In addition to Haarsager, the guest list included Stephen Hill from Hearts of Space, Steve Gillmor (the host), and Doc Searls, who also appeared on a panel at the recent Integrated Media Association conference along with Haarsager and others.

UPDATE: Highly Recommended Listening. Haarsager and friends go into depth talking about new media economics and public media’s entanglements — or lack thereof — with new platforms. Money quote from Stephen Hill: “Show the stations how you’re gonna keep them in business and they’ll be very happy to cooperate with [NPR].”

Running time of the MP3 file is about 1 hour, 25 minutes.

The link to the NewsGang podcast has also been added to my (still growing) list of Ken Stern articles.

• “…Mr Stern chose the time and day when he left the building.”
• “…no malfeasance or misfeasance should be imputed.”
• “…transparency is an important ideal; [Stern's] privacy is a right.”

These quotes are very important to understanding the events.

First, he blows the malfeasance idea out of the water. When the news hit about Stern’s departure, I know folks around my shop assumed there was something sinister about the change. Had there been embezzlement? Sexual harassment? Physical confrontation? Why else would the termination be so abrupt? Well, it wasn’t something like that. (And those with personal experience of Ken Stern couldn’t imagine such a scenario anyway.)

Second, Haarsager notes the mutually exclusive issues of transparency and privacy. We observers want transparency in these affairs, but the departed — Stern — has a right to privacy. Personal privacy trumps corporate transparency in this case, and rightly so.

If you’ve ever been in a managerial position, you know there are things you can and can’t talk about when it comes to hiring candidates and terminating employees. Indeed, mostly you can’t say anything. Even if you’re mad at the employee, even if you’d like to give them a swift kick on the way out the door, you say nothing. To say anything negative is an abuse of your power and opens the company up to lawsuits. Besides, the employee is gone now — it’s time to look ahead.

Third, and most importantly, the departure was abrupt, but the timing was Stern’s choice. In other words, Stern could have played this game entirely differently — even leading to a multi-month golden parachute process, I suspect — but he chose to go out this way and at this time. This tells us a tremendous amount without giving details (an excellent balance of transparency and privacy, I think).

Consider how most CEO departures play out: there’s usually a transition period, often a significant one. The Bill Gates departure from Microsoft has been in the works for more than 2 years and he even left the CEO role several years prior to that. Many nonprofits have written succession plans, allowing for smooth transitions either over time or in emergency situations. And even when a CEO departs to “spend more time with his/her family,” there’s at least some degree of hand-off, like a consulting gig with the company until the new CEO is seated. But not here.

So the fact that there’s no transition, that the change was so abrupt and surprising, and the fact that Stern more or less set the timetable speaks volumes. And not to Stern’s credit. In my experience, even if you’re disgruntled, you don’t walk out and cut all ties with the company instantly.

So Haarsager’s statement that the reasons for Stern’s departure were “multivariate” is probably the most accurate, albeit the least satisfying. And from what I’ve gathered privately, it really isn’t all about the new media angle (though that’s one of the variants to which Haarsager is likely referring). But the way this went down — the suddenness of it — suggests much of the problem existed inside the CEO’s office. It didn’t have to end this way.

Personally, I’m ready to move on — we’ve got so much to do in public media. But I’ll continue to update the articles list as needed.

But in the shifting media environment about which so many of us write and ruminate, isn’t a hard-charging general needed at the top? Someone that has both the vision and the drive to push through to a new way of thinking and doing. The media environment changes in play today are not just operational in nature, where a COO might fix this, improve that — they’re strategic shifts. Seismic shifts. World-upside-down shifts. Only a CEO and her or his board of directors can handle those issues and realign the company. And given the time-to-market pressures of new media on old media, NPR probably didn’t (and doesn’t) have the time for all the required dinners and socials and private meetings, nor could it afford compromise after political compromise on the way to a new strategy.

NPR — like all media companies, for-profit or nonprofit, operating in any or all media formats — must grapple with the fundamental changes in progress. The relationship between producers, distributors and consumers is completely inverting.

Of course, this entire discussion could be moot. Public media’s future may have to be created outside the voluminous corpus of NPR (or APM or PRI or APT or PBS or …). Developing a new model with fundamentally different DNA may not be possible inside the system, either with a hard-charging general or a sweet-talking politician.

• Trouble for NPR — BuzzMachine / 7 Mar 2008 (Update: Note Dennis Haarsager’s comment to this post at Jarvis’ blog)

In that post he also refers to a great year-old post about public radio, following a meeting he had at NPR along with other new media folks. This is the post that introduces the great new word “converstation”:

