John Lansing, the former chief executive of public radio program distributor NPR, died this week at the age of 67.
The cause of death was not immediately known. His passing occurred on Wednesday, according to a story posted on NPR’s website.
Lansing’s death comes about six months after he stepped away from NPR, which he led over a four-year period, to include the coronavirus health pandemic.
“He had a tremendous impact on NPR’s workplace culture, understood the importance of NPR’s mission to support democracy by informing the American public, and led the organization to rise to the challenge of an unprecedented global pandemic,” NPR CEO Katherine Maher said in a note to employees.
Under Lansing’s tenure, NPR endured layoffs and some programming cutbacks, which the organization justified as necessary to address financial constraints generated by ongoing economic headwinds due to the pandemic and the shift from traditional radio toward connected audio platforms.
He oversaw a number of diversity and inclusivity initiatives, most of which generated praise from most of NPR’s own staffers. He increased the salaries of female on-air hosts to match those of their male counterparts, while also pushing to hire individuals whose backgrounds have generally been underrepresented in traditional media.
Some of those initiatives came under ire when former business editor Uri Berliner criticized them in an editorial published at the Free Press, a Substack-based newsletter where he now works.
“The philosophy is: Do you want to serve all of America and make sure it sounds like all of America, or not?” Lansing questioned in response. “I’d welcome the argument against that.”
