Westin: Trying To Shift Balance of Power “From The Superstars…To Management?”

Is David Westin making a mistake with World News Tonight? That’s what Tom Shales wonders in the latest issue of TV Week.

He says Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff became anchors because Westin was “frightened” when Charles Gibson “wanted a contract that guaranteed he’d stay on until the next presidential election.”

Then Shales wonders if letting Woodruff travel to the middle of a war zone was another bad decision, “a kind of tragic sequel to the bad decision not to make Gibson the ‘WNT’ anchor in the first place?” He says he doesn’t have an opinion, but he hints that Westin — while “congenial, presentable, vigorous” — may have screwed up.

Here’s the key graf: “Couldn’t part of Westin’s motivation have to do with a kind of executive solidarity drive, a sense that here was a chance to continue a trend of the last few years that has seen the balance of power shift back from the superstars — the glam anchors and big-time correspondents — to management, those bureaucrats and party faithful who answer directly, and obediently, to the keepers of the bottom line?”

> Update: 10:40am: “Westin has been presented with among the most difficult circumstances any News president has ever faced. That he has done so with steady, thoughtful leadership is lost on a guy like Tom Shales,” an ABC e-mailer says. “Shales points out in his screed that years ago he didn’t think Westin would succeed as the president of ABC News. Yet, nine years later, David is the dean of the profession and with good reason — he cares passionately about the people of ABC News and sets the highest standards for the world class journalism his division continually breaks and produces.”