An investigation of a mine accident in Idaho by the Northwest News Network has prompted a federal agency to change how it handles documents regarding mine safety. Last year the network learned that a federal geologist’s report about unstable rock conditions at the Lucky Friday Mine in Mullan, Idaho, had never been sent to the mining company. In April 2011, a miner died in a tunnel collapse at Lucky Friday. After a congressman took the Mine Safety and Health Administration to task for the oversight, the head of the agency has announced that it will take additional steps to make sure that such studies are delivered to mine operators.

NPR has hired Todd Mundt as editorial director for NPR Digital Services, starting April 2. In his new position, Mundt will help stations develop digital content strategies and oversee news training for stations. He now serves as v.p. and chief content officer at Louisville Public Media in Kentucky, where he also serves as p.d. of WFPL, the news/talk station in LPM’s portfolio, and hosts Morning Edition. Before joining LPM, he was director of content and media at Iowa Public Radio and chief content officer for Michigan Public Media in Ann Arbor. He previously hosted a talk show distributed by NPR.

When it comes to explaining the relationship between NPR, its stations and the federal government, “part of me wants to do like a Schoolhouse Rock video of ‘how a bill becomes law,’” says NPR President Gary Knell in a Q&A with the Nieman Journalism Lab. Knell argues that federal support for public broadcasting serves the public interest by educating the public “so that we can make correct decisions and our political leaders can make correct decisions.” The interview also covers NPR’s promotion of Kinsey Wilson to chief content officer, the network’s development of in-car apps for Ford and other subjects.

A Chinese show featuring interviews with death-row prisoners just before execution has become a hit in that country, with 40 million viewers each Saturday night. Now scenes from the show, titled Dead Men Talking (available via PBS International), will be shown in Britain for the first time in a new BBC 2 documentary, reports The Daily Mail. The show has made a celebrity of interviewer Ding Yu. “Some viewers might consider it cruel to ask a criminal to do an interview when they are about to be executed,” she told the paper. “On the contrary, they want to be heard.

PBS has made an interesting selection for hosts for its first-ever Online Film Festival, reports GigaOm, two newbies “who have between them one mustache and barely six months of YouTube experience.” Yet despite their lack of expertise, Stephen Dypiangco and Patrick Epino have managed to create a popular YouTube channel, called the National Film Society, get press credentials to cover Sundance and cement a partnership with Filmmaker Magazine. “We were looking for someone with a really unique voice, someone you wouldn’t necessarily associate with PBS,” Jayme Swain, senior director of PBS Interactive, told GigaOm. The duo’s YouTube presence is “still a nascent channel, but have a reputation and a following, and they brought in a new perspective for us.”

Newsleader.com takes a look at how state funding cuts would affect a community radio network in rural Virginia, where in some areas the stations provide the only daily source of news for residents. “If we get a big funding cut, there’re just so many things that we wouldn’t be able to offer,” says Diane Buzzard, g.m. of the Allegheny Mountain Radio Network. “We wouldn’t be able to stay on the air every day. We’d probably have to limit our news feed, we’d probably have to eliminate our part-time news reporters and maybe our full-time news reporter. It would be devastating.”

In his latest post, CPB Ombudsman Joel Kaplan presses WAMU in Washington, D.C., for more transparency about interactions between its donors and journalists. “The public deserves more from WAMU,” Kaplan wrote. “It deserves to know exactly what is going on in its newsroom and at its donor conferences.” Kaplan urged the station to release transcripts, records of attendees and other information related to such events, and he suggested the station offer video streams of any future panel discussions that its journalists put on for donors, such as a recent “Meet the Producers Breakfast.” Kaplan’s focus on WAMU comes after the resignation of News Director Jim Asendio, who objected to the Meet the Producers Breakfast and refused to attend.

