Quick Takes

Kirby working to turn around PBS station KTXT in Lubbock, Texas

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Texas Tech’s KTXT/Channel 5 in Lubbock “has been the absolutely worst-managed television station in America for the past 50 years,” John Kirby tells the Lubbock Avalance-Journal in a story today (March 13). And he’s the station’s general manager. In fact, when he was considering the job, broadcasting buddies around the country warned him not to take it — some even saying, “Are you nuts?”But last October Kirby left his spot at the helm of Eastern New Mexico University’s PBS station KENW and took over at Lubbock, determined to turn KTXT around. He’s made personnel changes, and is inserting local filmmakers’ work into the schedule. He had the station IDs and logo redesigned after he ran across a viewer who “never heard of” Channel 5 — but watched Frontline and other PBS programs on the station regularly.“Guns up! I’m here for the long haul,” Kirby says.

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Knight funding development of open-source platform for nonprofit news sites

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The Texas Tribune in Austin and the Bay Citizen in San Francisco, nonprofit online regional news organizations, will share a $975,000 Knight Foundation grant to create a free, open-source publishing platform for other online news groups, the foundation announced Friday (March 11) from SXSW in Austin.The new platform will manage an integrated library of text, video and audio files; improve the way articles are linked, aggregated and tagged for increased search-engine hits; integrate sites with social networks and bloggers; and offer membership tools and integration with advertising networks to cultivate new revenue streams.

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Northwest pubcasting network hires former CBS News bureau chief as news director

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Former CBS News London Bureau Chief John Paxson has joined Murrow Public Media/Northwest Public Radio and Northwest Public Television, in the new position of news director. While at CBS News he supervised staff in London, Paris, Bonn, Tel Aviv, Moscow and Johannesburg. He oversaw the network’s coverage of conflicts in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. He also spent 10 years as a Voice of America correspondent based in Chicago, as well as a CBS News producer in Dallas, Los Angeles and New York.In his new position he will direct increased regional news coverage for the 15 radio and two TV stations licensed to Washington State University in Pullman. His wife, former ABC News correspondent Lucrezia Cuen, is a native of the area.

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Pubcasting station KBEM wins jazz educator award

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The Jane Matteson Outstanding Jazz Educator Award, presented annually by the Dakota Foundation for Jazz Education in Minneapolis, Minn., generally honors an individual. But the 2011 recipient is a public broadcasting station: KBEM/Jazz 88 radio, one of the few outlets in America playing 24-hour jazz — and which operates out of studios in Minneapolis North High School. “After 40 years of introducing jazz to new listeners, encouraging young musicians, providing the public with access to the best jazz has to offer — and teaching countless individual students about radio broadcasting and jazz — we could think of no more appropriate recipient for our ‘Jane Award’ than KBEM-FM,” said foundation President Tom Trow. The school district has been involved in radio programming since 1938; KBEM went on the air in 1970, and began receiving CPB funding in 1994. Jane Matteson was a local jazz benefactor and co-founder of the foundation.

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President defends pubcasting, says proposed CPB cuts are “political statements”

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President Obama defended public broadcasting in a press conference on Friday (March 11), reports The Hill.”I think it’s going to be important for us to have a conversation after we get the short-term budget done, about how do we really tackle the problem in a comprehensive way,” Obama said. “And that means not just going after Head Start or Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That’s not where the money is.””These aren’t really budget items; these are political statements,” Obama said.

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NPR funding on House schedule for March 17

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“Consideration of legislation relating to the federal funding of NPR” will occur in the House of Representatives on Thursday, March 17, according to the new weekly schedule posted by Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). The schedule notes that the timing complies with the House’s new three-day notice requirement. The 112th Congress established a minimum three-day scheduling notice to give members and the public time to review bills.The schedule does not specify what bill is under discussion, but several are pending to zero out public broadcasting money. H.R. 69, sponsored by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), targets federal funding specifically for NPR programming.

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Bipartisan support waning, pubcasters fret

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Jennifer Ferro, general manager of KCRW-FM in Santa Monica, Calif., was among pubcasters who spent time on Capitol Hill this week urging members of Congress to preserve funding, reports the Los Angeles Times. But it’s a tough challenge without bipartisan backing. “The Democratic lawmakers I talked to said, ‘We can’t help. There’s nothing happening across the aisle,'” Ferro told the paper. Steve Bass, president of Oregon Public Broadcasting and a member of the NPR board of directors, said he’s worried that the bipartisan support the system historically enjoyed has been eroded by former NPR exec Ron Schiller’s comments in the video sting.

