Holt gets job by keeping it real

LESTER IS MORE.

The only patch of clear, clean, high ground for NBC amid the deepening Brian Williams quicksand has been the man who will now replace him as anchor of NBC’s “Nightly News,” Lester Holt.

Holt stepped into the tarnished anchor chair in February and gave the network just what it desperately needed — solid professionalism on the air and zero headlines off it.

That may seem like an odd prescription for success in this personality-driven age, but you know what? It worked.

When the network officially gave the job to Holt — with a nice raise, we hope — no one anywhere can say he hasn’t earned or doesn’t deserve it.

Holt was a pro long before Williams started spinning self-glorifying fairy tales. If there was any complaint about Holt, it’s that he didn’t have the flash or élan that networks sometimes want in their most visible on-air hosts.

But over four months in the anchor seat, Holt has eased such concerns, showing enough of a human touch to reassure viewers there’s a person behind those crisply delivered news stories.

It’s a nice bonus — and in a curious way perhaps a mark of progress — that there has been only minimal attention to the fact he will be the first black solo anchor of a network nightly newscast.

He’s getting the job because he has shown he can do it.

Everything hasn’t gone perfectly during Holt’s interim tenure. Having him anchor the newscast from a helicopter after May’s Amtrak derailment felt like a silly gimmick that added nothing to coverage of the story.

But in general, he has done what network news anchors have tried to do for the last 60 years — identify the day’s most important stories and report what we know about them.

What matters most to NBC now, of course, is that Holt’s show has suffered no mass exodus.

NBC remains slightly ahead of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” which had been closing the gap before Williams left. So in that sense, Holt has not only righted the ship, but did so by making no waves.