What drives PBS documentarian Ken Burns to poke at history’s ghosts? In a revealing, low-key interview in the current New York magazine, he reveals that his mother died when he was 11 and his only memories of her are while she was gravely ill. It’s that pain that he says prompted him to making docs, a medium that “psychologically worked for me. Some of the things we do are to keep the wolf from the door.” After a bit more prodding, the mag notes, “Burns goes full Freud.” “I mean, I’ve talked to a psychiatrist about this. He said, ‘Well, look what you do for a living.

There isn’t really a name for what Andy Carvin does, writes Paul Farhi in this Washington Post feature story on NPR’s social media strategist. Are his relentless tweets on social unrest in the Middle East a form of curation, social media aggregation or interactive digital journalism? “I see it as another flavor of journalism,” Carvin says. “So I guess I’m another flavor of journalist.”

Tiny Marfa Public Radio — KRTS/93.5 FM in far west Texas — has “earned its spurs,” writes Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Bud Kennedy, as the only news station to sound the warning and then stay with the story Saturday (April 9) when wildfires burned through Fort Davis and the Big Bend. On Saturday afternoon, host and programming director Rachel Osier Lindley was on her way to her second job at a grocery and saw a house west of town ablaze. She called station General Manager Tom Michael, screaming that U.S. 90 was blocked and that she couldn’t get to her own house.

There’s “a lot of truth” in Sue Schardt’s recent speech about the lack of diversity in public radio, writes John Sutton, Maryland-based marketing consultant, on his blog. Schardt, executive director of Association for Independents in Public Radio, spoke passionately during a February NPR Board meeting, calling for the field to acknowledge its obligation to serve all of the American public, not just its core audience of highly educated, affluent, white listeners. Sutton disagrees that public radio’s focus on growing its core audience is a bad thing, but that’s a subject for his blog on another day. He lays responsibility for the field’s lack of diversity at the feet of its leadership.

PBS announced at the NAB Show in Las Vegas today (April 12) that later this year it will begin testing a next-generation emergency alert system to deliver multimedia alerts using video, audio, text and graphics to cellphones, tablets, laptops and netbooks, as well as in-car navigation systems. The pilot is part of work on  a new Mobile Emergency Alert System, the first major overhaul of the nation’s aging Emergency Alert System since the Cold War. PBS Chief Technology Officer John McCoskey said in a statement that PBS has been involved in testing digital broadcasting as a part of an upgraded emergency system since 2005.

As expected, CPB lost digital funding, recession aid to stations and radio interconnection money in the budget agreement for the remainder of the fiscal year, finally hammered out last week on Capitol Hill. The bill, H.R. 1473, zeros out $25 million in station “fiscal stabilization” grants and $25 million for replacement and upgrade of the radio infrastructure, and reduces digital spending from $36 million to $6 million. There’s also a small — .2 percent — across-the-board trim for all non-defense discretionary spending. Main appropriation for FY11, $445 million. One reported sticking point in the contentious negotiations was a provision to prohibit federal funding for NPR; the Democrats managed to kill that.

Philip Bennett, a former Washington Post managing editor and current Duke University journalism professor, is joining Frontline in the new role of managing editor. Bennett will oversee program content across multiple platforms and help develop longterm editorial strategy for the series. During 12 years at the Post, Bennett was deputy national editor and assistant managing editor for foreign news, supervising the newspaper’s international coverage. He was named the Post’s managing editor in 2005. He joined the Duke faculty in 2009, and will continue in his role there. He’ll also plan collaborations between the award-winning WGBH show and university.

Initial findings of a CPB-funded study on the potential impact of the reduction or loss of federal funding to the system anticipate further local production and staff cutbacks, as well as scant new revenue sources for stations, the CPB Board heard at its meeting in Washington, D.C. today (April 11). Matt McDonald of Hamilton Place Strategies, which also consulted on collaboration projects in New York and Illinois, presented the first phase of research, which looks at how stations have reacted to the recession. Using budget numbers from 2008 and ’09, the report shows that on average station fundraising was cut 7.5 percent; local production, 7.1 percent; general operating/administration, 5.2 percent; broadcasting engineering, 4.4 percent; and other costs, 7.6 percent.

