People

Daniel del Solar, 71, believer in progressive public media

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Daniel del Solar, 71, a Chilean-American media activist, poet and photographer who headed training for CPB in its early days and later managed countercultural stations in San Francisco and Philadelphia, died Jan. 13 in Oakland, Calif. He had prostate cancer. Del Solar served as director of training and development at CPB in the late 1970s, during a period of active recruitment and training of ethnic-minority professionals. He later became g.m. of San Francisco’s KALW-FM from 1985 to 1992 and of Philadelphia’s WYBE-TV from 1992 to 1995.

People

Alex Chadwick: Recharged to cover an energetic beat

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Alex Chadwick was lost. It took a journey to an unlikely place — the whitewater rapids of a Utah canyon — for him to find his way back to radio. In 2008, Chadwick found himself absent from the airwaves for the first time in decades. He had stepped down as host of the NPR show Day to Day to return to reporting, only to be laid off a month later, an unceremonious end to 31 years at the network. He then devoted himself to caring for his wife and partner in broadcasting, Carolyn Jensen Chadwick, who was battling multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood cells.

People

NPR promotes Wilson to chief content officer, Arnold departs PRI, and more…

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NPR President Gary Knell has restructured the news organization’s top ranks, elevating digital chief Kinsey Wilson to executive v.p. and chief content officer and appointing Margaret Low Smith senior v.p. of news, a job she took on an interim basis last year. When Wilson joined NPR as senior v.p. and general manager of digital media in 2008, the position was parallel to the senior news exec post then held by Ellen Weiss. Knell’s restructuring elevates Wilson in NPR’s organization chart to supervise all of NPR’s content areas — news, programming and digital media. “In Kinsey and Margaret, we have two journalists, strategists and leaders with a keen understanding of the craft that distinguishes NPR — and how we continue to innovate and evolve,” Knell said in a news release. The new structure allows for greater coordination of NPR’s news, digital and programming strategies, and a “more seamless integration” of its news operations, according to the release.

People

Pubradio manager and advocate Tim Emmons dies; was a co-founder of MEGS

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Northern Public Radio General Manager Tim Emmons, a passionate pubradio advocate and mentor, and a driving force behind the Morning Edition Grad School, died Feb. 18 at home after a long battle with cancer. He was 53. He headed the five stations in DeKalb, Ill., for 15 years. The NPR Board observed a moment of silence for Emmons at its Feb.

People

Philip Weinberg dies at 86; brought pubcasting to central Illinois

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Philip Weinberg, “the man responsible for bringing public broadcasting to central Illinois,” according to the Peoria Journal Star, died Thursday (Feb. 2) in Peoria, Ill. He was 86. “Not only did he start public radio on the Bradley [University] campus,” said Chet Tomczyk, g.m. of WTVP-TV, “but when he came across Sesame Street, produced by the Children’s Television Workshop, he decided that here was a show that people in this community needed to be exposed to.” So Weinberg arranged for the program to play on another local channel for six months before it could be carried on the pubTV station that Weinberg put on the air in June 1971, Tomczyk said.

People

Jeff Kaye, veteran media chronicler new to Current

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Jeffrey Kaye, an experienced media-industry journalist who recently joined Current as senior editor, died Feb. 11 of a heart attack in Bethesda, Md., where he and his family had recently moved. He was 57. Kaye had finished work on his third issue of Current the night before. He had taken a number of adventurous leaps in his life, moving from his home state of New Jersey to San Francisco before college, to Paris as a young writer, to Los Angeles, and to London, where he lived 20 years before returning to the States.

People

Gerald Poulsen, a.k.a. WAMU bluegrass host Jerry Gray, dies at 78

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Gerald Poulsen, known in radio as bluegrass music host Jerry Gray, died Feb. 2 in Roanoke, Va. He was 78. His son Mark Poulsen told the Washington Post that his father had health complications from a heart transplant that he received after suffering a heart attack on the air in 1989. Poulsen started in 1971 at Washington’s WAMU-FM  at American University and for 30 years hosted The Jerry Gray Show on Saturday afternoons, featuring traditional country music, featuring stars such as Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, Roy Rogers and Patsy Montana.

