An Internet site featuring a Web camera installed in Decorah, Iowa, last summer for the Nature episode “American Eagle” continues to draw visitors from some 70 countries, according to the Decorah Public Opinion newspaper. Bob Anderson, director of the local nonprofit Raptor Resource Project, says its DSL service has been scrambling to keep up with the high viewing demand for the site. Milwaukee Public TV also featured an eagle cam on one of its multicast channels in 2002.

WEDU in West Central Florida has launched the Blue Sky Project, gathering a “volunteer consortium of creative professionals” to assist the station, according to a statement (PDF). The PBS station is hoping to develop initiatives drawing on the experience of volunteers who are currently without full-time employment. Tasks include advertising, communications, graphic design, public relations, special event planning and Web design. In return for assisting the station, the work will help volunteers hone professional skills, contribute to their resumes and “provide stimulating projects in an invigorating environment,” the statement adds.

NPR led pubcasters in the 2009 Webby Awards honoring the best of the Internet. It won a total of seven awards, three of which were determined by votes cast in the “People’s Voice” competition. NPR Music and NPR.org received Webbys and People’s Voice Awards in the categories of music and radio websites, respectively. Awards also went to NPR Mobile, the network’s news site optimized for mobile phones (m.npr.org), NPR Podcasts, and Project Song, a video series presented by NPR Music’s All Songs Considered. Three of the four awards credited to PBS were for Frontline/World programs nominated in the online film and video division.

Lidia’s Italy: Sweet Napoli, cooked up by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and distributed by APT, received a James Beard Foundation Media Award among TV food shows (Julia Harrison, e.p; Shelly Burgess Nicotra, supervising producer), and WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show won the award in the radio shows/webcasts category for its three-ingredient challenge (with Rozanne Gold and online producer Sarah English), the foundation announced Friday. Bastianich served as gala chair of the foundation’s gala reception celebrating Women in Food last night in New York.

Hickok Cole, the architect hired by NPR to design its new headquarters, sketched this look for the tough task of combining a new office tower with the old concrete phone company building that must be preserved at least in part under the city’s historic landmark rules. An earlier version of this item mistakenly indicated that this rendering—labeled as a “preliminary” drawing on the DC Metrocentric blog—represents NPR’s plan. NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm says that plan is months away. Rehm has no complaint, however, about last week’s Washington Business Journal article naming NPR’s HQ land deals (with its big tax incentive to stay in D.C.)

Slate’s Jack Shafer thinks NPR’s Morning Edition should dump longtime Congressional analyst Cokie Roberts. “I can think of no comparably sized media space that’s as void of original insight and information as Roberts’,” he writes. “Her segments, though billed as ‘analysis’ by NPR, do little but speed-graze the headlines and add a few grace notes. If you’re vaguely conversant with current events, you’re already cruising at Roberts’ velocity. Roberts doesn’t just voice the conventional wisdom; she is the conventional wisdom.”

Here’s a rare occurrence: Newspaper coverage of PBS fave Antiques Roadshow is at the heart of a controversy (albeit small), in Grand Rapids, Mich. A reader questioned the news judgment of the Grand Rapids Press over its decision to feature prominently a $2,000 letter from Gerald Ford over an oil painting worth $300,000. “In his day, who in Grand Rapids didn’t get a letter from Congressman Ford?” a reader asked. “There may be valuable Ford items out there, but a three sentence, hand-written letter? I don’t think so.”

WGBH staffers talk about the arduous task of rights clearance in a story in today’s Boston Globe. Reclearance for program use years later is especially tricky. “I had film material from a man who is deceased, and his wife granted permission but said that the estate would not go under $20,000 for 50 seconds of material,” said Karen Cariani, head of the WGBH archives. “Definitely way overpriced, but we had to pay it.”

Tavis Smiley, host of talk shows on PBS and Public Radio International, is one of “The World’s Most Influential People” as chosen by Time magazine. The list of 100 includes individuals in politics, business, arts, science, media and more, each considered to have transformed the world in some way. This year’s honorees include President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, champion golfer Tiger Woods, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, rapper M.I.A., media mogul Ted Turner and actor Brad Pitt. Smiley is also the author or editor of 14 books and created of the traveling museum exhibit, America I AM: The African American Imprint.

The National Center for Media Engagement (formerly NCO) has assembled suggestions and resources to help stations keep audiences informed on the swine flu illness. Included is specific information that stations can offer citizens, including Web links and widgets; suggestions for coverage; and a comment box for sharing plans, ideas and materials. The mission of the center is to help public media build community connections across multiple platforms.

Longtime pledge fave Celtic Thunder continues to rumble across continents. Its latest tour stop: Edmonton, Alberta, where The Edmonton Journal chats with lead vocalist Keith Harkin. More on the lads at their website.

Thanks in part to local schoolchildren, Great Falls, Mont., is closing in on its goal of securing a PBS transmitter, according to The Great Falls Tribune. “Sacajawea (School) was selling cookies,” said Kerry Callahan Bronson, chairwoman of the board of Friends of MontanaPBS. “East Middle School teachers paid to wear jeans. Each school did their own thing.” Currently the group has less than $25,000 left to raise of its nearly $1.3 million goal. According to the newspaper, Great Falls is one of the nation’s largest cities to lack a free public television broadcast signal. The group hopes to be on the air by fall.

Who says there are no good movie roles for mature women anymore? Meryl Streep opens Aug. 7 in Julie & Julia as the late Julia Child. Writer-director Nora Ephron confects a screenplay from Child’s memoir My Life in France, folded gently into Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell, the Gen-X author of what may be claimed to be the first book based on a blog. With Amy Adams as Julie, Stanley Tucci as Paul Child. Here’s Columbia Pictures’ trailer. Bon appetit! Fans can hope for a prequel with Child as an OSS officer turning the course of World War II.

Great Performances has acquired Spike Lee’s film adaptation of the Broadway show Passing Strange and plans to air it on PBS in 2010, according to Variety. The rock musical follows a young black man who leaves 1970s Los Angeles for Europe. The stage version garnered seven Tony Award nominations last year and won for best book of a musical.

In his latest column, CPB ombudsman Ken A. Bode praises two pubTV documentaries that recently won prestigious journalism awards: Torturing Democracy and Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.