In case you haven’t seen it yet, “Hey girl. I heart NPR” on Tumblr is pretty amusing, with its hunky-dude photos and accompanying come-on lines like, “Wait, wait . . . don’t tell me you’re busy Friday night.”

What’s the most important innovation necessary for public media in the new year? That’s what pubmedia thinker/blogger/advocate Amanda Hirsch wanted to know, so she asked around. “According to some,” she writes on the Integrated Media Association blog, “what’s needed more than anything — more than any individual innovative approach — is a shared, collective vision of where public media needs to go next.” She said several respondents agreed with Ian Hill, community manager at KQED, who said, “I think what’s still needed most is a change in the culture so that innovation and risk-taking are supported and encouraged.”

Jean Feraca, an on-air host on Wisconsin Public Radio since 1983, told listeners on Tuesday (Dec. 20) that she’s retiring in March 2012. Feraca declined to talk further with a reporter from the State Journal newspaper, saying only, “I lost everybody in my team earlier this year, and it’s been difficult,” referring to two producers who moved on from the station. In her letter, Feraca jokes about her small stature, saying that listeners often say they thought she was taller — to which she replies, “I’m bigger on the radio.” “And this is true,” she writes. “I am bigger on the radio.

Pubcasters won three of the 2012 duPont-Columbia Silver Baton Awards announced this morning by Columbia University: Nova, the PBS science series produced at WGBH in Boston, won for “Japan’s Killer Quake”; WNYC reporter Alisa Chang, for her two-part investigative series on the New York Police Department, “Alleged Illegal Searches by the NYPD”; and Detroit Public Television, for “Beyond the Light Switch,” a documentary series produced and directed by Ed Moore and reported by David Biello of the Scientific American. The duPont jury presented a Finalist Award to WNYC’s Radio Rookies for “Coming Up in 2011,” a collection of “unflinching self-portraits” by teenagers from Staten Island.

PBS NewsHour has a new political editor. Christina Bellantoni of CQ Roll Call takes her post on Jan. 2, 2012, to oversee all political coverage on air and online, including political analysis, elections and personalities. NewsHour’s previous political editor, David Chalain, departed to lead the Washington bureau of Yahoo News in November. Bellantoni has spent more than a decade covering national political and business news in Washington, D.C., and California. She has worked as associate politics editor at CQ Roll Call since October 2010, appearing as a political analyst on Hardball, Countdown, On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren, Reliable Sources, TopLine, The Rachel Maddow Show and The Daily Rundown.

Don’t miss Whiteout Christmas, this year’s annual seasonal story by WHYY’s Chris Satullo and Tony Auth, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. They’ve created a serialized, illustrated Christmas story together nearly every year since 1996. The first 12 appeared in the newspaper; since 2009, they’ve been online at WHYY.org and NewsWorks.org, as well as broadcast on WHYY-FM as radio plays. Four of the stories also were collected in their 2004 book, A Christmas Quartet. This year’s radio version — starring Satullo, Auth and a slew of WHYY staffers — will be broadcast on 90.9 FM in Philadelphia at 8 p.m.

WXXI in Rochester, N.Y., is acquiring the city’s Little Theatre as a subsidiary, it announced Monday (Dec. 19). The merger, effective January 2012, “strengthens WXXI’s roots in the cultural life of the community, while helping to assure the future of Rochester’s independent film house,” said WXXI President Norm Silverstein in a statement. The Little Theatre, built in 1928, is a nonprofit multicultural gathering place, screening more than 100 films per year and hosting several annual community film festivals. It also provides local artists a place to share their work. The affiliation will “enable the two organizations to work more efficiently by pooling resources and strengths in a number of areas including back-office operation and improved fundraising capabilities,” the statement said.

A couple big show-biz names are owed money for their participation in the pubTV program Vine Talk, the New York Times is reporting. Actor Stanley Tucci serves as host of the wine gabfest, sipping and chatting with celebs such as writer Nora Ephron and actors John Lithgow and Rosie Perez. The show is produced by Jersey Wooly Productions at WNET’s Lincoln Center studio, although, the newspaper reports, the station has not yet been paid $500,000 for this first season. Joe Locarro, the program’s director and an executive producer, said he was owed “in the six figures.” Tucci declined to comment through his publicist, “on the advice of counsel.”

