Kevin Klose, a former NPR president, is stepping down from his position as dean at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, a spot he has held since February 2009. In a memo to colleagues also posted on Jim Romenesko’s Poynter Institute blog, Klose said he’s returning to the classroom as of July 1, 2012, “where the work of educating the next generation of journalists challenges us all.” Klose served as president of NPR from 1998 to 2008. He’s also a past president of the NPR Foundation and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, as well as an ex-Washington Post reporter.

Ellen Weiss, the NPR News chief who took the network’s blame for the Juan Williams affair, will join the Center for Public Integrity as its executive editor as of Oct. 3, the watchdog newsroom announced today. The center is headed by one of her predecessors at NPR, Bill Buzenberg. “Ellen Weiss is one of the best and most creative news executives in the business,” he said in a news release. CPI hired three other top editors including Christine Montgomery, the center’s new chief digital officer, who was managing editor of PBS.org for two years while it expanded and then sharply reduced its online news plans.

Though CPB and many other relatively small federal outlays could get whacked or seriously trimmed in the forthcoming scrum of Supercommittee deficit maneuvering, a Democrat-controlled Senate Appropriations subcommittee yesterday approved an increase in the advance appropriation for 2014. If CPB survives ’til then, it would receive $445 million, the same as appropriated for fiscal years 2012 and 2013 but $6 million below President Obama’s request, according to CPB. (This year’s sum is $430 million.) The action was taken in subcommittee markup of the Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bill for next year. In addition, CPB would receive $6 million for digital projects, and the Department of Education would receive $27.2 million for Ready to Learn.

A one-day Vermont Public Radio fundraiser for Hurricane Irene relief Sept. 13 raised more than $628,000 for the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund. More than 4,600 listeners called to pledge support or donated online during the 16-hour campaign. “We know that our listeners are community-minded, but this outpouring of support went beyond anything we imagined,” said VPR President Robin Turnau. The hurricane rampaged through Vermont Aug. 28. VPR received a special one-day waiver from the FCC to allow it to raise funds for an organization other than itself. The network’s news staff is still posting followup stories on its special hurricane blog.

Bruce Ramer was re-elected chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Board of Directors at its meeting today (Sept. 20) at headquarters in Washington, D.C. The new vice-chair is Patricia Cahill, general manager of KCUR-FM in Kansas City, who joined the board in August 2009.

“Sentinels of the Seas,” an episode of WPBT2’s Changing Seas, has won a 2011 Communications Award in the Film/Radio/TV category, from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine. The episode explained what Florida’s bottlenose dolphins reveal about the health of coastal waters and human exposure to chemical contaminants. The awards recognize excellence in reporting and communicating science, engineering and medicine. Other public media finalists included Richard Harris and Alison Richards for “Gulf Spill May Far Exceed Official Estimates” on NPR; Richards, Christopher Joyce, Jon Hamilton and Joe Palca for “The Human Edge: Finding Our Inner Fish” also on NPR; and Gary Hochman, Steve Reich and Paula Apsell for “Secrets Beneath the Ice” on Nova.

The MacArthur Foundation today publicly confirmed what fans already know: Jad Abumrad, auteur/producer and co-host of WNYC’s Radiolab, is some kinda genius. He is one of 22 scientists and other creative types who received $500,000 MacArthur fellowships in recognition of their achievements and potential. “This show is the central creative mission of my life right now, and the money might give me the space to bring new things into it,” Abumrad said in a New York Times article reporting the awards. Abumrad probably will have more to say Wednesday morning when he keynotes the Public Radio Program Directors conference in Baltimore.

Nonprofit satellite channel Link TV today (Sept. 20) announced a new c.e.o., former ABC News executive Paul Mason. After 30 years in commercial television, Mason told Current, he “wanted to go someplace optimistic, where there’s tremendous passion about mission.” “That’s happening in not-for-profit media,” he said. He takes over as Link launches several initiatives, including LinkAsia, a half-hour online news show hosted by Yul Kwon, a former FCC deputy chief and host of the upcoming four-part PBS series America Revealed; and ViewChange.org, an online media hub funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, that  “highlights progress in reducing hunger, poverty and disease in developing nations,” as Link describes it, with stories of the people helped by global development organizations such as Save the Children, Oxfam, UNICEF, CONCERN and Bread for the World.

Elizabeth Cheng, a Hearst Television executive, is the new general manager for the World channel, WGBH announced today (Sept. 20). Cheng will oversee all business, technical and creative aspects of production, distribution and marketing for the digital multicast service, which was developed by WGBH and WNET in 2004 and relaunched on multiple platforms last year (Current, June 7, 2010) with funding from CPB. At Hearst, Cheng was a vice president, as well as director of programming and communications for WCVB-TV Channel 5 Boston and director of programming for WMUR-TV Channel 9 Manchester, N.H., both ABC affiliates. In addition to executive producing specials and series programming, she was in charge of Chronicle, WCVB’s nightly news magazine covering the New England region.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting soon will request $451 million in advance funding for 2015, Tim Isgitt, CPB’s government affairs s.v.p., told board members in Washington, D.C. today (Sept. 19). That’s up slightly from the $445 million for the system in President Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget, which forward-funds FY14. CPB is also asking for $20 million in digital funding for 2013, Isgitt said, for collaborative station infrastructure projects, educational media support for teachers and public safety initiatives. And Patrick Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations advocacy organization, told the board that he’s “feeling a little bit better” about those funding prospects on Capitol Hill, compared with the brutal budget battles earlier this year.

As Jay Rosen sees it, “he said, she said” reporting is a “lame formula” for fact-based news reporting, a method of presenting opposing points of view that is out-dated and gutless. When Rosen, an NYU j-school professor who blogs at Press Think, found an example of “he said, she said” reporting in NPR’s Sept. 8 story on regulations on abortion clinics in Kansas, he called down the network in a series of posts that accused NPR of being cowardly: “NPR has, in this case, allowed its desire to escape criticism to overwhelm its journalistic imagination,” Rosen wrote. “‘He said, she said’ does not serve listeners.

At the Primetime Emmy Awards Sunday night (Sept. 18), premium cable channel HBO “was beaten up in prestige categories by an unlikely foe — public broadcasting, which gets its funding from the government and viewer contributions,” reports the Los Angeles Times. PBS won 14 statuettes (including the earlier Creative Emmy presentations) compared with HBO’s 19, but Masterpiece’s “Downton Abbey” walked away with some of the night’s top honors, generally reserved for big-money HBO productions. The Brit import about an aristocratic family in pre-World War I England won for TV miniseries or movie; Julian Fellowes, series creator, also won the writing award in that category; and director Brian Percival and supporting actress Maggie Smith took those honors.