Quick Takes

KET programs could suffer under furlough plan, station spokesman says

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Proposed furloughs of state employees could adversely affect Kentucky Educational Television programming, station spokesman Tim Bischoff said Monday (Aug. 16). According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, KET is requesting “flexibility” from the state Personnel Cabinet in the implementation of the furloughs, scheduled as a cost-saving measure for three days adjacent to holiday weekends in the upcoming year: Friday, Sept. 3 (Labor Day weekend); Friday, Nov. 12 (Veterans Day weekend); and Friday, May 27 (Memorial Day weekend).

Quick Takes

Station staffers eligible for ONA grants

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Are you a PBS affiliate pubcaster who’d like to attend the Online News Association conference Oct. 28-30 in Washington, D.C.? You might want to apply for one of six all-expenses-paid grants. Deadline is Sept. 15, more information and application here.

Quick Takes

Job training is focus of online project at Vegas PBS

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Vegas PBS is now providing viewers with job assistance through its Vegas Virtual Workforce, reports the Las Vegas Business Press. There’ll be more than 350 online, for-credit job training programs for unemployed or underemployed residents, as well as those wanting to change careers. “We have people who need jobs here and we can provide training,” KLVX General Manager Tom Axtell said. “We look at this as part of our programming mission.” The station is partnering with Workforce Connections and the Southern Nevada Housing Authority.

Quick Takes

Nonprofs continue to struggle, GuideStar report says

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The recession is still adversely affecting public charities and private foundations, according to new research from GuideStar, a nonprofit information clearinghouse. Around 40 percent of some 7,000 responding organizations reported contributions dropped during the first five months of 2010 compared with that time last year. Other findings: 17 percent of respondents reduced program services, and 11 percent laid off employees. In organizations that use volunteers, 17 percent put one or more in what had been paid positions. And 8 percent said their organizations was were in imminent danger of closing.

Quick Takes

Live this week: News forum from Aspen Institute

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The Forum on Communications and Society at the Aspen Institute is live from around 8 a.m. to noon Mountain Standard Time today (Aug. 21), Tuesday and Wednesday. Several pubcasting leaders are participating in the event, “News Cities: The Next Generation of Healthy Informed Communities,” on how the changing landscape of journalism could be molded to better serve citizens. Twitter hashtag, #FOCAS10.

Quick Takes

Kling to FCC: protect public service on the Internet

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Google and Verizon’s proposal to regulate the Internet “could force many users of the information superhighway onto a dusty back road,” including public media, writes American Public Media President Bill Kling in a letter to the Washington Post. “Just as the Federal Communications Commission acted decisively to set aside public broadcasting channels in 1945, it must flex its muscle now to ensure that the Internet continues to play a public service role. The FCC and Congress should carefully and creatively explore options that allow telecom and Internet giants to succeed, while assuring that public service media continue to thrive. Not doing so could mean that the best years of public broadcasting are behind us.”

Quick Takes

Carolyn Jensen Chadwick, producer of Radio Expeditions

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Carolyn Jensen Chadwick, a producer who created sound-rich, evocative stories that once defined the NPR listening experience, passed away yesterday. With her husband Alex she co-founded NPR’s Radio Expeditions and produced the Interviews 50 Cents films, according to Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices. Golding has assembled and posted a memorial collection of Jensen’s stories and photographs.

Quick Takes

UNC-TV reporter, researcher solicited and accepted money from anti-Aloca group

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A researcher working with UNC-TV reporter Eszter Vajda, who is investigating Alcoa’s dam licensing and associated environmental issues in North Carolina, asked for and received money from anti-Alcoa forces to continue assisting her, the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., is reporting. Former House Speaker Richard Morgan, who works for the N.C. Water Rights Committee, gave $3,000 to Vajda’s longtime friend Martin Sansone. Vajda had told Current in an interview in July that in the midst of her reporting, Sansone flew in for a visit, “and he’s still here because the project is so big and he’s been an integral part of the research.” But according to the newspaper, Vajda and Sansone, a citizen of Great Britain, solicited the money for his travel and living expenses during a meeting with Morgan and several others connected to the water rights committee.The station and Vajda have come under fire over the past few months from local news organizations and national freedom of the press experts for turning over reams of reporting documents and unaired footage on the story to an investigative committee of the General Assembly. Original Current story here, subsequent updates here.

Quick Takes

East Tennessee viewers get new name for their pubcasting station

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East Tennessee Public TV, or ETPtv, has changed its name to East Tennessee PBS and has a spiffy new website to prove it. Teresa James, general manager, said viewers previously referred to the station in any number of ways: ETPtv, Channel 2, Channel 15, WKOP or WETP. The station conducted focus groups, interviews and online polls and collaborated with PBS’s branding team to make the change.

Quick Takes

Knight News Challenge Grant winner discusses court project

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Here are further details on Order in the Court 2.0, the interesting Knight News Challenge Grant winner that seeks to establish best practices for reporting on courts via digital technology. John Davidow, executive editor of new media at Boston’s WBUR, is heading up the project. He writes on the Idea Lab blog that it is the first nationally funded initiative to change how courts deal with electronic journalism since video and audio recording standards were established in the 1970s.

