NPR has announced the promotion of Edith Chapin to Senior Vice President of News and Editor in Chief.
Chapin has been with NPR since 2012 with stints leading their International Desk, VP & Executive Editor, and as Interim SVP of News since last November. Prior to joining NPR, Chapin spent 25 years at CNN as an assignment editor, field producer, regional bureau chief, and Vice President.
In other NPR executive news, Current reports that COO Will Lee will exit on August 1. Lee was appointed Chief Operating Officer in February 2022 after previously serving as SVP/Head of Digital, Entertainment Group at Meredith Corporation. In a memo shared by Current, NPR CEO John Lansing wrote that Lee was leaving “for an opportunity he could not pass up in New York.”
NPR President and CEO John Lansing announced today that Edith Chapin will be Senior Vice President of News and Editor in Chief overseeing NPR’s journalism and journalists around the world and across platforms. Chapin had been serving as interim head of News since November 2022.
Chapin has spent over three decades delivering award-winning journalism to the public. She came to NPR in 2012 to lead the International Desk, where she managed a team of correspondents based outside the United States committed to bringing listeners dynamic stories of the world’s people, politics, economy, and culture. Most recently she had been serving as Vice President & Executive Editor at Large, with a focus on working on fundraising initiatives related to NPR’s strategic priorities in news. From 2017-2019, she led NPR’s efforts to build a collaborative journalism network with NPR Member stations. Previously, she was the Vice President and Executive Editor of News, responsible for the NPR newsroom, setting daily news priorities, and directing all of NPR’s news-gathering teams.
“Edith is a tremendous news leader: she has the news judgment to guide our storytelling, believes in the power of NPR’s mission, has worked closely with Member station newsrooms, and has the global vision to bring international, national and local stories to our audiences across all platforms,” said Lansing. “Under her leadership as interim head of News, NPR’s newsroom has excelled covering the war in Ukraine, ever-changing public health concerns, natural disasters of all kinds, and more.”
Prior to joining NPR, Chapin spent 25 years at CNN and worked her way up from intern, to bureau chief, to vice president. Chapin’s journalism career took her to London in 1992 for five years as CNN’s field producer and assignment manager where she produced news stories in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. She went to Baghdad one month before the first Gulf War and was in the first team of reporters allowed back into the country in the war’s aftermath. During her time overseas, Chapin worked in Syria; Jordan; South Africa, to cover Nelson Mandela’s election; reported on the genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia; and the United States’ invasion of Panama.
“It is a privilege to work every day with superb journalists who report, tell stories and provide moments of joy that are useful and relevant to audiences navigating a complex and dynamic world,” added Chapin.
Chapin’s work has been recognized with the journalism industry’s highest honors including a 2005 George Foster Peabody Award for coverage of Hurricane Katrina, a 2005 Alfred I. DuPont Columbia University Award for CNN’s coverage of tsunami disaster in South Asia, and a 1997 Cable ACE award for extended breaking news coverage of Rwanda and Zaire.
Chapin contributed to Covering Catastrophe (Bonus Books, 2002), a book recounting the events of 9/11 in an oral history format. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a past chair of the Board of Trustees of The Masters School. She holds a Bachelor of Science in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