The National Association of Black Journalists decided over the weekend to pull out of next year’s panethnic Unity: Journalists of Color conference, Richard Prince’s Journal-isms blog is reporting. One practical reason: Though NABJ members amount to half of Unity conference attendees in 2008, the association didn’t share proportionately in Unity event revenues and will do better by holding a separate conference in 2012. Unity conferences have been held every four or five years since the first in 1994. The participating groups have been NABJ, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association and the Native American Journalists Association.

The Houston Press hit KUHF President John Proffitt for H.L. Mencken quotes he posted on his Facebook page. The quotes — “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” and “In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican” — “confirm every fanatical right-wing zealot’s preconceptions of a public broadcasting muckety-muck,” wrote blogger John Nova Lomax, who advised Proffitt to reconsider. Think of how elitist statements brought down NPR fundraising chief Ron Schiller and his boss, former NPR prez Vivian Schiller, Lomax pointed out.

Arianna Huffington, head of AOL’s Huffington Post Media Group, opened the second day of the Council on Foundations annual conference in Philadelphia today (April 11) with an invitation to more than 1,000 foundation execs to join with her in reshaping local news and information through social media. Criticizing the mainstream media’s preoccupation with institutional conflict, sensationalism and fear-mongering, Huffington referenced “the fourth instinct” — a need for spiritual fulfillment and community — that, she said, co-exists with the primal drives of survival, sex, and power. In a 25-minute speech that mixed business promotion with inspiring messages, Huffington encouraged the leaders of philanthropy to join with her in a revitalization of local news through Patch, AOL’s rapidly expanding network of local news sites.

During a weekend symposium on non-profit investigative news, WGBH production chief Margaret Drain described how PBS’s top producing station plans to fund its national series by creating private trusts aiding programs such as Frontline and Nova. Fundraising has always been a challenge for WGBH producers, Drain told participants, and she acknowledged feeling “not very optimistic about the future of PBS.” “The problem that PBS faces is the blurring between commercial and noncommercial broadcasting,” Drain said, according to MediaShift’s Mark Glaser, who reported from the Reva and David Logan Investigative Reporting Symposium in Berkeley, Calif. “I think we need to protect the noncommercial part of broadcasting.

KPCC-FM’s decision to pull Planned Parenthood spots last Friday is attracting criticism. Programmer Craig Curtis sent a memo that day to staff that landed on LA Observed, and made its way to the Nation’s blog today (April 10). In it he said that “given that the budget debate in congress is focusing today on abortion in general and Planned Parenthood by extension,” running the spots “might raise questions in the mind of the reasonable listener regarding our editorial and sales practices.” On his LAWeekly blog, writer Dennis Romero noted, “We’ve never even heard a Planned Parenthood spot on the station.

A Republican provision to cut all federal funding to NPR was dropped in Friday’s (April 8) late-night deal on the fiscal 2011 budget, according to the Wall Street Journal. That funding, along with money for Planned Parenthood, became a sticking point in the tense standoff between the parties as they negotiated an agreement to keep the government open past a midnight deadline. Under the deal, the GOP won budget cuts of $39 billion for the remaining six months of the fiscal year, far more than either party had expected a few months ago.

A man accused of threatening to kill two All Things Considered hosts has agreed to plead guilty to the charges, the Associated Press is reporting. John Crosby, 38, formerly of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, was to go on trial in U.S. District Court in May on charges that he emailed dozens of threats to NPR’s Melissa Block and Guy Raz through the network’s website. Family members say Crosby suffers from mental illness. His attorney filed notice with the court Thursday (April 7) that Crosby will waive his right to trial and change his plea to guilty. It’s not clear whether the move is part of a plea agreement, although acceptance of responsibility typically results in a lower sentence.