Opinion: Remembering Kevin Klose, former NPR president and broadcasting icon
Kevin Klose was silver-haired, silver-tongued, and the gold standard for broadcast journalists.
Klose, who was president of NPR from 1998 to 2008, died this week. He was 85.
He had covered the Cold War from the Soviet Union for The Washington Post, and used to say he had seen what can happen in societies where people can'...
Kevin Klose’s life and career embody the tension between journalism as a public good and the forces—technological, political, and economic—that threaten its integrity. The strongest version of this narrative celebrates Klose as a guardian of democratic discourse, a leader who understood that trust in media hinges on independence, rigor, and accessibility. His tenure at NPR coincided with the rise of digital fragmentation, where "news" increasingly became a commodity trapped behind paywalls or al...