Edith Chapin, NPR’s Top Editor, Is Stepping Down

Media|NPR’s Top Editor Is Stepping Down

Edith Chapin, the top editor and acting chief content officer of NPR, will leave the organization later this year, according to two people with knowledge of her decision.

Ms. Chapin’s decision comes at a delicate time for NPR. Last week, Congress cut all $500 million in annual federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which backs NPR and its members. While only a tiny portion of NPR’s funding comes from those federal grants, the vote could have seismic effects on many of its member stations.

Ms. Chapin informed Katherine Maher, NPR’s chief executive, of her intention to step down before lawmakers approved the cuts, according to the people with knowledge of her decision. She will stay at NPR for a period of time to help with the transition.

Ms. Chapin’s resignation means that Ms. Maher will need to fill two top roles. In addition to overseeing NPR’s news efforts, Ms. Chapin has a say over its essential and growing podcasting business as the executive in charge of content.

Ms. Chapin, who became NPR’s top editor in 2023 and added the title of interim chief content officer at the organization a few months later, served in those roles during a stormy period for the organization. Shortly before she was promoted, the network laid off 10 percent of its staff and halted the production of several podcasts. The next year, one of its senior editors, Uri Berliner, wrote an essay for The Free Press that accused NPR of having a liberal bias.

Shortly after Mr. Berliner’s essay was published, Ms. Chapin sent a memo to the staff defending the “exceptional work” that NPR’s journalists do to “cover a wide range of challenging stories.” In the aftermath of Mr. Berliner’s essay, NPR took steps to increase editor scrutiny on stories. Ms. Chapin announced a new layer of editing, called “the backstop,” that required a handful of senior editors to review NPR’s journalism before it could be released.

The vote to claw back federal funding last week has been met with dismay by employees at NPR. Ms. Maher addressed the staff on Thursday, acknowledging that the public radio network would undergo “a tremendous amount of change.”

Ms. Chapin is a veteran journalist who has worked at NPR for more than a decade. Before she joined the public radio network in 2012, she was a vice president at CNN, where she had worked for a quarter-century. At NPR, she worked with NPR member stations to build a collaborative journalism network and worked with NPR’s development team to help form a fund-raising strategy around news.