• What should local radio be? — BuzzMachine / 19 Feb 2007

• Stern lost support in his tryout as No. 1 at NPR
  Current / 24 Mar 2008
• NPR Reboots — NewsGang Live 03.14.08 (MP3, 1 hour, 25 minutes)
  New NPR CEO Dennis Haarsager, Hearts of Space producer Stephen Hill, and Doc Searls
• NPR grapples with the prospect of a post-radio future
  Christian Science Monitor / 14 Mar 2008
• What’s the problem with NPR?
  The Sound of Young America (Jesse Thorn) / 13 Mar 2008
• Haarsager wades into murky water as interim chief at NPR
  Seattle Post-Intelligencer / 12 Mar 2008
• Why is managing NPR so damn difficult?
  Jeffrey Dvorkin / 9 Mar 2008
• Change at National Public Radio
  Technology360 (Dennis Haarsager) / 9 Mar 2008
• NPR is Radio Too
  Phil Wilson / 8 Mar 2008
• Value-added local journalism
  Etaoin Shrdlu (Howard Weaver) / 8 Mar 2008
• NPR CEO O-U-T
  On The Media / 7 Mar 2008
• WSU associate vice president’s retirement effective immediately
  Pullman-Moscow Daily News / 7 Mar 2008 (registration required, or read the full text in the comments below, thanks to Kerry Swanson)
• Trouble for NPR
  BuzzMachine (Jeff Jarvis) / 7 Mar 2008 (includes a comment from Dennis Haarsager and lots more interesting comments)
• Did new media success cost NPR boss his job?
  New Tech Heroes / 7 Mar 2008
• NPR Chief Executive Ousted After Fights With Board
  Chronicle of Philanthropy / 7 Mar 2008
• NPR – Horses for Courses
  Robert Paterson / 7 Mar 2008
• NPR – The Opportunity
  Robert Paterson / 7 Mar 2008
• How NPR’s CEO was Dumped
  David Weir / 7 Mar 2008
• NPR CEO Ken Stern Forced Out
  NPR.org / 7 Mar 2008
• NPR Leader Out After Board Clash
  Washington Post / 7 Mar 2008
• NPR Chief, in Office Since 2006, Will Depart
  New York Times / 7 Mar 2008
• NPR’s chief executive resigns
  Washington Business Journal / 7 Mar 2008
• Head of U.S. broadcaster NPR ousted
  CBC.ca / 7 Mar 2008
• NPR taps WSU administrator
  Seattle Post-Intelligencer / 7 Mar 2008
• NPR’s Chief Executive Steps Down
  Associated Press / 6 Mar 2008
• NPR CEO Ken Stern Resigns Abruptly; Differences Over Digital Media Part of It
  paidContent.com (Rafat Ali) / 6 Mar 2008
• CEO Ken Stern Leaving NPR
  NPR.org / 6 Mar 2008
• NPR chief resigns abruptly
  UPI / 6 Mar 2008
• CEO of National Public Radio out
  LA Observed / 6 Mar 2008 (includes text of NPR board memo, signed by Dennis Haarsager)

Older Articles (for context)

• NPR Chief Ken Stern Rides the Airwaves
  Wall Street Journal / 22 Oct 2007
• Ken Stern Named CEO, NPR
  fishbowlDC / 22 Sep 2006

Feel free to share more links in the comments.

I’m not sure if I’ll comment any further on the Ken Stern developments directly. Perhaps — it’s definitely disturbing to see this turn of events. But I’d rather wait to see what else comes out in the next day or so. NPR’s reporters have already lifted the veil further today than they did yesterday.

In any case, here’s the full comment left over at Paterson’s site…

Robert — I have some agreement and disagreement with your assessment here.

First is your notion of developing the “system” between NPR and the myriad public radio stations out there. I think that’s a losing proposition, long-haul. Pushing NPR alone toward any given mission is a huge task. Add in a few hundred geographically dispersed and distracted independent entities — each with different challenges and missions that in some ways directly compete with NPR at this time — and you have a royal mess on your hands. Talk about pushing a piece of string.

Stations and NPR will remain at odds so long as they have divergent visions of the future, and so long as any one of them doesn’t instinctively understand how to be successful in that future. Today, only parts of NPR understand the notions you talk about above, and only a handful of stations understand the future in a similar way. So the idea that we can all come together as a “system” is probably not realistic. I hate to say it, and I wish it weren’t true, but that’s the reality I see at the moment.

However, I really, REALLY like your idea of developing this new mission capacity in parallel to / outside of the existing system. There IS opportunity here for collaboration and positive “network effects” from the local to the national and back again. I get goosebumps thinking about the positive things we could do together for our communities and our nation if we worked collaboratively as you suggest — very exciting. It’s just unlikely to develop inside the orthodoxy, as you point out. Today, it appears that the orthodoxy is represented by a portion of the NPR board. They seem to have rewarded innovation with execution.

You also called out some of the new media / tech players out there in the private sector that could help us develop and build a new, parallel public service media and community fabric model. That’s great. I don’t know if those players would be willing to create Public Media 2.0, but I’d like to think so.

I suspect the development of a public service media model for the 21st century will start from two ends. First will be the large players with the money and the national scale to be successful online — ironically, players like NPR. Almost anything these biggest shops do can be successful due to scale. (NPR’s imprimatur can make almost any new media venture quickly successful.)

Then there will be the tiny players in communities across the country. Most likely these will not be the incumbent public broadcasters, who are too married to the old model to change — especially if they’ve been successful in the old model, and especially since the best leadership often goes to the biggest shops. Instead, we’ll see what was hinted at during the IMA conference this year… non-broadcast public service media groups that form on the web first, in small sizes, and grow organically with their “tribe” (as Seth Godin calls it). Over time these small groups can band together naturally using the web as a connective canvas.

The new, small players might be formed by the disaffected innovators from newspapers, local TV, public broadcasters and others — folks that want to serve the public interest first and feel that what we need now more than ever is real community, even if that means creating that community online.

I see tremendous (unparalleled!) potential, as you do. But with this latest NPR announcement, I’m drifting further into the Stephen Hill camp — if you love public media, get out of (traditional) public broadcasting.