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APT elevates Hamilton and Buxton

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American Public Television announced that has promoted two staff members, Virginia Hamilton and Hilary Finkel Buxton. Hamilton, previously senior manager of APT’s distribution services, now becomes director of that department. She came to APT from WGBH’s production services and audience services, and she is a current member of the PBS Traffic Advisory Council. Buxton, senior manager in APT’s Exchange Service, has been promoted to director. Prior to her arrival at APT, Buxton also worked in production at WGBH.

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WVIA promotes Currá

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Tom Currá is the new second in command at WVIA in Pittston, Pa., the northeastern Pennsylvania and Central Susquehanna Valley PBS and NPR station. The move will allow WVIA President Bill Kelly to concentrate his efforts in national advocacy and a WVIA endowment, according to a station statement. Currá came to WVIA in 2004 after a career in commercial television and as an independent filmmaker. His previous title was senior vice president and executive producer.

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Moyers weighs in on NPR uproar, accuses conservatives of double standard

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“Let’s take a breath and put this NPR fracas into perspective,” advises pubcasting newsman Bill Moyers in Salon, writing with his Public Affairs Television colleague Michael Winship. The two say that NPR walked into a trap “perpetrated by one of the sleaziest operatives ever to climb out of a sewer,” activist filmmaker James O’Keefe, who caught NPR’s Ron Schiller in a hidden camera sting. The two call O’Keefe “a product of that grimy underworld of ideologically-based harassment which feeds the right’s slime machine.” They point out that in the wake of the Juan Williams firing, Fox News chief Roger Ailes called NPR execs “Nazis” — and then, while apologizing for that remark, characterized them instead as “nasty, inflexible bigots.””Double standard? You bet,” the column says.

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Next NPR head needs balance between broadcast, multimedia, station execs say

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Executives at several NPR member stations tell the Poynter Institute’s Mallary Jean Tenore they want NPR’s next c.e.o. to appreciate for the digital initiatives that Vivian Schiller helped create, but they don’t want to see NPR abandon its broadcast culture to make the organization a “multimedia company.” Commenting are John Weatherford, chief operating officer of Public Broadcasting Atlanta; Sam Fleming, managing director of news and programming at WBUR; and Torey Malatia, c.e.o. of Chicago Public Media.

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O’Keefe sting, part 2: Attempt to hide $5 mil gift blocked by Slocum, Schiller

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In the second part of the right-wing undercover sting of NPR, released Thursday (March 10), a senior fundraiser told one of the men posing as a wealthy Muslim donor that she would explore whether NPR could shield his organization’s gift from government auditors. The phony donor recorded phone conversations with Betsy Liley, senior director of institutional giving, in which he inquired whether his organization’s planned $5 million gift to NPR would be subject to a government audit, given that NPR receives federal funding. NPR released e-mails from its top executives to document that ultimately the fake philanthropist didn’t pass scrutiny. Joyce Slocum, NPR general counsel who was appointed interim c.e.o. after Vivian Schiller’s resignation on Wednesday, wrote on March 4 to the donor posing as Ibrahim Halem Kassam, and told him to produce tax documentation of his nonprofit trust, the Muslim Education Action Center. In the audiotape of Liley, released as excerpted and full-length versions yesterday, the donor says, “It sounded like you were saying that NPR would be able to shield us from a government audit — is that correct?”

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NPR journos release letter to listeners, say they were “appalled” by taped comments

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A letter to listeners from 22 NPR journalists, posted today (March 10) on media blogger Jim Romenesko’s website:An Open Letter from Journalists at NPR News . . .Dear Listeners and Supporters,We, and our colleagues at NPR News, strive every day to bring you the highest quality news programs possible. So, like you, we were appalled by the offensive comments made recently by NPR’s now former Senior Vice President for Development. His words violated the basic principles by which we live and work: accuracy and open-mindedness, fairness and respect.Those comments have done real damage to NPR.

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Vivian Schiller tells AP she had to depart NPR, due to federal funding fight

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Former NPR President Vivian Schiller told the Associated Press today (March 10) that her staying on as network chief executive would have complicated the federal funding battle. “We took a reputational hit around the Juan Williams incident, and this was another blow to NPR’s reputation,” she said, referring to this week’s NPR video sting. “There’s no question.”Howard Liberman, a communications attorney who represents several NPR affiliates, told the AP that many stations were unhappy with Schiller and the release of the video was just the final straw. In addition to firing Williams, Schiller shortened the organization’s name from National Public Radio to NPR (predicting that broadcasting towers would be gone within a decade) and attempted to push listeners toward the NPR.org website. “This was just the last in a series of things that have shown to the members and the stations that this ship is not running very well,” Liberman said.

