Robert MacNeil & Jim Lehrer

In October 1975, Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer launched a half-hour nightly news program, The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, which covered with a single issue each night. Eight years later, this innovative approach was expanded into The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, the first hour-long evening news program in the United States, and a perennial recipient of major broadcasting awards.

Jim Lehrer was born in Kansas in 1934. He is a graduate of Victoria College in Texas and the University of Missouri. After three years as an infantry officer in the Marine Corps, he worked for ten years in Dallas as a newspaperman and then as the host of a local experimental news program on public television.

Robert MacNeil was born in Montreal, Quebec, in 1931. After graduating from Carleton University in Ottawa, he moved to London, where he worked first for Reuters News Agency and then for the National Broadcasting Corporation. He then became a correspondent for NBC in Washington and New York City.

MacNeil retired from NewsHour in 1995; the program is now named The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.