Jim Lehrer To End Three-Decade Run as PBS News Anchor
Veteran journalist will move to a more limited NewsHour role beginning next month.
| Posted Thursday, May 12, 2011, at 10:55 AM
Jim Lehrer will end his 36-year run in the anchor chair of PBS’s NewsHour program early next month.
Lehrer announced Thursday that June 6 will be his last day as regular anchor of the show, but that he would continue to appear on Fridays to moderate the show’s weekly news analysis panel, the Washington Post reports.
The 76-year-old Lehrer may be best known to most Americans as a moderator of presidential debates, the Post notes. He was given the high-profile assignment nearly a dozen times during his career, including in 2008 for a debate between Barack Obama and John McCain.
More from the Post:
Lehrer’s career spans several eras of television, from a time when most people had black and white sets to the digital age. When he was honored last month with a career achievement award by the National Press Club, the club’s president, Mark Hamrick, announced his selection by saying, “Amid the cacophony of a sometimes shrill media landscape, he has remained the true voice of reason, balance and fairness.”
[Slate Flashback: Jack Shafer argued back in 1996 that Lehrer had become the “successor to Walter Cronkite in the semiofficial role of America’s first TV father.”]