People

Mike deGruy, 60, shooter for Nature docs, dies in crash

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Mike deGruy, an acclaimed cinematographer with a love of the sea who created several Nature documentaries on PBS, was killed Feb. 4 in a helicopter crash in Australia. He was 60. His employer, National Geographic Society, said that deGruy and Australian television writer-producer Andrew Wight crashed after takeoff near Nowra, 97 miles north of Sydney. Australia’s ABC News reported that Wight was piloting the helicopter.

People

Blogger gets the hots for NPR’ers, Maine pubcaster appears on Family Feud, and more…

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Despite the phrase “a face made for radio,” a blogger has started appraising crush-worthy folks in public radio. Babes Of NPR features public radio hosts, reporters and producers whose photos inspire a swoon or a snarky comment from the site’s North Carolina proprietor. Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep is “the thinking man’s David Hasselhoff.” Peter Breslow, a senior producer for Weekend Edition, is likened to actor Ted Danson. And Joe and Terry Graedon, hosts of The People’s Pharmacy, “look like they might be fun to take home from the middle-aged hippie swingers potluck.”

Babes of NPR was launched after a photo of NPR reporter Ari Shapiro popped up on the Facebook page of creator Katie Herzog. “I thought, ‘That guy is really good-looking, especially for an NPR nerd,’” says Herzog, who works for an academic press in Durham, N.C.

The blog started getting attention from people in public media.

People

Stanton joins KPCC, MPR vet honored by governor, Alaska pubradio icon retires, and more…

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A former top editor of the Los Angeles Times, Russ Stanton, has joined APM’s Los Angeles station
KPCC in Pasadena, Calif., announced a major hire last week: Former Los Angeles Times Editor Russ Stanton has joined the station as its new v.p. of content. Stanton’s arrival “is part of an aggressive effort by the nonprofit news organization to become the preeminent regional source for both broadcast and online news — with deeper, more enterprising and investigative coverage,” KPCC declared on its website. Stanton had left the newspaper last month in what was announced as a “mutual decision” with Times President Kathy Thomson. In his four years at the helm, the Times won three Pulitzer Prizes, including a prestigious Public Service award. At KPCC, Stanton will be responsible for the station’s broadcast, website and live events coverage; one of his first duties will be to select an executive editor to supervise daily radio and digital news operations.

People

Lynn Samuels, 69; began talk career at Pacifica’s WBAI

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Progressive radio talk-show host Lynn Samuels, 69, who began her career on public radio, was found dead in her Queens, N.Y., apartment on Christmas Eve, the New York Daily News reported. When Samuels didn’t show up for her Sirius XM show Dec. 24, reps for the satellite radio company had asked the police to investigate. Samuels began her radio career in 1979 at Pacifica Radio’s WBAI in New York City. In the 1980s she moved to WABC Radio.

People

Robert A. Woods, 80, attorney for public stations, NAEB

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Robert A. Woods, 80, a retired founding partner in the communications law firm of Schwartz, Woods & Miller, died Dec. 22 [2011] following a long illness. The firm handled FCC and other matters for numerous public broadcasting stations as well as for common carriers and commercial broadcasters. Woods served as outside general counsel for the National Association of Educational Broadcasters in its later years. In cities where there were no suitable TV channels reserved for noncommercial use, Woods went into battle.

Frontline

NewsHour picks up Bellantoni, WBEZ personnel changes, and more…

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Bellantoni to oversee all <em>NewsHour</em> political coverage
PBS NewsHour has a new political editor as of Jan. 2. Christina Bellantoni of CQ Roll Call oversees the newsroom’s political coverage on-air and online, including political analysis, elections and personalities. Her predecessor, David Chalain, departed in November to lead the Washington bureau of Yahoo News. Bellantoni has spent more than a decade covering national political and business news in Washington, D.C., and California.

