose, Jablow says, becomes ``the leader and visionary." Klose will have to develop a strategy to hold and expand NPR's audience in an informationally overloaded society. But neither Klose nor Dvorkin sounds worried.
Dvorkin says NPR's audience, now around 13 million, is growing. And Klose brands radio a distinctive force. ``Radio is the most ephemeral, ubiquitous, powerful of all the broadcast media.... You can be doing other things in your immediate life, and radio's with you," he says. ``It's magical."