Comedy is out. Chernow is in.

The White House Correspondents’ Association announced on Monday that for the first time in 15 years, no comedian would crack jokes at its annual black-tie dinner in April. Instead, Ron Chernow, the historian and biographer of Alexander Hamilton and John Rockefeller, will speak on the First Amendment.

The dinner, intended to commemorate comity between the president and his press corps, has come under immense pressure in the age of “fake news,” and President Trump has declined to attend two years running. This year’s performer, the comedian Michelle Wolf, outraged the Washington crowd with her off-color jokes about members of the administration. Mr. Trump, for his part, declared the dinner “DEAD as we know it.”

“This was a total disaster and an embarrassment to our great Country and all that it stands for,” the president wrote after Ms. Wolf’s set.

The choice of Mr. Chernow, five months ahead of the April 27 event, seemed intended to lower the temperature. “As we celebrate the importance of a free and independent news media to the health of the republic, I look forward to hearing Ron place this unusual moment in the context of American history,” the president of the Correspondents’ Association, Olivier Knox, said in a statement.