All Things Considered, She’s Feeling Lucky

Linda Wertheimer thought she already had the perfect job. Her new boss at National Public Radio thought he had something better.

Which is why Jay Kernis, NPR’s senior vice president for programming, asked the co-host of “All Things Considered” to set aside her own comfort and leave the show after 13 years, instead reporting from the field on a variety of subjects as the network’s senior national correspondent. The change, announced this week, takes effect Jan. 2.

“She’s a great host, but Linda Wertheimer is one of the best reporters we have,” Kernis said. “I’ve taken one of our strongest players and freed her. To me, this is spreading the wealth around.”

So the groundbreaking and award-winning journalist--one of NPR’s first employees 30 years ago--will begin reporting on the topics she says fascinate her, ranging from Congress to cooking, from religion’s place in the nation to Americans’ changing view of their government. And the pieces may crop up on any of the network’s news programs.

“All of our newsmagazines are very strong,” Kernis said, but he wants to make them even stronger and thinks he can accomplish that by getting Wertheimer’s voice on all of them. “Linda has a way of taking a policy issue and making it come alive.”

Wertheimer hadn’t been looking for a new job, saying she and her co-hosts are in a groove, and complement one another’s skills and interests.

“The guys upstairs wanted to make some changes, so we tried to work out a new job for me, which was a mutually agreed-upon design for the next few years,” Wertheimer said. “If everything goes as it’s supposed to, it’s great.”

Wertheimer’s longtime friend Cokie Roberts, ABC’s chief congressional analyst and a former NPR co-worker, is more skeptical.

“The show will suffer. I never know why executives make the decisions they make,” she said, surmising that the change has something to do with youth, or edge.

Wertheimer and her co-hosts, Noah Adams and Robert Siegel, are all in their 50s, and their team has been together longer than that of any other NPR show.

Kernis said some might allege the change is demographically motivated, but he insists he’s just trying to make the best use of the network’s “remarkably talented journalists--to shake things up a little bit, to not keep people in boxes.”

“People can look at this any way they want,” Kernis said. “These are not easy decisions, and I consider them in the best interests of our listeners and our stations.”

It is an audience that is apparently growing, especially since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In addition, NPR has won praise for its clarity and context in reporting the events and their aftermath. Kernis said those are exactly the qualities Wertheimer can bring, making what might be considered dry subject matter vivid and comprehensible.

And Kernis, who returned to NPR in May after 14 years at CBS News, knows the value that a name-brand journalist provides a network. He most recently was a “60 Minutes” producer working for Mike Wallace.

“We need somebody who can make policies come alive, get the big newsmakers for us. Somebody well-respected, a prominent journalist, who can get to the players in a way that you can’t when you’re tied to a program,” he said. “There’s no one better who could do this.”

Wertheimer was the first director of “All Things Considered” in 1971. Three years later, she began covering Congress and national politics. In 1976, she became the first woman to anchor network coverage of a presidential nominating convention and of election night. She became the first person to broadcast live from inside the Senate chamber, during Panama Canal treaty debates in 1978, coverage for which she won a special Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. She shared a second duPont-Columbia Award for NPR’s coverage of the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, after Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution” in 1994.

During Wertheimer’s tenure, the audience for “All Things Considered” has grown from 6 million listeners a week in 1989 to nearly 10 million this year.

“I think I’ve been very lucky,” said Wertheimer, calling her assignments as “All Things Considered” host and NPR’s national political correspondent “two of the best jobs in journalism.”

She said she’ll miss the collegiality of the afternoon newsmagazine, where everyone from the executive producer to the greenest intern is free to suggest an idea that may appear on the show. But when she took that job in 1989, she said it was with trepidation about losing the autonomy of a reporter working her beat.

“You make so many decisions before you even refer to your editor,” she said. “Clearly, my life will be more under my control. We do have these days where somebody shows up at my door and says, ‘We’ve got China on the phone.’ And I say, ‘China who?’”

Susan Stamberg--one of the first hosts of “All Things Considered,” who also left the anchor desk for the life of an NPR correspondent--said that Wertheimer’s move will have good and bad points for her and NPR fans alike.

But ultimately, Stamberg said, her colleague will enjoy the new freedom.

“I said, ‘You are not going to believe how lightened you’re going to feel when you get that anchor off your back,’” she said. “It’s a tremendous opportunity, but it was a tremendous challenge.”

That doesn’t mean some fans won’t rebel at the change. When Stamberg left temporarily to write a book, a farmer said his cow wouldn’t give milk, because he listened to NPR in the barn and said the cow was used to Stamberg’s voice.

“There will be sadness. Any change is disruptive,” Stamberg said. “People love public radio, and they also trust us enormously. It’s a really serious relationship that we have with our listeners.”

But Kernis maintains the loss to “All Things Considered” will be the network’s gain.

“She is very dedicated to this next step. If other reporters at NPR feel a little threatened by it, great. It makes everybody stronger,” said Kernis, who in his previous stint at NPR, from 1974 to 1987, created the network’s other signature show, “Morning Edition,” as well as “Weekend Edition.”

Roberts, who said she and Wertheimer conferred about what the new job should be like, added that the assignment will make good use of her strengths. “Her pieces are really lyrical. She writes beautifully, she speaks beautifully, and she reports wonderfully,” Roberts said.

“It’s also true that she’s from Carlsbad, N.M. She grew up as a grocer’s daughter. She can relate to the groups like the Elks and Moose--she grew up with them. She has a real sense of America,” a sensibility she will bring to her stories from the road, Roberts said.

Wertheimer conceded she’ll miss the daily show, her rapport with Adams and Siegel and the four or five new subjects she learns about every day.

“At some point during the show we’ll have a conversation with somebody that will keep people in their cars. It’s been a very, very rewarding job,” she said. “What can be more wonderful than all these people who come up to you and say, ‘You’re great. Your show is great’?

“NPR is the best job for me there is. I’ve loved every minute of it,” Wertheimer said. “This sounds like a wonderful job. I guess we’ll find out.”