Nexstar Media's cable network NewsNation said it hired Cherie Grzech, previously VP of Fox News, as VP of news, managing editor, effective July 19.
Since launching its NewsNation newscast last year on WGN America and renaming the network as NewsNation, Nexstar has had to install new news management amid low ratings and concerns of bias.
NewsNation had been billed as aiming to be objective, but after the disclosure that former Fox News President and Trump administration communications director Bill Shine had been consulting with Nexstar, concerns among staffers were reported and senior newsroom executives departed.
Jennifer Lyons, a longtime WGN news director, left in March. She had spearheaded the newscast launch as VP of news. Also resigning was NewsNation Managing Editor Richard Maginn.
According to an article in the New York Times, NewsNation staffers said an early sign the newscast was moving right came during an interview with President Trump on Sept. 22. The NewsNation staffers said that anchor Joe Donlon hadn’t sufficiently challenged false claims by Trump.
The interview was arranged by Sean Compton, president of Nexstar’s networks division, which oversees NewsNation. Earlier in his career as a radio executive, Compton helped boost the career of Fox News host Sean Hannity and signed Trump to be a commentator on radio shows across the country, the paper said.
Nexstar hired former ABC News senior executive producer Michael Corn as head of NewsNation in May.
Grzech has been VP of Fox News since 2018, managing the operations of the network’s Washington, D.C., news bureau. From 2009 to 2018 she was Fox News’ senior director of politics in Washington, D.C.
She will be based in Chicago and report to Corn.
Crzech began her TV career as an intern and reporter at WJBF-TV, in Augusta, Georgia, and, according to Nexstar, became the youngest female news director in the U.S. in 1995 at WILX-TV in Lansing, Michigan.
