NPR’s long-awaited mobile app NPR One launched yesterday, allowing iPhone and Android users to tune into a stream of curated and algorithm-powered newscasts, segments, podcasts and local content. After a brief introduction from NPR host Guy Raz, NPR One prompts users to log in using Google, Facebook or NPR accounts. The app allows users to choose a local station, search for stories and programs and donate via voice-activated prompts. NPR is delaying a marketing push for the app until the fall, after station pledge drives, but eager users are already downloading NPR One and giving it a test run. At Nieman Lab, news analyst Ken Doctor discussed NPR’s aim to appeal to younger audiences and the risk NPR One might pose to stations.

Plus: American Experience pursues crowdfunding, Mohn appears on Tell Me More and KCPW's CEO quits.

Margot Adler, a longtime NPR correspondent and former contributor to Pacifica Radio, died July 28 after a three-year battle with cancer. She was 68. The granddaughter of renowned Viennese psychotherapist Alfred Adler, she began her radio career in the mid-1960s as a volunteer reporter for Pacifica’s KPFA in Berkeley, Calif. Adler then moved to New York and joined Pacifica’s WBAI in 1972, launching and appearing on local talk shows. In 1978 she joined NPR as a freelance reporter covering New York and became full-time the following year. Appearing on NPR’s Talk of the Nation in June 2013, Adler recalled how TOTN host Neal Conan, a colleague at WBAI, helped her land a job at NPR after they worked together on a Pacifica fundraiser.

KCSM-TV in San Mateo, Calif., has dropped international programming from MHz Networks after determining that the programs did not meet legal requirements for noncommercial stations. MHz and KCSM negotiated for several months before the station discontinued the content July 15, said Jan Roecks, v.p. of administrative services for licensee San Mateo Community College District, which operates KCSM. KCSM’s website notes, “We complained to MHz repeatedly regarding underwriting and political call-to-action messages that did not comply with FCC regulations. MHZ has been either unable or unwilling to bring its broadcasts into compliance with the applicable requirements.” KCSM Technology Director Michele Muller declined to provide examples.

Joy Parker, a station relations and web coordinator for WXXI in Rochester, N.Y., died July 12 after a years-long battle with ALS. She was 43. Parker joined the TV station in 1996 as an operations technician. In 2002 she was promoted to segment producer on programs such as Need to Know and Assignment: The World, and she worked as an associate producer on the local documentary Crucible of Freedom. “She always brought a lot of energy to her projects,” said Marion French, WXXI’s v.p. of education and interactive services and Parker’s supervisor. In her role, Parker worked on station initiatives including its web and social media presence, e-newsletters, and liaising with statewide pubTV stations for the program Homework Hotline.

• Public media’s coverage of the conflict in Israel and the Gaza Strip has some audience members questioning news outlets’ objectivity. Last week, PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler and NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos published a total of three blog posts about coverage of the battle between the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas, rounding up complaints from readers with diverging criticisms. Getler focused on the PBS NewsHour‘s coverage of the conflict in his two reports. In the first, he fielded complaints about the show’s selection of guests and its usage of the term “occupied.” The second column concerned Gwen Ifill’s interview with a UNICEF specialist regarding civilian casualties in Gaza, which Getler said prompted more mail than any segment since the conflict started.

Moss Bresnahan will become the public television system’s first dual president when he takes over in September at WTVP-TV in Peoria, Ill., and WILL-TV, 90 miles to the east in Urbana-Champaign. He succeeds interim dual General Manager Chet Tomczyk, who delayed his retirement from WTVP to temporarily lead the two stations. Tomczyk has been in charge of WTVP, a community licensee, and WILL, part of the College of Media at the University of Illinois, since September 2013. The unique agreement was designed to foster more collaboration on content between the stations and to save on salary costs. “We have two great stations here, and the staff at each is so dedicated and has such a great legacy,” Bresnahan said in an announcement Friday.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — You have to love the irony. The first scripted narrative series from PBS Digital Studios is a modern update of Frankenstein, the science-fiction classic about creating new life. Just as in Mary Shelley’s timeless Gothic tale, PBS Digital Studios is using the latest in science and technology in its experiments to breathe new life into PBS programming. PBS Digital Studios, launched in March 2012, will premiere Frankenstein M.D. Aug. 19, rolling out new episodes, each five to eight minutes long, on its YouTube channel every Tuesday and Friday. Fittingly enough, the 24-episode series will conclude Oct.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — They don’t make the front page, but the comments and observations of panelists during PBS’s portion of the Television Critics Association press tour are often surprising and revealing. PBS’s two-day segment, which concluded here Wednesday night, included a rare confession from Henry Louis Gates Jr. and a takedown of Jenny McCarthy, whose opposition to vaccines has made her the bane of public-health officials. Here are some highlights. “Kind of a fib” Gates, executive producer and host of Finding Your Roots 2, says celebrities rarely turn him down when he asks them to join him on a televised exploration of their ancestries.

Seven public media projects got a boost July 21 with the announcement of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which included almost $2 million for pubcasters. The largest grants, each for $600,000, will support documentaries from WGBH in Boston and Firelight Media in New York. WGBH will use the grant for a two-hour American Experience episode, “Into the Amazon: The Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition.” The documentary, produced by American Experience Executive Producer Mark Samels, covers a 1913 expedition to an unmapped territory of the Amazon led by Theodore Roosevelt and Brazilian colonel Candido Rondon.

Amgott was one of the first female producers in TV news.

Plus: AIR releases a Kickstarter tutorial, and a small Washington state community approves public access TV.

Madison Hodges, a longtime manager of public radio stations and advocate for the system who worked to increase the community impact of pubcasters nationwide, died July 18 in Tallahassee, Fla., from cardiac arrest following treatment of a rare bone cancer. He was 66. Hodges ran several university-licensed public radio stations over the course of his career and served as executive director of the University Station Alliance. He also oversaw station services at NPR and spearheaded initiatives with the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program to increase community involvement, help licensees secure CPB funding, identify gaps in public radio’s coverage and quantify stations’ community impact for license-holders.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The success of Downton Abbey, whose fifth season has been set for Jan. 4, has created a novel problem for PBS: too many programs to fit into the Sunday-night slot occupied by Masterpiece. It’s possible that PBS might schedule some of the excess series at another hour or on another day. But there are no plans to do so for now, according to Masterpiece EP Rebecca Eaton. “We have been working with PBS to figure out what to do with all this programming because we are bursting the banks of Masterpiece Sunday nights at 9 o’clock,” she said.