KPBS Announces Sudden Departures of News Director, HR Director

OB Rag Staff Report

KPBS Public Media informed staff on February 11 that News Director Terence Shepherd and Director of People and Culture Lois Hoyt were “no longer with” the station. The internal memo signed by Chief of Staff Travis Tamasese gave no specifics about why both senior executives were leaving simultaneously.

“We recognize that these announcements, though unrelated, are being shared at the same time and reflect a great amount of change for the organization,” Tamasese wrote. “Please know that we are here to support you if you would like to touch base.”

Shepherd joined KPBS in 2022 after eight years as news director of WLRN, Florida’s major public news outlet. He previously worked as a business editor at the Miami Herald.

Hoyt joined KPBS in 2024. According to her bio on the KPBS website, she previously “led strategic HR initiatives as the vice president of human resources for several organizations, including eight years in the print media industry and three years in film and music production.”

The departures have occurred at a challenging time for KPBS. The station announced last summer that it will lose $4.3 million, or 12% of its annual budget, due to federal spending cuts.

And the exits of Shepherd and Hoyt come less than two years after KPBS Education Reporter Margarito “M.G.” Perez said in an angry LinkedIn post that he was forced to resign in June 2024 after “I was falsely accused of ‘insubordination.’”

When Perez joined the station in 2021, “I was not prepared for the work environment,” he wrote. “The public facing KPBS is not congruent with what is happening in the newsroom. In just the past twelve months, several veteran and experienced colleagues preceded me in their resignations.”