A committee of NPR’s board voted May 8 to maintain embedded underwriting at its current level on network programs, despite concerns among station executives that the practice could harm listeners’ perceptions. Embedded underwriting credits appear within segments of NPR’s newsmagazines, rather than in the longer blocks of credits that punctuate the shows. The credits give sponsors dedicated placement alongside particular series and areas of coverage, such as business, health and technology. NPR ramped up efforts to sell embedded underwriting starting in 2011, and station leaders and programmers responded with worries that the credits were disrupting the flow of programs and giving listeners the idea that sponsors are influencing content.

Plus: Celeste Headlee tells Current about plans for Middle Ground now that she has a new job.

Producers of The Aviators, a public TV series distributed by the National Educational Telecommunications Association, devoted a page of the program website to videos depicting opportunities for product placements by sponsors. The web page was removed after Current inquired about the unusual sponsorship marketing. Screenshots from the page are presented here. In an email to Current, Executive Producer Anthony Nalli explained the marketing strategies behind the descriptions and how FourPoints Television Productions worked with sponsors. Nalli writes:  “Any time aviation gives back to the community, that’s the kind of positive message we feel is important to convey as part of the core mission of The Aviators.”

Summer Reese, former executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, was ordered to vacate the network’s headquarters Monday after an Alameda County Superior Court judge sided with the majority of the Pacifica board who fired her in March. Reese’s continued occupation of Pacifica’s national office “constitutes trespass and a nuisance,” wrote Judge Ioana Petrou in her ruling. Petrou ordered that Reese leave Pacifica’s headquarters immediately, as her presence there was impeding the foundation from conducting its normal business. “The Court finds that the current situation is not only far from ideal, but completely untenable,” Petrou wrote. After Pacifica’s board voted March 14 to dismiss Reese, she questioned the validity of the firing and broke into the foundation’s headquarters with a team of supporters.

Plus: A Frontline filmmaker wins a WGBH fellowship, and Wait Wait makes a cameo on The Simpsons.

Plus: PBS's retired longtime chief engineer receives a prestigious industry award.

The Jeffersonville, N.Y. community radio station came under heavy scrutiny after a former g.m. cancelled programs in closed meetings.

“Impact” is a feel-good media buzzword of the moment, increasingly required by the funders of many projects and invoked by some PTV stations, news organizations and documentary producers as key to demonstrating the social good derived from their work. But defining the concept and then measuring whether a media project has demonstrated its value remain elusive challenges for many. During “Understanding Impact,” a two-day symposium convened last month at American University in Washington, D.C., participants explored a number of the ad hoc systems for tracking impact that are taking form. Organizations including the Center for Investigative Reporting in Emeryville, Calif., and KETC, the Nine Network of St.