Plus: The Marshall Project makes its debut.

A supplier of pledge-drive premiums to public broadcasters is offering an upgrade to traditional CD giveaways, providing a new program of monthly music downloads delivered via email. The program from Forest Incentives, Forest Music Express, has blanket agreements with several record labels, including all three majors, allowing stations to send virtually any album to their donors. Forest Music Express is billed as an update to the concept of the “CD of the Month” club, allowing stations to curate gifts to donors while avoiding the logistics of mailing physical recordings. The distribution system integrates with membership databases at stations to deliver download links to donors.

Seigenthaler hosted A Word on Words, a series of interviews with authors, which will continue to air new Seigenthaler-hosted episodes through September.

Steve Post, legendary New York radio personality for more than 50 years, died Sunday. He was 70 years old. Steve was the acerbic host of Morning Music, heard on WNYC-FM for 25 years. Every morning Steve read his version of the news. When Mayor Ed Koch had a stroke, his doctors announced that he had “the brain of a 12-year-old.” Ever after Steve referred to His Honor as “him with the 12-year-old brain.” Weather reports were called “the weather lies.” Steve delivered news of leaks from nuclear reactors, always ending with the line, “No significant amount of radiation was released,” whether in the wire copy or not, read absolutely straight with an incredulous voice.

Climate Connections will debut on public radio Aug. 18.

Plus: A Reuters photographer chronicles a day in the life of an Elmo impersonator.

In a statement, the station said it was "disappointed" by the decision.

The election to fill four member-director positions on NPR’s board is underway, with nine candidates vying for the seats. Voting for the seats started July 11 and will run through Aug. 11. The winners start three-year terms in November. For what is believed to be the first time, a candidate was put on the ballot by gathering petition signatures from NPR’s Authorized Representatives. Candidates are usually selected by a nominating committee headed up by the chair of NPR’s board. But under NPR’s bylaws, candidates can also be added to the ballot by a written petition signed by at least 15 A-Reps.

The center is putting a $2.9 million grant toward an offshoot of its "Consider the Source" project.

A deaf college student has filed a lawsuit against NPR for employment discrimination, claiming that the network misrepresented the terms of the internship and failed to properly accommodate her needs during her employment. Catherine Nugent, a student at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., filed the lawsuit in the District of Columbia Superior Court in March. Nugent, a major in business administration, alleges that the network did not give her tools she needed to communicate with supervisors. The suit also claims that Nugent was assigned to teach sign-language classes to her colleagues though she had expected to learn about marketing. Nugent claims that NPR did not provide interpreters or interpreting software and fired her two weeks into the 10-week internship after she asked for accommodation multiple times.

Plus: Prairie Home encourages listening parties, and consumers show interest in the NextRadio app.

Drew directed Primary, an early example of cinema verité, and more than a dozen films for PBS.

• Maxie Jackson, formerly president of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, is now managing WCPN-FM in Cleveland, part of the ideastream public media network, the station announced Wednesday. The hire is part of an organizational restructuring at ideastream stations WVIZ/PBS, 90.3 WCPN and WCLV Classical 104.9. • Pubradio freelancer Jon Kalish wrote a remembrance of NPR reporter Margot Adler for the Jewish Daily Forward. Adler, who died Monday, was known for being a Wiccan priestess, but Kalish also saw her as “one of the many prominent Jews in the 1960’s counter-culture who, like Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman, rebelled against the established order.”

NPR will integrate NPR Labs into its general budget and tighten its focus on public radio after almost five years of running the division as self-sustaining. Under the restructuring, NPR Labs will transition from its status as a stand-alone unit and move from NPR’s distribution division to its technology and operations division. NPR Labs will also drop the Technology Research Center name that it used to market consulting work to clients. The restructuring eliminated the top job at NPR Labs, held by Rich Rarey, a 34-year NPR veteran. Rarey, who will leave July 31, took the job of director of NPR Labs in February when founding director Mike Starling took a voluntary buyout offer and retired.