Thanks for the response!
I think I may have a couple of issues going on.  First, the output I receive with the above method amended as suggested is
I get this regardless of the path of the filter I give in the pandoc_args: section. 
The current version of pandoc on my RHEL 6 machine is 1.11.1 (I have a request in to my IT folks for an upgrade).
One point of confusion for me is the statement in the release notes for 1.13 stating that this error text is thrown regardless of the cause for the error. 
So, is the error due to issues with the filter or due to something else such as permissions?
Can I test outside of Rstudio?
I am currently working through the filter writing tutorial, hopefully I will be able to learn something.
Thanks,
Joel


On Monday, April 20, 2015 at 1:17:33 PM UTC-4, John MacFarlane wrote:

Try with

insertPgBrks :: Block -> Block
insertPgBrks (RawBlock (Format "tex") "\newpage") = pgBrkBlock
insertPgBrks blk = blk