LulzSec, the hacking group that saw itself as pirates on the Web seas, has disbanded and ceased all activity, according to its final statement posted on Sunday (June 26). Its 50-day run of Internet security breaches included targeting PBS.org (Current, June 13) to protest Frontline’s “WikiSecrets” report; its six members also hit Sony, the U.S. Senate, the FBI and Britain’s X Factor TV show. What was it all about? ” … [W]e truly believe in the AntiSec movement. … We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us.

John F. Gregory, an early general manager at KPCC-FM in Pasadena, Calif., died May 9 at his Los Angeles home. Gregory led the station at Pasadena City College in the late 1970s and early ’80s, longtime KPCC newsman Larry Mantle wrote on a station blog. During that time Gregory professionalized the station, establishing it as one of the first NPR-member stations and hiring a full-time staff of five to qualify for CPB funding. He hired Mantle as news director in 1983. After the college separated from the Pasadena city public school system, the station went with the college and changed its call letters from KPCS to KPCC in 1979.

Bob Paquette, senior news producer and local host of Morning Edition at WFCR-FM in Amherst, Mass., died unexpectedly May 28 of an apparent heart attack. He was 55. For many listeners, Paquette was “the voice of WFCR every morning,” station General Manager Martin Miller said in a release. “There are no words to express our shock and grief over the loss of our colleague and friend Bob Paquette. Our heartfelt condolences and sympathies go out to Bob’s husband, Michael Packard, and to their families, friends and colleagues.” “Believe it or not, getting up at 4 a.m. is not such a bad gig,” Paquette said in his profile on the station’s website.

Chris Ulanowski, a former news director at WRVO in Oswego, N.Y., died May 30. He was 51. Ulanowski spent 27 years at the station, winning the Syracuse Press Club’s career achievement award in 2008. During his tenure as news director, the station won three national awards in two years for “Talk of the Nation: Religious Bricks,” on issues of church and state in the Mexico, N.Y., school district. It took first-place awards from the Public Radio News Directors Inc. Awards in 2000 and won first- and second-place PRNDI awards in 1999. Ulanowski is survived by his wife, Rochelle Manley of Fulton; three daughters; and four siblings.

Jim Sweenie, a four-decade staffer at Pittsburgh’s WQED-FM and host of its Saturday Night Requests, died June 4 after complications from surgery the previous day. He was 76. The station will broadcast a special Saturday Night Requests: Jim Sweenie Tribute on June 18 at 8 p.m. Eastern, with memories and dedications, including condolences from listeners. Sweenie got into radio in the early 1950s by hanging around WMCK-AM in McKeesport, Pa. The station paid him $10 a week for putting away records and reading a sign-off. As he used to say, he was “fired several times.” He loved the theater and began his life on stage at age 17 at the local White Barn Theater starring as a French-speaking taxi driver opposite Colleen Dewhurst.

George Leigh Hall, 82, a public television leader in North Carolina, Illinois and Virginia, died June 5 at a retirement home in Fuquay-Varina, N.C. His wife of 60 years, Katherine Waddington Hall, had died six months earlier. After starting in radio during the 1940s in his hometown of Reidsville, N.C., north of Raleigh, Hall joined Capitol Broadcasting Company’s WRAL-AM in Raleigh and advanced to program manager; helped the company acquire a television license and served as the TV station’s first program manager. In 1960, Hall became g.m. of North Carolina State University’s Raleigh studios of the state educational TV network, UNC-TV.

Stanley S. Neustadt, 87, a longtime communications lawyer for public stations, died May 30 in suburban Virginia. He had lived with Parkinson’s disease for the past 12 years. “Anyone who appreciates public radio and TV should give him some credit because he had a large role in preserving and reserving the frequencies for them,” said a friend and law school classmate Herbert Schulkind. Not long after receiving his law degree from Columbia University in 1948, Neustadt found himself near the center of an unprecedented disturbance at the FCC. He joined the FCC staff as legal assistant to Frieda Hennock, the first female member of the commission and a flamboyant, persistent advocate for reserved educational channels.

“Blessed Be the Ties that Bind” may be music to churchgoers, but many station leaders find it discordant. No matter how much CEOs welcome the blessings of major gifts, they tend to start doubting if they find strings attached. Increasingly, big donors do attach conditions. Not all want to see their name on a building or a room, but they do want to see their gifts used for purposes that matter to them, even when giving to the operating fund. Donors give for their own reasons; the fact that a station needs “to pay the power bill,” as one CEO put it, tends to be less compelling than content about topics that matter to them.

Los Angeles Public Media, the CPB-backed startup that hoped to serve a new generation of minority listeners in one of the nation’s most competitive and ethnically mixed media markets, shuttered its operations June 15 after failing to acquire an FM station and secure renewed support from CPB. Radio Bilingüe, the Fresno-based public radio network that oversaw LAPM, disbanded the staff of five and stopped adding material to its website, LA>Forward, launched last fall. Like a number of other forward-looking CPB projects, LAPM became an aftershock casualty of the House-Senate conference committee’s agreement to cut $30 million of CPB’s requested $36 million add-on appropriation for digital projects.

See Current‘s story.

NJN’s nonprofit fundaising arm and the NJN staff proposed separate alternatives among the five bidders and one alternate plan for managing the TV network being divested by the state, Michael Symon of the Gannett New Jersey newspapers blogged last week. NJN Foundation (formally, the Foundation for New Jersey Public Broadcasting) proposed a lower-cost approach that it described as “C-SPAN New Jersey.” NJN staffers, under the name New Jersey Public Media Corp., proposed an alternative plan, which wasn’t eligible as a bid. It proposed that the state maintain aid for a transition period and establish the network as a more independent state authority.

A section of the PBS website was hacked Friday (June 24), according to the Associated Press. PBS spokesperson Anne Bentley said a “very small number” of administrative user names and encrypted passwords were stolen from the section of the site for the program Becoming American. Here’s a look inside the first hack, which occurred over Memorial Day weekend.

The New Jersey Assembly, half of its state legislature, has voted down Gov. Chris Christie’s plan to turn over management of the New Jersey Network’s TV management to WNET, the Star-Ledger reports. By 45 to 30 the Assembly on Thursday (June 23) voted to block a five-year contract that would allow Public Media NJ, a nonprofit subsidiary of WNET/Thirteen, to be incorporated in the state to operate the TV network. The Senate may vote on a similar resolution on Monday, but that must pass by Tuesday to prevent the WNET deal from going through. No one seems to agree on what may happen.

The Public Broadcasting Service (“PBS”) is committed to serving the public interest by providing content of the highest quality that enriches the marketplace of ideas, unencumbered by commercial imperative. Throughout PBS’s history, four fundamental principles have guided that commitment. Editorial integrity: PBS content should embrace the highest commitment to excellence, professionalism, intellectual honesty and transparency. In its news and information content, accuracy should be the cornerstone. Quality: PBS content should be distinguished by professionalism, thoroughness, and a commitment to experimentation and innovation. Diversity: PBS must be responsive to a diverse public and has a responsibility to explore subjects of significance and the marketplace of ideas.

The latest analyses from public radio’s Grow the Audience project examine the performance of public radio news stations, revealing two top predictors of these stations’ ability to attract sizable audience shares within their markets: the percentage of core listeners in their listenership and the educational level of the market. The new studies, co-authored by Station Resource Group and Walrus Research, also focus on the relationship between audience and listener support and the size of local news staffs.