StoryCorps on NPR, which has archived oral histories from more than 50,000 participants, is kicking off StoryCorps Historias in a Washington, D.C., event Thursday. StoryCorps calls it “a groundbreaking initiative to record and preserve the stories of Latinos across the United States” (Current, Dec. 22, 2008). Partners in the national project include the Latino Public Radio Consortium, Latino USA and the U.S. Latino and Latina World War II Oral History Project. Members of Congress, CPB President Pat Harrison and StoryCorps founder Dave Isay will be on hand for the announcement, at the United States Botanic Garden next to the Capitol.

Wick Rowland, CEO of KBDI in Denver and dean of the Colorado University-Boulder School of Journalism, has announced that Colorado Public Television will create an investigative news website and pubTV show, according to the Temple Talk journalism blog from John Temple, former publisher of the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News. The project will have a staff of 12; it’s currently partially funded. Heading up the effort will be former Rocky Mountain News reporter Ann Imse. KBDI will provide about a quarter of the $2.2 million budget, including air time, the website, libel insurance and administrative costs. The group is hoping to raise $400,000 to get begin work.

Alarm bells went off in Minnesota when Prairie Home Companion talker Garrison Keillor mentioned to Minneapolis’s Star Tribune last week that he might give up host duties and become producer for a “successor show.” The newspaper is examining “the ripple effects” that it says “would be enormous” for state businesses if that happened — even at the state fair, where Keillor appearances routinely draw 7,000 to 11,000 fans. Keillor’s mild stroke on Sept. 7 and four-day hospital stay has him pondering his future.

After being drawn into a scandal over alleged predatory loan practices of Wells Fargo, talk show host Tavis Smiley has cut all ties to the financial company. Smiley, who hosts shows on both PBS and Public Radio International, began working with Wells Fargo in 2005 as a speaker at wealth-building seminars for African Americans. A lawsuit recently filed by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan charges that these seminars were marketing schemes to peddle subprime mortgages to minorities and “part of the bank’s overall illegal and discriminatory practice of steering black and Hispanic borrowers into riskier and more expensive loans,” according to the Washington Independent.

Little Dorrit, the BBC/PBS/WGBH Dickens adaptation considered an Emmy underdog, actually walked away with seven statuettes: Best miniseries, directing, writing, art direction, casting, cinematography and costumes. The stunning victory for the Masterpiece miniseries even bested such powerhouses as Mad Men and 30 Rock. Here’s a clip of just one of the acceptance speeches, and a list of all the winners. Other pubcasting winners: American Masters for original main title theme music, and Great Performances for nonfiction series. UPDATE: PBS’s Joe Miller, senior associate of primetime publicity and awards, tells Current the network will be re-posting the miniseries on the PBS Video site on Thursday, and refeeding it to stations sometime this week.

Maybe we’re at a 1967 moment again,” says Ernest Wilson III, shortly after his election as chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on Sept. 16 [2009]. He’s making a hopeful comparison with the year when a Carnegie Commission report slid into President Johnson’s in-box in January and  returned for his signature as the Public Broadcasting Act in November. Wilson, who is dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, admires the way the stars are aligning for an advance of federal policy on public media: Foundations are examining the plight of journalism and reengaging with public media.

Stations that stream all four movements of the entire symphony could be seen as violating the law’s detailed rules — the “performance complement”—and risking the statutory license for streaming given them by Congress.

The leadership of WNET said a federal investigation into the station’s use of federal grants totaling almost $13 million is wrapping up, and the organization is financially sound. “There was sloppiness as opposed to real wrongdoing in terms of our accounting systems, which has been addressed,” said James Tisch, chairman of the WNET Board, in an interview.

With the PBS premiere of Ken Burns’ much anticipated National Parks: America’s Best Idea quickly approaching, The Los Angeles Times is examining the filmmaker, his approach and his subject matter. “Though he’s generally respected by critics and scholars,” the paper said, “a backlash has been building, dismissing him as middlebrow, charging that he’s repeating himself, that he’s too earnest, too dark or naively patriotic.” As Tim Page of The Washington Post wrote of Burns’ 2001 film Jazz, in which Burns presented the improvisational music as a mirror of American culture, “This sort of unreflected populist Hallmark-ese seems a strange mixture of New Deal and New Age, and I don’t believe it for a moment.”

Latino Public Broadcasting has received a 2009 National Council of La Raza ALMA Special Achievement Award for its body of work for the year starting June 2008 in the development, support, and promotions of Latino-themed documentaries on public television. LPB Chairman Edward James Olmos and Managing Director Luis Ortiz accepted the honor during the ALMA pre-show on Thursday. The ALMA Awards show with hosts Eva Longoria Parker and George Lopez airs at 8 tonight on ABC.

Liza Minelli’s Las Vegas show “Liza’s at the Palace” will be shot for distribution by American Public Television, Playbill reports. The Tony-winning production will be available to stations in November, then released on home video in 2010.

Ira Glass, host of pubradio phenom This American Life, somewhat accidentally revealed last night that its Showtime version is ending. “I don’t know if I can say this yet, but we’ve asked to be taken off of television,” Glass told the audience at a panel discussion in Manhattan that included several of the show’s senior producers. As reported by FishbowlNY, Glass said that despite its four recent Emmy nods, the TV version would not continue. “Most journalism is about things that already happened, as it turns out,” he said. “But with television, you want to capture it while it’s happening.”

Network World, a news provider for network and IT professionals, is reporting that the Internet security firm Purewire has discovered malware in the PBS Kids’ Curious George web page. Purewire researcher Nidhi Shah told the news site that the company first observed a malware, or malicious software, infection on Monday when a Purewire customer’s computer picked it up. The log-in at the Curious George page may produce an error message that drags the user to a domain where “an attempt to exploit vulnerabilities on the user’s desktop applications is made,” according to the news report. A PBS rep said it is aware of the problem, which should be fixed by Friday afternoon.

Kermit the Frog is on the record about his relationship with oh-so hip pop star Lady Gaga: There is none. His denial to People magazine comes after the two arrived together at the recent MTV Video Music Awards and were photographed smooching as Kermit leaned out of the back of a limo. “It was not a romantic kiss,” he insists. “It was a kiss for good luck. Kissing a frog is good luck for the person giving the kiss–but bad luck for the frog if his pig finds out.” That would be Miss Piggy, who has long been linked to the green Muppet.