Quick Takes

Frustrated? The PBS ombudsman is

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Hearing about the McLaughlin Group makes PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler feel like “that airline cabin attendant who grabbed a beer and hit the escape chute,” he writes in this week’s Mailbag. He’s written about the show in many previous columns and has received “literally thousands” of emails, mostly complaints, about the program. In this recent batch, one viewer writes about giving up and turning the show off after two panelists on a recent segment “spouted spiels of foundationless propaganda like they had suddenly become right wing nut jobs.” Another called panelists “racists.” Compounding the problem is that some viewers consider it a PBS show, although it is not branded as such on the screen.

Quick Takes

Vermont listener questions Schiller on NPR’s online expansion

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When listeners can find NPR programming on the Internet and via so many different mobile devices, what does the future portend for NPR member stations? The question has been increasingly on the minds of station execs this year as NPR rolled out its new iPad and iPhone apps; yesterday Vermont Public Radio’s Jane Lindholm put the question, which came from a listener, to NPR President Vivian Schiller. “No matter what we do, the audience is going to find media in the way that best suits their needs,” Schiller said during an Aug. 12 appearance on Vermont Edition. To provide NPR content exclusively for radio broadcast would be a mistake, the NPR chief added.

Quick Takes

Community broadcasters support net neutrality in letter to FCC

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Several community broadcasting leaders are signatories to a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski protesting the recent Google-Verizon policy proposal that they say undermines the open nature of the Internet, a concept known as net neutrality. The signers include Maxie Jackson, president, National Federation of Community Broadcasters; Alex Nogales, president, National Hispanic Media Coalition; Loris Taylor, Executive Director, Native Public Media; and Pete Tridish of the low-power advocacy group the Prometheus Radio Project. The letter urges the chairman to reclassify Internet communications as a Title II Telecommunications Service, putting the FCC directly over broadband communications networks. Genachowski has said in the past that approach has “serious drawbacks,” such as extensive regulations for service providers.

Quick Takes

Family sues Frontline over funeral film

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PBS and WGBH’s Frontline are among defendants in a lawsuit filed this week (Aug. 10) in Cook County (Chicago) Court that contends a film crew “barged into a private funeral ceremony” on March 13, according to Courthouse News Service. The daughter and grandson of of the late Annie Gibson Bacon say a crew accompanied by the anti-violence group CeaseFire, another defendant in the suit, showed up at Bacon’s funeral because her son, Jeff Fort, was alleged to be the leader of a street gang. In its coverage of the suit, the Chicago Tribune refers to Fort as a “notorious Chicago gang leader.” Read the 20-page lawsuit here.

Quick Takes

Car hits NPR host Peter Sagal

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Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me host Peter Sagal is recovering from injuries he received when a car struck him Wednesday (Aug. 11) on his bicycle at an intersection in suburban Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Quick Takes

Pubcasting execs heading to Aspen to ponder Communications and Society

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Several public broadcasting system leaders are participating in next week’s (Aug. 15-18) 2010 FOCAS (Forum on Communications and Society) at the Aspen Institute. Meeting to discuss “News Cities: The Next Generation of Healthy Informed Communities,” will be government officials, media and business executives, civic leaders and user representatives. Pubcasters include CPB President Pat Harrison, PBS President Paula Kerger, American Public Media President Bill Kling, Native Public Media Executive Director Loris Ann Taylor and NPR President Vivian Schiller. Click here to register as an observer — for $1,000.

Quick Takes

Whad’ya Know? celebrates 25 years on public radio

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“The audience brings the show. . . . I am the vessel,” says public radio host and humorist Michael Feldman in this local TV news feature on the 25th anniversary celebration of Whad’ya Know?, the weekly comedy and quiz show from Wisconsin Public Radio.

Quick Takes

Virginia station pairs with university for civic engagement

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Virginia’s WHRO-TV/WHRV-FM and Old Dominion University are partnering on civic engagement opportunities, the university announced today (Aug. 12). Cathy Lewis, host of HearSay with Cathy Lewis on 89.5 WHRV-FM, will work with the university’s new Office for Community Engagement on projects such as a series of symposia where business, community, and government leaders and faculty experts and researchers identify challenges to the region and collaborate on potential solutions. “That initiative will utilize WHRO’s broadcasting and video streaming capabilities to further the discussion and engage a broader audience,” the university said in a statement. The station is licensed to a group of 18 local school systems and offers services to the schools including professional development for teachers.

Quick Takes

Majority in survey think government shouldn’t make broadband a priority

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A just-released report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals that 53 percent of Americans don’t think spreading broadband availability should high on the federal priority list, and 26 percent said the government shouldn’t even be doing such work. Broadband adoption has also slowed, after several years of growth. Some 66 percent of American adults currently use high-speed Internet at home, compared with 63 percent in 2009. The one anomaly across demographic groups was African Americans users. Broadband adoption in that group is at 56 percent, up from 46 percent in 2009.