Vivian Schiller, who heads the online operations of The New York Times, will leave the paper to become the president and chief executive of National Public Radio, the network announced on Tuesday.

Ms. Schiller, 47, will take over NPR on Jan. 5, heading a nonprofit corporation with a budget of more than $150 million and an endowment of more than $240 million. It provides news and entertainment programming to more than 800 public radio stations around the country and claims an audience of 26 million people.

Ms. Schiller will succeed Kevin Klose, who served as president for 10 years, and Dennis L. Haarsager, the interim chief executive. Mr. Klose recently became NPR’s president emeritus and president of the NPR Foundation.

The network has gone through several high-level power struggles in recent years, including clashes with Bush administration appointees at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting who suggested that NPR had a liberal bias. In 2006, it pushed its top news executive into a lesser job, and last March, the NPR board forced out Kenneth Stern just 18 months after naming him chief executive.