To all our faithful RSS readers, happiest of holidays!

The general manager at WDAV-FM/89.9 in Davidson, N.C., Benjamin Roe, will depart to marry one of the station’s “high-profile hosts,” reports the Charlotte Observer today (Dec. 24). Roe said that he and Jennifer Foster, the station’s midday announcer, plan to marry sometime in 2011. He departs the post Jan. 14, and will work on contract into the summer. He arrived at WDAV in 2008 with more than 25 years of experience, including serving as NPR’s director of music and music initiatives. Roe also was a Grammy and Peabody Award-winning producer. Foster will continue her work as host and producer.

When the Center for Public Integrity partnered with American Public Media’s Public Insight Network (PIN) in November, “we weren’t quite sure what to expect,” writes Cole Goins, the center’s deputy web editor, “but the initial results in just two months have been tremendous.” The PIN comprises more than 90,000 participating “citizen sources” that have signed up to help reporters nationwide. So far, the center has reached out to the sources for two stories: looking for persons living near coal power plants, and others whose credit card use has changed over the past year. In all, reporters received about 230 responses offering valuable information and generating several stories.

WQLN Public Media in Erie, Pa., filed suit Wednesday (Dec. 22) against the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority in an effort to receive proceeds from the Presque Isle Downs and Casino. The nonprofit is seeking to be named a “dedicated regional asset,” which is required to be eligible for the funds. The suit claims that WQLN meets the criteria established by the authority, which includes county assets “that have a strong history of service to the community, a large operating budget and a regional audience base.”

Five public broadcasting projects won 2011 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Awards. The silver batons are among the most prestigious honors in broadcast journalism. PubTV and radio winners are: — KCET, Los Angeles, for “Up In Smoke,”“Protected or Neglected: Workplace Safety” and “Hung Out to Dry?” — NPR and Laura Sullivan for “Bonding for Profit.” —  P.O.V. and Geoffrey Smith for “The English Surgeon.”— West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Trey Kay for “The Great Textbook War,” distributed by PRX.— WGBH, Frontline and reporter/videographer Najibullah Quraishi, for reporting on Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. The awards ceremony is scheduled for Jan.

Art Timko is retiring after 42 years at WEMU, Eastern Michigan University’s pubradio station. Timko, 64, started at WEMU as a student in January 1968, when he enlisted served in Vietnam. He returned in 1970 for graduate school, finished that year, and started working at the station again. “I was hired in August of 1971 as a producer and have been here ever since,” he told AnnArbor.com, adding that he has no regrets about working at just one station for his entire career. Molly Motherwell, the station’s general manager/marketing and development director, will be interim executive director during the search for Timko’s replacement.

The William Penn Foundation has approved a $2.4 million grant for a Networked Journalism Collaborative project in Philadelphia, based in part on input from the American University School of Communication’s J-Lab. Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab, announced the grant in her blog. A c.e.o. search begins in January. The money will come in a three-year grant to Temple University to create a center to incubate a new organization to produce original journalism, aggregate other news, and support the city’s growing group of news websites. J-Lab’s mapped the Philadelphia news ecosystem in late 2009. “Philadelphia has become a hotbed of journalistic networking and innovation,” Schaffer noted.

Several staffers at WPBT2 in Miami may be still asleep this winter Tuesday afternoon, after staying up overnight (Dec. 20-21) for a unique event: The station presented a live stream of the lunar eclipse, along with an online chat. The full eclipse of the moon was also a perfect time for a 30-minute episode of its revamped Star Gazer series that directed folks to the web activities. Three chatrooms were full of visitors within five minutes, and the station now has about 1,000 new Facebook friends. “It was a remarkable night and the feedback has been terrific,” Neal Hecker, v.p.

Jim Packard, longtime radio sidekick to host Michael Feldman on Whad’Ya Know?,” is retiring at the end of January. He’s also a familiar voice to Wisconsin Public Radio listeners; he’s been there since 1981. So the popular show is searching for a new (temporary) Packard, literally, with its “Being Jim Packard” contest. (“If you can say . . . ‘That’s One Right’ you could be me on Whad’Ya Know? for one fabulous day. To quote Michael, you could get in on the ground floor of radio and stay there, much as I have.”) Entries are due Jan. 12, 2011, and the winner will be announced on the Jan.

Tavis Smiley is severing his producing partnership with KCET in Los Angeles, and will collaborate instead with WNET/Thirteen in New York city beginning in January. WNET President Neal Shapiro told station staff in an e-mail: “Tavis will celebrate his 20th year in broadcasting in 2011, and we are truly privileged to have the opportunity to work with him as he continues to bring his nightly half-hour talk show to PBS stations across the country.” Smiley said in November that he had not been aware of KCET’s plans to drop its PBS membership in January. UPDATE: WNET issued a press release today (Dec.

Hey, how about sharing some station seasonal cheer in the Current blog for the next couple weeks? We’ll start with this feature from KERA in Dallas, where for more than three decades a Scrooge puppet has been hurling insults at NorthPark Center mall shoppers during the holidays. KERA’s Stephen Becker talked to John Hardman, the voice behind the grump. Is your station covering a fun tradition in the community, or planning any special events? Let us know. And don’t forget to send along photos!

Debra Aliano, a fundraising executive for Colorado Public Radio and former g.m. of the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s radio and television stations, died in October after a six-month battle with cancer. She was 57. Aliano joined CPR in late 2007 as executive director of development and major gifts. Under her leadership the public radio network’s major giving revenue grew by more than 50 percent, according to CPR. She also managed a 2008 donor event featuring NPR journalist Robert Siegel that raised more than $100,000 toward operations expenses. Aliano was a native of Omaha, Neb., and began working at the University of Nebraska’s KVNO classical radio and UNO Television in 1992.

Cookie Monster’s campaign to host Saturday Night Live didn’t work — but did get him on the show. He made an appearance on Dec. 18 next to host Jeff Bridges at the opening of the popular NBC show. What did Cookie want for Christmas, Bridges asked. “An iPad!” Cookie replied, quickly changing his mind to “A cookie!” Of course. Cookie Monster and Bridges also sang a duet, check it out.

Of 276 U.S. cities of 100,000 or more residents, 256 of them — that’s 93 percent — televise routine meetings of one or more of their governmental bodies on PEG (public, educational and government access) channels, says Rob McCausland on the Sustaining Democracy in a Digital Age blog. McCausland, who has been involved in community access television since 1979, continues mining facts in his comprehensive study of PEG channels nationwide. Check out his ever-growing database. Local cable access channels have been struggling in recent years as support wanes: Since 2005, some 600 community access stations have shut down, according to the Alliance for Community Media.

It’s official: After nearly 10 years on Capitol Hill, the Local Community Radio Act has passed both the House and Senate and now heads for the president’s signature. The House approved it Friday (Dec. 17) and the Senate, on Saturday. Free Press released a statement that said in part, “Woo hoo!” The law will repeal restrictions on the LPFM (low-power FM) spectrum approved by Congress in 2000 at the request of commercial broadcasters. The restrictions limited the frequencies available to LPFMs to every fourth frequency instead of every third. When low power FM was approved by the FCC in 2000 (Current, Jan.