That’s what the Washington Week host told PBS’s Engage blog this week. Ifill was the most recent subject of the social media project‘s regular “Five Good Answers from…” pubTV interview feature. If the tables were turned, whom would she pick to interview her? “Since I’m writing a book that comes out next year, I suppose I’d most want an Oprah interview,” Ifill said. “Wouldn’t you?”

KETC in St. Louis has launched Facing the Mortgage Crisis, created in partnership with CPB. The multimedia project–which includes a partnership with the online newspaper The Saint Louis Beacon–aims to make KETC a central hub for information about how and where struggling homeowners can get help. A Google map on the project website maps partner service organizations across the metro area. The site’s other resources include information about the United Way’s help line and KETC-produced video stories about specific neighborhoods. The project, which was initiated in mid-May by CPB, is intended to create a template for other stations to use in their communities.

NPR News, Mississippi Public Broadcasting and XM Satellite Radio’s Bob Edwards Show are winners of 2008 Edward R. Murrow Awards for radio network news coverage announced yesterday by RTNDA. New York’s WNYC-FM is the only pubradio outlet earning a national Murrow in the large-market radio division, but six pubcasters serving small markets receive RTNDA honors for excellence in electronic journalism. NPR’s winning reports are “Sexual Abuse of Native American Women” by Laura Sullivan and “Rescuing the Wounded: Iraq to Germany” by Guy Raz. MPB Radio wins with “Emmett Till Apology” and “Kids Write the Blues.”

Public Radio Program Directors unveiled its redesigned website today. Upgrades include an improved search function, a knowledge base of tricks of the trade and a members forum. Reports on recent PRPD activities, such as a meeting on best practices in local talk programming and a webinar on social media produced by WXPN’s Bruce Warren, are available to non-members.

PBS 45 & 49, a public TV station covering northeast Ohio, including Akron, Canton, Cleveland and Youngstown, will reach back into the 17th century for a new name it will adopt this fall — Western Reserve Public Media. The Western Reserve name, shared by a major Cleveland university, comes from a strip of Ohio claimed by Connecticut in the 1700s, when present-day Ohio was the frontier, according to Cleveland’s Western Reserve Historical Society. By 1800, after a series of armed conflicts with Pennsylvania settlers, Connecticut had given up on its claims over a strip of land reaching to the Pacific.

Pacifica’s KPFT-FM in Houston has taken several steps to respond to what are being called “potentially crippling financial situations” throughout the network. KPFT’s board recently passed resolutions asking the Pacifica National Board to discontinue its in-person meetings as a cost-saving measure. The station board also asked Pacifica to allow “ethical sponsorships and underwriting” to boost station income. Pacifica does not now accept underwriting, relying on on-air fund drives for support. In a report to KPFT’s Board June 18, Duane Bradley, g.m., said, “It is the sense of the paid staff that the greatest threats to the network are the huge costs related to elections, national board meetings and lawsuits.”

On the occasion of its 35th anniversary, KOCE-TV in Orange County, Calif., is considering how it can add to its local coverage, reports the Orange County Register. “We’re not part of an institution like the community college district, we’re not being sued, and we can finally take off and be what the county needs us to be,” says Mel Rogers, g.m.

Fast Company focuses on the startup of public radio’s The Takeaway, which hinged on a collaborative effort with the design school at Stanford University. An observation: “Program directors are people who think of themselves as visionaries and like to be ahead of the curve, but they’re actually extraordinarily risk averse,” says WNYC’s Dean Cappello. (Via the PRPD blog.)

Want to see what molten lava looks like underwater, as it advances toward you on the ocean floor? WNET gives top priority to video on its new website, including an enhanced web experience for Nature fans. Preview the lava scene, shot for a future show on Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano. Paul Atkins swam into 100-degree water to film it in HD, writes Fred Kaufman, e.p. WNET is keeping the new sites easy to update for program staffers by organizing them in a multi-user version of WordPress, an open-source content management system widely used by bloggers, instead of a more complex CMS, says Thirteen.org

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed a new tax to offset revenue losses when advertising is eliminated from state-funded public radio and television, beginning Jan. 1, 2009. In addition to a 3 percent tax on private TV’s ad revenues, the state will tax internet providers and telephone companies 0.9 percent to make up for the estimated $1.3 billion loss in revenue. Sarkozy announced in January that he wanted to eliminate ads to ensure quality programming, but critics say he’s simply handing ad dollars to private channels. France’s biggest private station, TF1, is owned by a close friend of Sarkozy. In February, pubTV and radio staff staged a strike against the plan.

Longtime PBS pledge guru Deepak Chopra is not pissed that Mike Myers’ movie The Love Guru caricatures his subcontinent murmur, Chopra said Monday on PRI’s Tavis Smiley Show. He’s not cheesed off that Myers mimics his creation of self-help catch phrases such as “EGO, Edging God Out” (a real Chopraism) or “Ecumenical Intuitive Enlightenment Institute” or EIEIO (really Myers). On the contrary, Chopra says he’s an advocate of laughter in his new book Why Is God Laughing? (foreword by Myers), and he’s a longtime friend of Myers and an admirer of the movie’s script, which he called “hilariously silly.” The movie’s silly, at least, according to critics: “Relentlessly juvenile,” says Variety.

Jim Lehrer will be back in the anchor seat tomorrow night after a nearly two-month absence following heart valve surgery. Lehrer will be anchoring the NewsHour part-time–two or three days a week–and moving toward a full time schedule. In August and September, he will report from the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

Katrina Browne’s P.O.V. documentary Traces of the Trade examines “what it might look like for whites to talk honestly with one another about racial history’s implications for contemporary American lives and life chances,” writes John L. Jackson, Jr., professor of communication and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, in his Chronicle of Higher Education blog. The film, which follows Browne and her nine relatives as they travel to Ghana and Cuba to learn about their ancestors’ slave-trading past, “helps to demonstrate why many of the dialogues we have about race and racism in America are not robust enough…” (See the film’s website here.)

Benjamin Roe will succeed Kim Hodgson as general manager of classical music station WDAV-FM in Davidson, N.C. Roe, an award-winning producer and public media web strategist who directed NPR music initiatives from 1987-2007, led development of the blueprint for NPRMusic.org. Meanwhile, Doug Myrland, longtime g.m. of KPBS/TV-FM in San Diego, announced that he’ll be retiring a year earlier than planned, according to the Union-Tribune. He’ll remain at the station as a consultant through next year until his successor is hired.

ITVS and Independent Lens announced that Kylee Darcy, a 19-year-old attending UC Berkeley, is the grand prize winner of their first annual Filmocracy mashup contest. She wins $1000 for her short film King Corn Takes Over the World, which incorporates clips of the Independent Lens film King Corn. Her film will also play in various cities as part of Community Cinema, ITVS’s free monthly screening series. Based on response from site visitors, the mashup “And So It Is” by Ananta was the most popular Filmocracy video and “The Politics of Food,” by Brandon Savoie, was the highest rated.