WNET and PBS are among broadcasters that filed one of two copyright infringement lawsuits Thursday (March 1) in Manhattan federal court against Aereo, a TV service that streams over-the-air channels to web-enabled devices, reports PaidContent.org, a news site covering the economics of digital content. Aereo, backed by media mogul Barry Diller, announced last month that it would use “proprietary remote antenna and DVR” technology to enable subscribers, for $12 a month, to watch over-the-air broadcasts on their smart phones, tablets and computers. The service, set to launch March 14 in Brooklyn, is similar to the recent ivi TV (Current, Oct.

WGBH, one of four public stations selected last year to pilot a Mobile Emergency Alert System (M-EAS) project funded by CPB and LG Electronics, will test the system on Monday (March 5), according to TV Technology. WGBH will send tornado emergency information to mobile devices via text, video, audio, maps and photos, using the mobile DTV standard ATSC M/H. The test will occur at 10:30 a.m. Eastern. Participating are KLVX in Las Vegas, and Alabama station WBIQ in Birmingham and WAIQ in Montgomery.

“What a difference a year makes,” Patrick Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations, told the crowd at the group’s Public Media Summit on Feb. 27 in Arlington, Va. Last year at this time, the House of Representatives had just voted to eliminate all federal funding for public broadcasting. Since then pubcasters have notched several victories, including protecting the fiscal 2011 appropriation for CPB to $445 million. In recognition of Butler’s performance during his first year, the APTS Board of Trustees gave him an extended standing ovation. APTS renamed its longtime Capitol Hill Day public TV political advocacy gathering as the Summit, which included sessions on how both TV and radio stations are “Moving from ‘Nice’ to ‘Necessary,’” and appearances by former U.S.

The Interrupters topped the P.O.V. blog’s exhaustive list of the best documentaries of the past year, based on lists from critical acclaim, documentary festivals, industry organizations and online voting. The Kartemquin Films production, which  recently ran on Frontline, tells the stories of three individuals in Chicago who literally interrupt situations on the streets that are brewing into violent confrontations. Don’t miss the blog’s cool graphic tracking dozens of films.

AOL and PBS today launched the multiplatform project “Makers: Women Who Make America” to showcase “hundreds of compelling stories from women of today and tomorrow,” as the site says. Tim Armstrong, AOL c.e.o., told Bloomberg News, “Women’s content is a major strategic focus for us.” “Makers” filmmaker Dyllan McGee called the online-first approach “the future of documentaries.” The 59 interviews on the site so far include Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, tennis great Billy Jean King, newswoman Barbara Walters, entertainment icon Oprah Winfrey and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. In 2013, PBS will premiere a related three-hour documentary telling the story of the women’s movement over the last 50 years.

Legislation enacted last week to authorize FCC auctions of TV spectrum contains some protections for pubcasters, but broadcasters will face technical challenges that will exceed the difficulties of their transition to DTV just four years ago. The new law sketches out an extraordinarily complex process of auctioning off TV broadcast spectrum to mobile digital carriers and repacking reduced TV channels in the remaining spectrum, though many questions remain unanswered. The law now assures broadcasters that any spectrum giveback will be voluntary, for noncommercial and commercial operators alike. The FCC will not force any relocations from UHF to VHF or from high to low VHF channels.

“What a difference a year makes,” Patrick Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations, told the crowd at the group’s Public Media Summit on Monday (Feb. 27) in Arlington, Va. Last year at this time, Butler notes, the House of Representatives had just voted to eliminate all federal funding for public broadcasting. But since then pubcasters have notched several victories, including resurrecting the fiscal 2011 appropriation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from zero to $445 million. “Washington wisdom has it that we are likely to bump along this year with a series of stop-gap funding measures through the election; and that the mother of all lame-duck Congresses will come back after the elections to deal with a host of pressing tax and spending issues,” Butler said.

The FCC has denied the request of a Native American college in New Mexico for more time to build a new noncommercial FM station. (PDF of decision.) Navajo Technical College in Crownpoint, N.M., had run into a number of setbacks as it worked toward getting its new station on the air. To start with, the school blew past its FCC-imposed deadline for starting the station due to a misunderstanding. It then revealed to the FCC that it couldn’t build the station at the location it had initially proposed because the solar-powered facility at the site would produce too little power.