The National Center for Media Engagement has hired Jennifer MacArthur as its director of television and digital media engagement, the NCME said today (Nov. 1) in a statement. MacAurthur will work with pubTV stations, digital media organizations and content producers as they develop ways to engage communities. MacArthur’s Borderline Media led outreach for the Emmy-nominated POV documentary Traces of the Trade, and has consulted on and directed other national campaigns. She also produced StoryCorps Griot, which collects and distributes oral histories of African Americans, and has worked at Link TV, Village Voice Media and Scholastic Entertainment.

NPR and Frontline scored honors at the Online Journalism Awards Oct. 29 in Washington, D.C. The Gannett Foundation Award for innovative investigative journalism, small site, went to the collaboration among ProPublica, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and Frontline for “Law and Disorder,” a probe into post-Katrina shootings by the police. The Gannett Foundation Award winner for technical innovation in the service of digital journalism was NPR’s API, which provides a way for various computer applications to receive NPR programming (Current, July 21, 2008). And NPR.org won for outstanding use of emerging platforms for its popular mobile apps.

The Public Insight Network is expanding with new partners ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Center for Public Integrity, it announced Oct. 29. The network, a creation of American Public Media in 2003 to encourage public input in the newsgathering process, announced the new collaborations at the 2010 Online News Association conference in Washington, D.C. The investigative news outlets join a growing number of organizations affiliated with the network, including WNYC in New York, the Miami Herald, Oregon Public Broadcasting and the nonprofit online St. Louis Beacon.

For the first time, PBSKids.org is the top-ranked children’s site for number of videos viewed, according to comScore Video Metrix (September 2010). Viewers spent an average of 47 minutes watching nearly 88 million  free educational videos in September, PBS said in a statement today (Nov. 1). That’s twice the monthly average for other top children’s sites. The PBS Kids preschool and PBS Kids Go! players offer free access to more than 3,800 streaming full-length episodes and video clips. PBSKids.org attracts an average of 9.5 million unique visitors per month, with a 72 percent repeat visitor rate. Traffic has increased 28 percent over last September, according to Google Analytics.

TVNewsCheck‘s Contributing Editor P.J. Bednarski spoke at length with PBS President Paula Kerger last week about KCET’s decision to drop its PBS membership in January (Current, Oct. 18). The transcript was posted Sunday (Oct. 31). Excerpts: — Concerning the negotiations: “I don’t want you to walk away from this discussion with the idea that we took a really hard line. There were lots of other options that were put on the table that just weren’t acceptable.” — Reactions in the system: “I’ve heard from a number of stations, and I’m going out to meet with more, and basically what I have heard is consistent: The stations are supportive of the fact that we do care about equity across the system.”

Check out “An open letter to the FCC about a media policy for the digital age,” by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll, now president of the New America Foundation, via Columbia Journalism Review. One of Coll’s ideas, for CPB: “I’ve heard suggestions that new funding should be linked to more pluralistic formulas, including a restructuring of CPB to encompass new digital entrants, such as ProPublica, for example, or local sites like the nonprofit Voice of San Diego — a change that might be signaled by renaming the entity as the Corporation for Public Media. That may be ambitious politically, but it is certainly the right strategic direction.

San Francisco’s KQED is the first pubTV affiliate, as well as first local TV station, to be featured on the new Google TV, the station revealed today (Oct. 29). Google TV allows viewers to use a standard remote-control to search and view Internet programs on television. KQED Interactive worked with Google to create a video portal for viewing KQED content on a large TV screen format, the announcement said. Check it out here.

Kentucky Educational Television’s network center in Lexington has received a loan of nearly $2 million from the Green Bank of Kentucky program, according to the Business First website. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear announced Thursday (Oct. 28) that with the low-interest loan, KET will implement energy-efficiency and conservation measures, then the money saved through reductions in energy and utility costs will repay the loan. KET updates will include high-efficiency boilers and a system that will transfer heat generated in the studios and server rooms back into the building, high-efficiency light fixtures, and new water fixtures estimated to reduce annual water usage by about 50,000 gallons.

Take an evening of local and national food programs, encourage viewers to interact via Twitter and what do you get? Bon AppeTweet. And HoustonPBS’s social media experiment with that awesome name was a huge success Wednesday night (Oct. 7) reports station spokesperson Julie Coan. “We got so many Tweets that it crashed the software we set up to count them,” she told Current. Food programs are very popular on Channel 8, and lots of local “foodies” use Twitter to share local restaurant info, so the combo was a natural. National programs during Bon AppeTweet (seriously, is that the best name or what?)

Southern Florida dual-licensee WLRN and the Miami Herald are going where no media has gone before: They’re sponsoring a LeBron James poetry contest. Yes, LeBron James as in the basketball superstar who broke the collective heart of Cleveland when he decamped for the Miami Heat. They’re asking for six lines or fewer, “with six being the number on James’s new uniform,” reports the New Yorker in its current edition. A “mystery celebrity” will select the winner and is expected to read his or her poem on the air before the Nov. 2 game. As of late last week, the mag reports, they’d received several hundred entries, including a few “hate poems” from Cleveland.

Keep an ear open during tonight’s (Oct. 27) Game 1 of baseball’s World Series. Word is the opening segment was written by Tenth Inning filmmaker Ken Burns, and will be voiced by the doc’s narrator Keith David. Game time 7:30 p.m. Eastern, on Fox.

WQED in Pittsburgh has named a member of its Board of Directors as vice president and chief financial officer, effective Nov. 3, the station said in an announcement today (Oct. 27). Carol Bailey will be responsible for all of WQED’s finances. Her work on the board includes serving on the finance, business and operations committee since 2008. She is the president of Bailey Management Consulting, where she advises executives in financial and operations management.

Here’s a unique award for an icon series. Nature has won the prestigious Christopher Parsons Outstanding Achievement Award presented at the 2010 Wildscreen Festival earlier this month in Bristol, U.K. It’s the first American production to be so honored in the festival’s 28-year history. It’s the top prize in the awards, dubbed the Green Oscars for their equivalent of the Academy Awards. The Parsons honor goes to “an organization or individual that has made a globally significant contribution to wildlife filmmaking, conservation and/or the public’s understanding of the environment.” It’s named for the late Christopher Parsons, Wildscreen’s founder, head of the BBC Natural History Unit and executive producer of Life on Earth.