Ellen Weiss was forced out of NPR today. The apparent reason was that she, more than anyone else at NPR, mishandled the firing of the outspoken commentator, Juan Williams.

via nowthedetails.blogspot.com

Read Jeffrey Dvorkin’s full post above if you don’t know the backstory to Juan Williams’ firing from NPR… or today’s news that the NPR Board of Directors forced the resignation of Ellen Weiss, the VP of NPR News who fired Williams and makes no apologies for it.

I think Jeffrey is right that NPR has some introspection to do here as not only has it lost an erudite, albeit selfish, commentator in Williams (not to mention one of its few prominent African-American voices), but now it has lost a veteran news manager in Weiss who has pushed the newsroom up and over her high bar of excellence (not to mention one invested with 29 years of institutional prowess).

(Jeffrey himself got shuffled from the same VP role at NPR during a management shake-up about a decade ago, thus his insight on that being a popularity contest you rarely win. In his case, he noblely accepted the ombudsman position, which, in fact, he inauguraged and made quite meaningful.)

The point here is not to sweep the entire matter under the rug but to pull up the rug and expose the underlying causes, then make the structural repairs at NPR that would prevent any similar repetition. Talent is a terrible thing to waste.

Meanwhile, there’s another point here worth our focus.

NPR will undertake a selection process to replace Weiss and this I see as a signature moment in the company’s history. Naturally, we should expect a news leader with outstanding journalistic credentials and superior news management skills. And we can surmise that CEO Vivian Schiller will be looking for a news boss who can bring harmony to the divided culture at NPR (divided, I’m told, between its radio tradition and its new media future).

But, I would add something more and it may be tricky to find.

I would like to see NPR hire a new VP of News who actually sees the incredible potential that exists within the network of station journalists. There are 2000 journalists at public radio stations, many of whom should be seen as an essential resource in the NPR news ecology. I’m afraid that if NPR opts for a network insider or (another) commericial news refugee, it may miss this important opportunity to exploit NPR’s greatest untapped resource, the thousands of trained eyes and ears in local communities.

Not that NPR needs to air many more local stories, although there is definitely room on-air to better reflect the diversity of the country outside the beltway. Rather, there ought to be built into the structure of NPR and member stations an editorial dialogue about what’s happening on the ground in America as if each station is a bureau with potential to file into the national dispatch.

The onset of the new public media platform, an off-air digital distribution matrix that is under development, should make this an obvious goal for all concerned. (It is somewhat painful to see NPR tout its innovative platforms for listener interaction, when it has failed miserably at inviting editorial interaction with professional journalists who share in its mission — and in fact suffer local resource deprivations in order to send dues to NPR headquarters)

At the recent unveiling of Barbara Cochran’s white paper, “Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive,” Vivian Schiller said the top priority of the network today is promoting local news. I hope this is not mere lip service to the largest source of NPR funding — member station dues — but a signal that change is ahead, change that capitalizes on the full power of the public radio system.