Joanne Bachmann, former associate general manager at KNME in Albuquerque, N.M., has filed suit against the University of New Mexico, claiming she was fired for complaining that the university took more than $2 million that should have gone to the station. Co-defendant in the suit is Polly Anderson, current station g.m., who allegedly told Bachmann to “drop the matter,” according to Bachmann’s March 14 filing in Bernalillo County Court. The suit says that Bachmann was hired at KNME in February 2001 for digital transition fundraising. She was promoted to associate g.m. in 2005. Anderson came on as general manager in September 2008.

American Routes, the New Orleans-based public radio music series hosted and produced by Nick Spitzer, is moving from American Public Media to Public Radio Exchange distribution as of July 1. Spitzer has retained pubradio veteran Ken Mills to manage the transition and “help plan a new independent future for American Routes,” he said in a statement. Spitzer and Judy McAlpine, APM senior v.p. of national content, described the split as amicable. PRX picked up distribution of Sound Opinions, the weekly rock music show from WBEZ in Chicago, last July.

As discussions of public radio’s federal funding continue, AOL’s DailyFinanceblog looks at the finances and talent compensation for top national shows such as Morning Edition, and Fresh Air, This American Life. Net earnings from each of the programs, all of which are produced by nonprofit public media companies, may be reinvested in the show itself or redirected to other operations, AOL’s Jonathan Beer reports. For two years during recession, for example, revenues from This American Life covered other operating losses at producing station WBEZ Chicago, spokesman Daniel Ash explains. “However, moving forward, there is no expectation that TAL revenues will underwrite any other…initiative.”

It’s not his job to address questions about federal funding of public radio, but Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep takes on complaints about “perceived bias” in NPR News programs in today’s Wall Street Journal . The “recent tempests,” he writes, “have nothing to do with what NPR puts on the air.”

Tom Rosenstiel of the Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism will discuss the latest State of the News Media report during a panel discussion to be webcast live at 1 p.m. on Thursday, March 24. His talk will focus on “myths” about contemporary media, drawing on PEJ’s research and insights from a panel of media experts, including Alberto Ibargüen of the Knight Foundation, Jane McDonnell of the Online Journalism Association, and Matthew Hindman of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, which is hosting the event. Broadcast journalist Frank Sesno, director of the school and host of PBS’s Planet Forward, will moderate.

WNET in New York City and DirecTV are announcing the premiere U.S. broadcast of their “Treasure Houses of Britain in 3D,” WNET’s first 3D project. The five-part series debuts Saturday (March 26) on DirecTV’s n3D channel. Producer-Director is Alastair Layzell of Colonial Pictures, cinematographer is Richard Hall. Executives in charge for WNET are Gillian Rose and Stephen Segaller. Neal Shapiro, WNET president, said in a statement that the “Treasure Houses” 3D series “showcases public media’s continued journey toward the future of television programming, which our viewers have come to expect.”

Ellen Rocco, station manager at North County Public Radio in Canton, N.Y., writes today (March 23) on the station’s blog about how staffers helped an errant shipment of turkey chicks find their way home to her farm. Well, one did manage to escape down a station hallway. But fear not: Program Director Jackie Sauter made it a little nest while Rocco was on the air with her blues show, Blue Note.

As the political battle over federal aid to public broadcasting focuses narrowly on NPR, two public media leaders describe what’s most vulnerable to funding cuts: diversity and innovation in content. “[W]hat bothers me about this debate is the lack of true understanding in the public eye about just what public media is,” writes Jacquie Jones of the National Black Programming Consortium for the Huffington Post. “Despite NPR’s and PBS’s enormous contributions to the media universe — their bedrock news and information services and their role in the documentation of American life, history, culture and experience — public media is a whole lot more than NPR and PBS.

The National Center for Media Engagement explains why today (March 23), in its first of five postings exploring the use of social media by public media. Today’s post discusses location-based social network sites. Writes Bryce Kirchoff, “Imagine: A mobile user checks into your city’s art museum on Gowalla and they’re offered a clip your station produced about the institution’s Picasso exhibit. Or, a high school student visits Washington D.C.’s Vietnam War Memorial and is prompted to stream a preview of a Ken Burns film. Both are potential parts of public media’s future.”

Pubmedia thought leader Rob Bole has posted on his Public Purpose Media blog his presentation for Media Future Now on new forms and formats of digital storytelling, from the D.C. group’s meeting Tuesday (March 22). One point: “In the seemingly coming era of paywalls (or the final, sad collapse of mainstream journalism), it is not just brand that carries the day, but quality, unique, relevant content that has editorial narrative … and this might be supplied, in part, by new forms of digital journalism.”

In a special one-day fund drive, WAMC Northeast Public Radio raised more than $188,000 for disaster relief in Japan. The station, based in Albany, N.Y., but heard through 22 transmitters in several states, asked for and received an FCC waiver from the rule that noncommercial stations ordinarily can raise funds only for their own operations. WAMC organized the drive in cooperation with American Red Cross of Northeastern New York, and the proceeds went directly to the Japanese Red Cross. “There wasn’t a moment the phones weren’t ringing, and the empathy and love for those in need came roaring through,” said station President Alan Chartock.

The University of Alabama purchased WHIL-FM from Spring Hill College on Monday (March 21) for $1.1 million, pending federal approval, reports the Press-Register. Spring Hill College, in Mobile, had lost $160,000 in fiscal 2010 on the station. The university will transmit WHIL programming from Tuscaloosa. The university already operates WUAL Alabama Public Radio.

An analysis of NPR’s connections on Twitter “shows it has the sort of network you’d expect to see from a left-of-center person or institution,” reports Forbes today (March 22). The mag cites data from a Duke University study examining whether Twitter could be used to plot ideological affiliations of political candidates. As part of that study, researchers looked at the Twitter networks of individuals and brands in the media.  Forbes asked Duke researcher David B. Sparks where NPR’s Twitter connections fell on the study’s conservative-to-liberal curve (right). He said somewhat to the left of center, but further to the right than CBS News anchor Katie Couric, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times or NBC News anchor Brian Williams.

PubTV station relations consultant Jennifer Owensby Sanza, who produced “The Teachings of Jon” about her brother and his challenges with Down syndrome, has advice for first-time filmmakers aiming to see their work on PBS. “Many producers make the mistake of rushing to their local PBS station, begging them to air their program,” she writes on The Independent. “STOP RIGHT THERE! Yes, it is important to find out if you have the support of your local station — you may want to partner with them as a presenting station down the road. But don’t air the program anywhere until you have exhausted EVERY national opportunity first (and there are several).

The G4 — the Association of Public Television Stations, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Public Television Service and National Public Radio — on March 18 filed a 19-page document with the Federal Communications Commission commenting on its notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on spectrum allocation. In it, the orgs say that pubcasting would support “certain goals” by the FCC to maximize efficient use of spectrum (Current, Feb. 8, 2010), “but is concerned with the potential ramifications of a number of proposals.” One topic of talk among stations: Channel sharing. The FCC is pondering letting two or more TV stations — commercial and noncommercial — share a single six-megahertz channel, “thereby fostering efficient use of the U/V Bands,” as it said in the NPRM.