CPB will award $1.4 million to seven public radio and TV stations for the creation of a new Local Journalism Center covering energy policy, production, use and innovation. The grant is for two years, and the LJC will hire seven new positions along with freelance multimedia reporters to cover the beat, according to CPB spokesperson Kelly Broadway. Rocky Mountain PBS and KUVO-FM in Colorado are the lead stations on the initiative, which will focus on the West and Great Plains. The other participating stations, together covering six states and parts of Canada, are northern Colorado’s KUNC-FM, Colorado Public Television, Wyoming Public Media, Wyoming PBS and Prairie Public.

StoryCorps has hired its first chief executive in its decade-long history, reports the New York Times. Robin Sparkman, currently editor in chief of The American Lawyer magazine, joins the Brooklyn-based oral history project next month. Founder David Isay “will continue to be the public face of the organization,” the report said, as creative director and chief fundraiser. Sparkman will focus on management and strategic planning. StoryCorps content is a longtime favorite of NPR audiences. The organization, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary in October, now has 100 staff members and a yearly budget of $9.2 million.

PBS has named Mario Vecchi chief technology officer, calling the former AOL executive “a world-class technologist.” Starting Jan. 27, Vecchi will oversee distribution operations and engineering, media management, interconnection engineering, information technology, web and new media applications/systems and technology strategy and planning. In the Dec. 13 announcement, PBS President Paula Kerger praised Vecchi’s “wealth of skill and experience.” He holds three engineering degrees, including a doctorate, from MIT. He is currently president of P&A Development Inc., a broadband network consulting firm for new businesses. Previously he was president of Apex Technologies, a business-systems company he founded within the Grupo Ferre Rangel consortium, the largest communications and media group in Puerto Rico.

A new feature added to Facebook on Monday allows donors to give directly to charities by clicking on a “donate now” button. “The Donate feature will appear beside Posts in News Feed shared by participating nonprofits and at the top of their Facebook Pages,” Facebook said in a statement on the new feature. “When people click ‘Donate Now’ they can choose the amount, enter their payment information, and immediately donate to that cause.” Facebook said it will store the donor’s credit card on file, but that information will not be shared with the nonprofit. Launch partners include the Nature Conservancy, Oxfam America, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Malaria No More and the World Wildlife Fund.

Ad man and podcaster Mike O’Toole has teamed up with veteran pubradio producer Jim Russell to adapt a narrative-focused business podcast into a public radio series. The show, The Unconventionals, features long-form interviews with executives who run startup companies or established businesses that have adopted game-changing tactics for marketing to younger consumers. O’Toole, host and president of PJA Marketing + Advertising, seeks guests who fit a certain profile — entrepreneurs whose innovative business models disrupt those of their competitors. He aims to highlight undertold stories in business and marketing, looking beyond companies such as Apple, whose narratives have been “told to death.”

Virginia public broadcasters WCVE and WVPT are the latest stations to come together to form a joint master control. Starting as early as February, programming for WVPT-TV in Harrisonburg, Va., will be transmitted from a joint control at WCVE, a dual licensee about 120 miles to the southeast in Richmond. The arrangement is a win-win: the service provides WCVE with a new source of revenue, and WVPT rings up savings by avoiding an expensive refresh of its outdated equipment. Execs at both stations said they’ll use the extra cash to produce more content. “We are at end of life for most if not all of the equipment in our current master-control facility,” said David Mullins, WVPT president.

According to pubradio consultant John Sutton, several sources close to the NPR Board say that “current and past CEO search committees have taken the position that no one in public radio is qualified to manage the external relationships NPR must forge to succeed in the digital age.” “I hope that’s not that case,” he notes in a blog post on Radio Sutton. This creates “an interesting dichotomy,” he writes. “NPR’s Board searches for leaders who want to build on public radio’s great success, but does not think the leaders who are very much responsible for creating that success are good enough for the job.”

NPR has lined up $17 million in grants and individual gifts to expand two beat-reporting units and to complete development of an app designed to provide a personalized, location-based listening experience of content from NPR and local stations. Most of the funding, about $10 million, supports development of the app, which NPR has referred to internally as Project Carbon. Slated for release by April 2014, the app will enable listeners to hear, read and watch public radio content across digital platforms, providing an experience similar to what Pandora or Spotify offer for music. The app is designed to customize the content it delivers by using geolocation, gathering feedback and tracking when and for how long users listen.

12/16/13: This item has been updated. Oregon Public Broadcasting is preparing to open a permanent bureau in Southwest Washington state by early 2014, and has surpassed $400,000 in funding to make it happen. The bureau will allow OPB to deepen its reporting on Washington’s Clark County, which is located just across the Columbia River from OPB headquarters in Portland, as well as cross-border issues and the Washington State legislature in Olympia. It will contain one staff member, a full-time multimedia reporter, to start. Stories produced by the bureau will be shared across public radio stations and for-profit media organizations in the Pacific Northwest, and with national outlets such as NPR and the PBS NewsHour.

Los Angeles’s KPCC is shuffling news priorities. As LA Observed reports, the station is closing its bureau in the state capital and cutting two general assignment reporters. But it has also made eight new hires since October, mostly to expand healthcare and environment coverage as well as its digital presence. Russ Stanton, KPCC v.p. of content, told LA Observed that the station may reinstate a Sacramento staffer in 2015. In the meantime it will rely on reports from Sacramento’s Capital Public Radio for state-government coverage. The station also launched an iPad app Dec. 2, making it one of the few public stations to put out its own tablet app, according to Nieman Lab.

The Maryland Public Broadcasting Commission is appealing a proposed FCC fine of $20,000 for multiple violations of its Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) rules, reports Broadcasting & Cable. In a Notice of Apparent Liability, the FCC contends that the pubcasting commission, the licensee of Maryland Public Television, broke several rules between June 2008 and May 2010 by failing to provide notification of 11 full-time vacancies to an organization that had requested that information. The agency also said that those failures “reveal a continuing lack of self-assessment” and that the Maryland licensee “provided incorrect factual information” to the FCC regarding the situation.