Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post and one of the nation's top journalists, says he will retire at the end of February. The Los Angeles Times is further along in its search for a successor to Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine. The Washington Post named Krissah Thompson the newspaper's first managing editor for diversity and inclusion. Kevin Merida, a senior vice president at ESPN and former Washington Post editor, is a name on many lists as a potential hire. The news industry's financial troubles over the past two decades has thinned the usual pipeline of leaders, Geisler said.

NEW YORK – Phil Griffin is stepping down as the longtime president of MSNBC, to be replaced early next year by rising NBC News executive Rashida Jones. Griffin, 64, has worked at NBC News for 35 years and has been president of MSNBC since 2008. Jones, who has been with NBC News for the past seven years, is currently chief of breaking news and major events at the network. She just led the network's coverage of the 2020 presidential election and the team preparing Kristen Welker as moderator of the third presidential debate. Cesar Conde, the new chairman of the NBC Universal News Group, has made diversity one of his top priorities.

The others in this space are political talk channels, and so even when they're talking about these stories, they're talking about the politics of the stories. CNN has its share of political talk, especially on its increasingly opinionated prime-time lineup of Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon. During the breaking stories, CNN responded by assigning more of its top people, like Wolf Blitzer, to weekend work. It has simulcast the CNN International network overnight in the U.S., Zucker said. The ratings of the past three months proved those viewers still return to CNN when there is important news, he said.