Two views of why Vivian Schiller left NPR

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Veteran pubcaster Dennis Haarsager, who steered NPR through its last executive leadership transition, weighs in on the turmoil at the top of NPR on his blog Technology 360. Noting that he wasn’t plugged into the decision-making process behind Vivian Schiller’s resignation yesterday, he writes: “Boards and c.e.o.s rely on mutual trust and confidence. Boards and c.e.o.s part ways when this is out of whack. It’s that simple and that complicated. It’s tempting to speculate beyond this….But this speculation is almost always wrong.”

Haarsager was responding to Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine, who blasted the NPR Board for sending Vivian Schiller out the door, describing it as “ballless in the face of pressure,” and asserting that member stations’ parochial objections to Schiller’s agenda for digital news undermined support for her in NPR’s boardroom.

Jarvis, who teaches at the City University of New York’s graduate j-school, was interviewed in this Marketplace segment yesterday.

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