Iowa PBS Executive Director and General Manager selected for 2025 Poynter/CPB Fellowship

This week Andrew Batt, Executive Director and General Manager at Iowa PBS, joined 22 other public media executives to begin the 2025 Public Media Executive Editorial Integrity and Leadership Initiative. The six-month fellowship was developed by the Poynter Institute and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The goal of the fellowship is to equip Batt and his colleagues with support, tools, and individualized training to help build stronger stations and strengthen local journalism.

"Dedication to editorial integrity is foundational to Iowa PBS and our trust with Iowans, said Batt. “With the help of Poynter Institute and CPB, this training will strengthen our journalism and our connection with viewers across Iowa."

Designed to be effective across experience levels and station types, the program brings together public media executives whose stations serve audiences that range from rural markets to regional networks. The Executive EILI program builds on the Editorial Integrity and Leadership Initiative, a CPB-supported program that has graduated 150 editors in the past six years.

“These station leaders know their communities and work every day to serve local audiences. Local journalism is essential to the civic health of our nation, because it provides relevant, fact-based information to respond to the information needs of the communities it serves, reflecting and respecting local voices and perspectives," said Kathy Merritt, CPB executive vice president and chief operating officer. “CPB supports the Executive Editorial Integrity and Leadership Initiative because we know their communities trust these leaders to make the right decisions on editorial ethics and standards.”

Fellows will focus on implementing a leadership action plan built from their newsroom’s vision and informed by the frameworks gained during their week spent at Poynter in St. Petersburg. The program cultivates a collaborative, supportive space where executives learn together and build lasting bonds with Poynter's signature training in leadership and ethical decision-making at the core.

“This is the right time to bring these leaders together,” said Kerwin Speight, Poynter leadership faculty. “The landscape for local journalism keeps changing. This work will help them adapt, adjust, and effectively lead.”

Beyond their week spent together in person, fellows will continue to engage in virtual sessions including one-on-one and group coaching, small-group work, and live executive training.

The program is led by Poynter’s Kelly McBride, senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership, and Poynter faculty Cheryl Carpenter and Kerwin Speight.

About CPB

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private, nonprofit corporation authorized by Congress in 1967, is the steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,500 locally managed and operated public television and radio stations nationwide. CPB is also the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television, and related online services. For more information, visit www.cpb.org and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and subscribe for email updates.

About The Poynter Institute

The Poynter Institute is a global nonprofit working to address society’s most pressing issues by teaching journalists and journalism, covering the media and the complexities facing the industry, convening and community building, improving the capacity and sustainability of news organizations and fostering trust and reliability of information. The Institute is the gold standard in journalistic excellence and dedicated to the preservation and advancement of press freedom in democracies worldwide. Through Poynter, journalists, newsrooms, businesses, big tech corporations and citizens convene to find solutions that promote trust and transparency in news and stoke meaningful public discourse. The world’s top journalists and emerging media leaders rely on the Institute to learn new skills, adopt best practices, better serve audiences, scale operations and improve the quality of the universally shared information ecosystem.  

In addition to our statewide broadcasts, Iowa PBS, WORLD and Create are available to livestream on iowapbs.org/live, pbs.org/livestream, and the PBS app. Iowa PBS KIDS is available to livestream on iowapbs.org/live or the PBS KIDS app. Iowa PBS programs are also available on most popular platforms. See all the ways you can watch by visiting iowapbs.org/watch. 

Learn more at iowapbs.org.

For more information about Iowa PBS, please contact Hayley Schaefer at 515.776.0406 or hayley.schaefer@iowapbs.org