• In a New York Times op-ed, Laura Walker, president of New York’s WNYC, addresses New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s repeated refusal to share requested documents with media outlets. Walker’s station has filed one of “at least 22 lawsuits” against Christie’s administration under New Jersey’s public records act, she writes. “The open records law was explicitly designed to create incentives for elected leaders to act transparently, and to punish them for violations,” Walker says. “But Mr. Christie is using the state attorney general’s office to fight the lawsuits, causing delays and running up costs that are ultimately borne by the taxpayer, not by the governor.”
Scharpling’s Best Show will relaunch as a podcast and web stream, the host says. (Photo: John Dalton via Flickr/Creative Commons)
• Tom Scharpling, formerly host of The Best Show on WFMU, shared a few details last week about his plans to relaunch the show next month. In an interview during the CMJ Music Marathon in New York, the host said the revived Best Show will be offered as a podcast and live webcast from his own production studio in New Jersey. Scharpling quit his popular WFMU show last year after a 13-year run.
• Bernard Mayes, the first g.m. of San Francisco’s KQED-FM and an executive at NPR in its early days, died Friday at the age of 85, reports KQED. Mayes was also active in the gay rights movement, founded a suicide prevention center and taught at the University of Virginia. Mayes was a memorable character. I met him years ago at a celebration of NPR’s incorporation and remember him gleefully telling me that KQED’s founders were “as queer as ducks!”
• Watching Olive Kitteridge, the upcoming HBO miniseries adapted from the novel by Elizabeth Strout, prompted Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik to ask why the pay network has such an edge in presenting American-made dramas. “Why are great American stories like these being told on HBO, one of TV’s most expensive subscription services, and not PBS, which is supposed to be the free public channel of American life?” he writes.