David Greene Leaving NPR’s Morning Edition
• After eight years as host of NPR’s Morning Edition, David Greene announced he’s stepping back from hosting to focus on other projects. In what he calls the ‘hardest decision in his career’, Greene will leave NPR on December 29, 2020. NPR will be undertaking a national search to find his successor. In a tweet announcing his impending departure, Greene said, “I find goodbyes hard. Especially this one. But after 16 years, I have decided to leave NPR at the end of 2020. I love the place and will sorely miss so many colleagues. I will always be a storyteller.”
Greene’s memo to his fellow NPR colleagues reads, in part, “Being part of the Morning Edition family has been a lesson in collaboration and collegiality you find nowhere else in the business. I just think of working on a segment or interview, seeing producers and editors bring their own ideas and approaches, all valuing one another’s contributions and working together to make a work of art — sometimes with minutes to spare, sometimes at 2:30am! But that’s just the news department. I just think of the relationships I have been lucky to build across this company. I have colleagues in engineering, IT, operations, facilities, HR — the list goes on — who became friends, went to bat for me or saved my butt in the scariest moments and all worked alongside news and programming with our singular mission of serving our audience.”
A joint note from Kenya Young, Executive Producer of Morning Edition and Sarah Gilbert, VP for News Programming, said, “People always ascribe ‘mixed emotions’ to moments like these, but for us, this is one of those times when the cliché rings true: Because we’ll miss David and the boundless joy he brings to the work every day — and because we’re as pleased and excited as he is to see him embark on a new chapter in life.”
Prior to taking on his current role in 2012, Green was NPR’s correspondent in Moscow. He also spent four years covering the White House during George W. Bush‘s second term. Greene was honored with the 2011 Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize from WBUR and Boston University for that coverage of the Arab Spring. [Photo credit: Stephen Voss / NPR]