Five persons were charged with trespassing late Wednesday night (Dec. 14) after they climbed WETA’s 500-foot radio tower in Arlington, Va., in an attempt to BASE jump from the structure using parachutes. One, Kristin Stewart, 48, was injured after her parachute became snared in a tree. “Every single one of them has been charged with trespassing because they climbed the tower without the permission of WETA,” Crystal Nosal of Arlington County police told a local NBC reporter. BASE stands for buildings, antennas, spans (bridges) and earth, which represent common locations for the jumps. WETA spokesperson Mary Stewart told Current that the station will be sending a crew to inspect the tower for any damage. 

A legislative rider to the omnibus spending bill concerning CPB funding is not included in the final budget agreement, according to a statement from House Appropriations Committee Ranking Democratic Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.). House Republicans originally proposed a rider to block CPB from funding NPR. As of 11 a.m. Eastern Friday (Dec. 16), text of the entire 1,200-page legislation still had not been made available online.

Masterpiece and Vanity Fair celebrated the upcoming second season of Downton Abbey with an “aristocratic crowd” of A-list guests at New York’s Museum of Modern Art this week, reports the New York Post. Guests included Princess Firyal of Jordan, British Ambassador Sir Nigel and wife Lady Julia Sheinwald, philanthropists J. Pepe Fanjul and Lewis Cullman, financier D. Dixon Boardman, fashion designer Carolina Herrera and husband Reinaldo, Jimmy Choo Chief Creative Officer Tamara Mellon and filmmaker Angela Ismailos. Quipped VF Editor Graydon Carter: “The great thing is that this is a PBS night, but it’s not a fundraiser.”

The head of the closed Capitol News Connection bureau in Washington, Melinda Wittstock, apologized yesterday to former pubradio clients of the news service Dec. 12 and asserted that CNC was seeking only a 24 percent subsidy from CPB for 2012, and much less in 2013. CPB radio chief Bruce Theriault said that CNC asked for 100 percent support from CPB (Current, Dec. 12). An email identified as Wittstock’s was leaked to Current today. Everyone — Many of you will have read the article in Current today about the very painful demise of CNC. Confidentially, I would like to correct some inaccuracies in the piece.

“Downton Abbey” on Masterpiece provided PBS with four Golden Globe nominations, announced today (Dec. 15), with a fifth from Masterpiece’s “Page Eight.” “Downton” nods came for mini-series or motion picture made for television; actress in a TV mini-series (Elizabeth McGovern); actor in a TV mini-series (Hugh Bonneville); and supporting actress in a TV mini-series (Maggie Smith). Another name called for actor in a TV mini-series was Bill Nighy for “Page Eight.” A full list of nominees is here. The prestigious awards, from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, will be presented in televised ceremonies Jan. 15.

The Fiscal Year 2012 Final Consolidated Appropriations Bill package, which the House probably will vote on this Friday (Dec. 16), contains a fiscal 2014 advance appropriation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of $445 million, according to a summary of the legislation from the House Appropriations Committee (PDF). That’s $50 million below CPB’s request (PDF) and $6 million below the administration’s proposal. In addition, the bill (H.R. 3671) would require CPB to compile a report on alternative funding sources for pubcasting stations in lieu of federal money. Full text of the 1,200-page legislation is not yet available online. The GOP House majority is expected to bring up the bill Friday, according to the website of House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

A 10-year-old girl’s recent letter to WXXI in Rochester, N.Y., has inspired its newsroom to present a special series of positive local stories. The weeklong radio project, titled “Liza’s Letter,” kicks off Dec. 26 during Morning Edition. “The reason why I want happy news,” Liza wrote, “is that every morning on the radio they’re talking about sad things, crimes, murders, car crashes, terrible storms, sometimes it depresses people who listen to it. So it would make me happy to hear good news, and would lighten other people up, too.” “I know you are busy,” she concluded in her letter, “but it would really really be a big favor.”