People
Daniel Faulkner and Mumia Abu-Jamal

State drops death penalty for commentator Mumia Abu-Jamal

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Mumia Abu-Jamal, the onetime radio journalist, activist and convicted killer whose planned jailhouse commentaries were dropped by NPR after an outcry 17 years ago, is off of death row. However, he’s likely to stay in prison the rest of his life, without the possibility of parole.  Abu-Jamal is now jailed at State Correctional Institution Mahanoy, west of Allentown in eastern Pennsylvania. Philadelphia’s district attorney, Seth Williams, said Dec. 7 [2011] the death penalty was a just punishment for killing a city policeman 30 years ago, but he wouldn’t prolong the legal struggle by asking again for execution. Twice the courts had ordered execution, and appeals saved him — to the relief of his partisans and to the outrage of those of Officer Daniel Faulkner.

People

Judy Jankowski, 61, managed prominent jazz stations

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Judy Jankowski, who held top management positions at several public broadcasting stations, died Dec. 17 [2011] at Kindred Hospital in Westminster, Calif. She was 61. She started her long pubcasting career as a traffic manager at WOUB in Athens, Ohio, worked as g.m. of Pittsburgh’s WDUQ from the mid-1980s until 1994, and then managed another leading jazz station — KLON, now KKJZ in Long Beach, Calif. — until retiring in 2005.

People

Bob O’Rourke, 72, developed pubcasting science shows

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Bob O’Rourke, a former v.p. for public relations at the California Institute of Technology who helped develop several pubcasting science features, died Dec. 27 [2011] of complications following a lung transplant several years ago. He was 72. O’Rourke conceived AirTalk: The Caltech Edition, a collaboration with local NPR member station KPCC in Pasadena, Calif., as well as The Loh Down on Science, designed to be “the fun way to get your daily dose of science in less than two minutes” and hosted by comedian/Caltech physics major Sandra Tsing Loh. He also was a driving force behind Curious, a four-part pubTV series from WNET that focused on the work of scientists at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

People

Dave Creagh, 60, producer and station exec ‘in vanguard of public radio pioneers’

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Dave Creagh, an early All Things Considered executive producer who went on to lead other programs and major-market stations throughout his influential 22-year pubradio career, died Dec. 16 at his home in Blowing Rock, N.C., following a short illness associated with treatment of a cancer diagnosed in November. He was 60. “Dave was in the vanguard of public radio pioneers who laid the foundations for a vital communications network,” said John Dimsdale, Washington bureau chief for American Public Media’s Marketplace and a former colleague at NPR. “Over his career, he established high standards for engineering, journalism, production and station management.

People

Jim Fellows: diplomat at center of pubTV

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James A. Fellows, 77, an advocate of high ideals, strategic planning and executive training for public television, died in his sleep Friday, Jan. 6, at a nursing home in Millville, N.J.

He had been besieged by Parkinson’s disease and the lasting effects of a nearly fatal car accident in 2003 and a stroke in 2004. Jim represented stations on the national scene for 40 years, serving as the last president of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, a forerunner and parent of PBS and NPR. Recognizing that few station leaders had ever been trained as managers and budgeters, he arranged for development of intensive short courses taught at business schools. He founded Current as one of NAEB’s last projects in 1980 and remained its publisher, in effect, for more than 20 years — advising its editors, never interfering, inspiring them with his sense of purpose.

Obituaries

Ed Burrows, active in movement to win federal aid for public radio, dies at 94

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Edwin G. Burrows, a public radio pioneer who was instrumental in getting federal aid to public radio — when CPB’s founding legislation initially planned only the Corporation for Public Television — died Nov. 20 in Edmonds, Wash. He was 94. His public radio career began in 1948 as program director at WUOM, Ann Arbor, Mich., according to the National Public Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland Libraries, where Burrows’s papers reside. He helped create WVGR in Grand Rapids in 1961, and in 1966 he was made manager of WUOM and WVGR.

System/Policy

Albany gets a lot of Chartock, but how much is too much?

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When Alan Chartock, president of Northeast Public Radio in Albany, N.Y., was on a wife-imposed Mexican vacation, despite her objections he still found a way to call in for his five-day-a-week 7:34 a.m. spot. Chartock, 70, lives and breathes the media institution he created nearly single-handedly in 1981. He’s on air most days and often hosts two weekly shows, one about medicine and the other about media. If you are one of the 450,000 monthly listeners to mother station WAMC or its 22 repeaters in the hilly towns and valleys where New York meets Vermont and Massachusetts, you know a lot about Chartock. You know he’s always trying a new diet (currently, no white food).