When the 13-year international combat mission ends in Afghanistan Dec. 31, NPR’s Kabul bureau will also close. NPR decided in 2012 that it would close the Kabul bureau this year because of the planned reduction of U.S. troops in the country, according to an NPR spokesperson. Starting in 2015, coverage of Afghanistan will be handled by Philip Reeves, NPR’s correspondent based in Islamabad, Pakistan. “We are confident that Phil Reeves can cover the news coming from Afghanistan,” said Edith Chapin, senior supervising editor of NPR’s International Desk, through a spokesperson. Meanwhile, NPR is shifting its priorities and resources to Seoul, South Korea, where it will open a bureau early next year.

Six public broadcasting organizations filed joint comments Wednesday with the U.S. Forest Service protesting proposed special-use permits and fees for still photography and filming on National Forest Service lands. “The version of the commercial filming directive currently proposed suffers from significant constitutional infirmities,” the organizations said in the document. “Were it to be enacted without revision, it would be subject to serious legal challenges” and could infringe the First Amendment rights of journalists, filmmakers and photographers, they said. Joining forces on the filing are the Association of Public Television Stations, CPB, NPR, PBS and two stations that produce wilderness programming, Idaho Public Television and Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Two doctors who focus on the relationship between incarceration and public health have teamed up with a Sesame Street Muppet to call attention to the issue. Prompted by Sesame Workshop’s “Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration” initiative, the video released in October features two experts on prison health, the creator of the Sesame Workshop initiative and Alex, a Muppet with electric blue hair and an incarcerated father. The video followed the publication of “Sesame Street Goes to Jail: Physicians Should Follow,” an article in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine. Drs. Dora Dumont, Scott Allen and Jody Rich called for physicians to pay more attention to mass incarceration and took note of Sesame Street’s involvement.

Plus: Bill Keller keeps cool.

The Public Media Company is looking to drum up support to pilot the Public Media Database, an all-in-one dashboard to help stations track finances, audience ratings and the impact of their journalism on listeners. The concept is to cull data from a variety of sources, reach agreement about which metrics are significant and weed out the less important information. Each station would maintain a database of measurements, to be displayed in a dashboard for easy access and review. Uniform metrics among stations would help them compare performance and make presentations to funders. PMC, a nonprofit based in Boulder, Colo., hopes that adding participating stations will enable more meaningful comparisons of metrics across the public radio system.

Plus: A producer needs her mic back, and Splendid Table gets pranked.

NPR loses another high-profile employee to The Atlantic.

NPR announced Tuesday a contest that will use the platform of its Tiny Desk Concerts to discover up-and-coming musicians. For viewers, the appeal of the Tiny Desk Concert series is watching popular and rising artists — from T-Pain to Timber Timbre — perform in an unusual setting: the desk of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen. But the new contest will give smaller acts not signed to a record label the opportunity to perform and gain exposure. “I go to shows, most every night, hoping to find something new and surprising,” said Boilen in a press release. “This Tiny Desk Concert Contest is a way for me to, essentially, time travel around the country, hear hundreds of bands that are completely off my radar, and share the most exciting and surprising ones with our music-loving audience.”

Current’s reporting roster has grown with the addition of Tyler Falk. As a freelance journalist, Tyler has written about topics including food, energy and business innovation. He’ll now turn his attention to the world of public radio, picking up that beat from Senior Editor Ben Mook. Ben will cover development and digital media. As a contributing editor for CBS Interactive, Tyler blogged daily about business innovation for SmartPlanet.com. He was also a fellow with The Atlantic Cities in 2012, a communications fellow with Smart Growth America and an editorial assistant for Grist, and his writing has appeared in Fortune.

Plus: Sesame Workshop's SVOD strategy, and a new website from Fred Rogers Co.

Plus: Kinsey Wilson's move to the Times, plans at Voice of San Diego, and where to hear "Alice's Restaurant."

Broadcast TV in the U.S. will undergo two big changes in the next few years, and a clash in the timeline for those shifts promises big headaches for pubTV stations.

Plus: The debated relevance of Audience 98 in 2014, and a petition to deny Serial a day off.