Bill O’Reilly of Fox News won’t stop whuppin’ on NPR, so NPR whups back. (Low in column.)

Boston’s WBUR has lost more than $1 million in revenue due to protests of its Middle East coverage.

Louis Wiley, executive editor of Frontline, discusses his program and its World spinoff with JournalismJobs.com.

There’s now a website for the budding Public Radio Weekend project.

NPR’s On the Media to Fox News star Bill O’Reilly: Stop complaining! You’re invited!

Frontline/World aims to target younger audiences with a fast-moving mix of international reporting.

Jim Lehrer on ABC’s thwarted move to oust Nightline: it may be time for the commercial networks to get out of the news business.

Nina Totenberg tells the Buffalo News she’s turned down TV anchor jobs (including at CNN) to stay on her Supreme Court beat at NPR.

PBS prez Pat Mitchell tells the L.A. Times she “had no idea how hard it was going to be.”

A bill introduced in the House May 2 brings the DOIT proposal for a trust fund supporting digital educational content one step closer to “done it.” The legislation introduced by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) proposes to invest proceeds from spectrum auctions in a permanent trust fund for that purpose. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) is preparing a similar bill in the Senate, earmarking 50 percent of all future auction proceeds for such a fund. Markey’s Wireless Technology Investment and Digital Dividends Act (H.R. 4641) also provides for up to $300 million in funding for public broadcasting’s digital conversion. The bill looks very much like the trust fund proposed last April by the Digital Promise Project led by former PBS President Lawrence Grossman and ex-FCC Chairman Newton Minow.

Public radio’s Sonic Memorial Project has an online home.

Did NPR’s Tavis Smiley play hardball to get Bill Clinton on his show? (Next to last item.)

Bill McCarter, who headed Chicago’s WTTW for 27 years before retiring in 1998, died of complications from cancer April 21. He was 81. Newton Minow, a former FCC chair and WTTW trustee, recruited McCarter from WETA in Washington, D.C., to run WTTW in 1972. “I have a very high opinion and respect for Bill,” Minow once said. “He is everything you could want in a person, a broadcaster and leader. One of the keys to his success is his exquisite balance and judgment.” Minow said in a WTTW interview that McCarter had been offered the position of PBS president and turned it down on three occasions.

On May 2, 2002, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a bill to authorize the investment of spectrum auction proceeds in public-service content for digital media, apparently inspired in part by the Digital Promise Project of 1991. See also his remarks about the bill and Current coverage of the bill. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. A BILLTo allocate spectrum for the enhancement of wireless telecommunications, and to invest wireless spectrum auction proceeds for the military preparedness and educational preparedness of the United States for the digital era, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1.

Programmers at PBS and at a key group of stations put themselves on a collision course when they scheduled two different programs for the night of May 14, 2002.