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Pubcasting Caucus loses support of its former co-chairman

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The Public Broadcasting Caucus has suffered its first defection in the aftermath of the NPR video sting, reports The Hill. Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) is a former co-chair of the bipartisan caucus. “As a father of five children, I have been supportive of PBS children’s programming in the past,” he said. “However, the recent events involving NPR undermine their claims of objectivity in their reporting. Because NPR has crossed the line to political bias, I will no longer serve on the caucus.”

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Boston Herald reports on WGBH salaries; 14 employees make more than $200,000

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“More than a dozen WGBH honchos at PBS’ taxpayer-subsidized flagship station are raking in upwards of $200,000 a year while toiling in the lap of a luxurious $85 million multimedia palace dubbed the ‘Taj Mahal’ that boasts a 200-seat amphitheater, state-of-the-art recording studio and Hamburg-Steinway grand piano,” reports the Boston Herald in a story today (March 10) about the pubcasting powerhouse’s finances.Update:: Abbott responded in a letter to the newspaper. The Herald’s review of the latest IRS records (2009) for the station, which then employed around 950, found that four vice presidents and producers pulled in more than $300,000 in compensation; 10 employees took home more than $200,000; 145 earned more than $100,000; ex-WGBH president Henry Becton Jr., the station’s vice chairman, made $160,873 for working 24 hours a week; and “top brass,” as the paper called execs, “pocketed more than $200,000 in bonuses.”Jon Abbott, WGBH c.e.o., told the paper he hasn’t had a raise since taking over in 2007, and that the station must compete for talent with leading media companies. “We also benchmark all of those salaries to comparable salaries at media and nonprofit organizations in this area and nationally,” Abbott said. “If you look at my compensation relative to . .

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Arts have been politicized by conservatives, Henry Louis Gates says

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Harvard scholar and PBS documentarian Henry Louis Gates said he can’t imagine that any “self-respecting” member of Congress would vote to cut or zero out pubcasting support. In an interview with the Zap2it TV and movie news website, Gates called public broadcasting “one of our truly great national resources,” and added that the funding fight “just shows you how politicized the arts have become by the Right, and it’s disgusting. And I think we should all be embarrassed by it.”

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Rosen to public media: “These people want to destroy you”

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Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University who blogs at PressThink, has a 10-point response to public media’s tactics for recovering from the video sting that brought down NPR’s chief executive and its top fundraiser. Rosen views the ouster of President Vivian Schiller as a “stupid and cowardly act” by the NPR Board that reveals a fundamental weakness in public broadcasting’s political strategy and its commitment to positioning itself as an impartial news service. Culture warriors of the right wing “want to destroy you,” Rosen warns public media. “You don’t get to decide whether you have political enemies or not. Your enemies have that power.

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Alabama senator urges end to NPR support in letter to Labor/HHS subcom chair

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Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) — the ranking Republican on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, which oversees pubcasting funding — says it’s now time to discontinue federal support to NPR. In a letter to subcommittee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Shelby said he intends to “look at all available appropriations vehicles to discontinue funding directly related to NPR programming.” It is also signed by Labor/HHS subcommittee members Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.).

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TV coverage of NPR controversy, from the serious to the silly

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A link roundup of last night’s (March 9) reactions to NPR President Vivian Schiller’s resignation in the wake of fundraiser Ron Schiller’s remarks caught on undercover tape:Juan Williams on Fox’s Hannity program, saying in part: “This to me is finally is a window into how they [at NPR] really think.”ABC  World News with Diane Sawyer, hosted by George Stephanopoulos. The report featured pubcasting foe Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) saying, “There are some real serious problems at NPR,” and supporter Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) noting, “Obviously it doesn’t help when somebody does idiotic things.”WAMU’s Diane Rehm on CNN, telling John King that inside NPR, although Schiller’s resignation was a shock, “you had the feeling that another shoe was going to drop.”The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, its segment shows Ron Schiller discussing the joys of madeira wine on the undercover video.White House Press Secretary Jim Carney, explaining President Barack Obama’s ongoing support of public broadcasting funding despite the controversyBaltimore Sun media columnist David Zurawik, calling NPR “the last best hope for a global news service for factual information rather than opinion or commentary.”Rush Limbaugh on his radio program, via Media Matters