Was Emma Goldman a fraud, a killer or a real revolutionary? PBS viewers won’t find the answer in tonight’s American Experience, writes a New York Times reviewer. By ignoring the question, the film “forgoes an opportunity to illuminate the link between idealism and terrorism and to gauge the relevance of Goldman to our accursed world.”

Just five weeks after filing his last Letter from America for the BBC, Alistair Cooke died March 30 [2004] at his home in Manhattan. He was 95 and had heart disease. Cooke had delivered the Letter for 58 years, far exceeding his 26 years as a U.S. correspondent for Britain's Guardian newspaper or the mere 22 years he hosted Masterpiece Theatre.

Louis Schwartz, an attorney active in public broadcasting for three decades and a partner in Schwartz, Woods & Miller, died March 31. His family is holding a memorial service Saturday, April 10, at the River Road Unitarian Church in Bethesda, Md.

WAMU-FM in Washington, D.C., has received the largest donation in its history, a $250,000 bequest from late journalist and communications professional Ellen Wadley Roper.

An editorial cartoonist imagines mornings without Bob.

New BBC Chairman Michael Grade doesn’t have an easy choice of a man to fill the director general post, reports David Cox in London’s New Statesman. The job might go to a woman for the first time. (May require subscription.)

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that an anonymous “friend” of KCTS is lending the station $7 million to pay off its creditors, including PBS.

Listeners remain steamed about losing Bob Edwards, says NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin, and NPR has erred by not reporting more extensively on the departure of the Morning Edition host. Cokie Roberts tells the Philadelphia Inquirer that NPR goofed: “When you have 10,000 listeners saying it’s a mistake, it’s probably a mistake.” (Req. req. Via Romenesko.) One general manager says in the Houston Chronicle that NPR’s claim that stations pushed for the change could be called “a bald-faced lie.”

Pittsburgh’s WQED announced today that it will lease out its second channel to HSN’s America’s Store shopping network for three years, retaining the right to air some public TV programs and promos on the channel. Rumbles of a new deal were heard in March by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which said the station has tried several plans to “unload” the station and bolster its revenues since 1996. The station signed to sell it to a California broadcaster in 2001, but the deal fell through in 2002.

Execs at WOUB-FM in Athens, Ohio, changed the station’s format from news/classical to all-news in response to financial pressures, reports the Athens News. The station has suffered cuts in CPB funding due to its small audience and low membership income.

Jay Kernis, NPR’s senior v.p. of programming, answered questions about Bob Edwards from listeners today in an online chat. “The news demands of the broadcast require more than one host to keep the program timely every morning,” he said. Kernis has also written an FAQ: “Twenty-five years ago, Morning Edition was created with a single, in-studio host. That model is no longer sufficient to bring the weight of credible, in-depth reporting that we are demanding of ourselves.”

Monkey, a devoted public radio supporter, recently went on a tour of NPR’s headquarters (and sent this Current editor a postcard while in town).

A few months after listener complaints provoked “Car Talk” to switch its streaming audio to Windows Media Player, the program has returned its stream to Real Player. According to hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi, Real has promised to eliminate pop-up ads, make its free player easier to access, and otherwise address the issues that fueled listeners’ web rage.

In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, NPR President Kevin Klose talks publicly about the reassignment of Bob Edwards—though he says little that other NPR execs haven’t already said: “Edwards’ strengths are actually anchoring from the studio. What we’re looking for is more diversity in our studio hosting and a kind of knowledge of what is happening in places that may be very far away from the studio.”

Michael Skoler, managing editor of news at Minnesota Public Radio, talks with Leonard Witt about the network’s efforts to involve the public in its reporting.