Lester Holt Halts Hosting NBC Nightly News

The sun is setting on Lester Holt’s time at NBC Nightly News. On February 24, NBC confirmed that Holt is stepping down from the show after a decade as anchor and managing editor. He’ll remain with the network and will move full time to Dateline. We’ve still got time until this shift in night shifts, though. The longtime newscaster plans to continue anchoring Nightly “through around the start of summer,” according to a memo he sent to staff obtained by Semafor’s Max Tani. “It has truly been the honor of a lifetime to work with each of you every day, keeping journalism as our true north and our viewers at the center of everything we do,” he wrote.

Holt anchored weekend broadcasts of Nightly News for eight years before filling in for his predecessor Brian Williams, who was suspended in 2015 after being publicly shamed for embellishing a story about a helicopter attack in Iraq. In June of that year, Holt was officially named anchor of Nightly News. He has also served as the principal anchor of Dateline since 2011. “A smile comes to my face when I think that with Nightly News, and Dateline, I have now anchored two of the most successful and iconic television news programs in broadcast history,” Holt wrote in his memo. “As a 20-year-old radio reporter on the police beat chasing breaking news around San Francisco, I could never have imagined my career path would unfold in the way it has. What an amazing ride.”

• [NBC]

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