The Conference Board reports 45 percent of businesses have reduced donations to nonprofits this year, and another 16 percent were considering doing so. Thirty-five percent of companies said they would make fewer grants this year, and 21 percent said those grants would be smaller. The figures are based on a February 2009 survey of 158 companies.

The Knight Center for Specialized Journalism has extended its application deadline to March 12 for its seminar on economic reporting. The seminar on “The Economy: Bringing the Big Picture Home,” the recession’s effects and possible remedies, will be held April 14-17 at the University of Maryland, College Park. The center covers costs of the seminar, meals and lodging. Details online.

Pubcasting leaders have been talking up the opportunity to fill the void left by ailing newspapers by stepping up online coverage of local news, and the NYTimes.com has already unveiled an experimental website aimed in that direction. The Local, which launched yesterday with coverage of three New Jersey communities, is exploring “how to serve and engage audiences in new ways,” writes Times‘ veteran Tina Kelley, who runs the site with three journalism students. “This is not a we-talk-at-you-and-you-listen kind of site,” Kelly writes. “The Local will be built and maintained with your help, contributions, advice, admonitions, creations, words and pictures.

Vermont Public Radio is cutting executive pay 7.5 percent and the other 43 full-time employees’ salaries will be cut 2 percent, due to a sharp decline in business underwriting, according to the Times Argus in Barre, Vt. The station was originally expecting $2.1 million in revenue for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, but has revised that projection to $1.5 million. So far this fiscal year the station has received $544,245 in underwriting revenue. VPR has nine full-power stations around Vermont. Underwriting support is also down at nearby New Hampshire Public Radio, although no cuts are planned.

NPR prez Vivian Schiller spoke at the National Press Club in Washington today, focusing on what commercial media can learn from pubcasting–and the other way around. Public broadcasters, she said, shouldn’t be shy about promoting and marketing themselves aggressively, as their commercial cousins do. And for-profit media would do well to take note of the dedication of the public broadcasting workforce. “There are 8,000 people that work in public radio … Nobody in public media is there because they think they’re going to get rich fast, or even slow. They’re all motivated by the mission.”

Katy June-Friesen talks with talks with Oregon Public Broadcasting producer Ed Jahn about the documentary Silent Invasion, which won a duPont-Columbia University Award last month.

There’s disagreement in the nonprofit world over the potential effects of President Barack Obama’s proposal to reduce charitable deductions for wealthy donors, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports. Some groups such as Independent Sector and the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning say the move would put a damper on donations; others analysts say the change wouldn’t make much difference.

CPB is planning a station survey to determine the extent of a problem that has crept up practically unnoticed during planning for the DTV transition: what pubcasters can or should do with old analog equipment. Some stations are simply letting the equipment sit while they ponder its fate. But that can take a huge amount of space: Many analog TV transmitters are the size of three refrigerators in a row, accompanied by a high-voltage power supply nearly as big. The obsolete analog antennas, still perched in the sky, add weight to aging towers that threaten to topple on equipment below. Selling all this outdated stuff poses its own complications, including federal liens, university property-disposal rules and the glut of retired hardware that has few buyers.

Seven years after WGBH began its on-demand video archive of the often-stellar lectures and cultural events of the Boston area, it’s getting substantial national-level support for expansion to other cities. CPB contributed a two-year, $585,000 grant to assist expansion, as the station announced (without the price tag) Feb. 17. NPR and PBS also will help support the initiative, WGBH announced a week later.

Tucson’s PBS station, KUAT, is considering sharing facilities with two cable-access media centers for budgetary and space reasons, according to a report in the Arizona Daily Star. Station rep Wendy Erica Werden told Current that talks are “only in the concept stage.” Partners in the consolidation would be Access Tucson and the city-owned Tucson12.tv. The three would work together in a single production center in the city’s downtown. Access Tucson had already shut down for the month of June to make it to the end of the fiscal year. KUAT g.m. Jack Gibson told the Arizona Daily Star that state funding is being cut and large donations are down.

David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun comments on a monthslong controversy he sparked with a column on Maryland Public Television’s decision not to carry two docs: “It started in December when I complained on the blog about MPT not airing two extraordinary independent films from the celebrated PBS series Independent Lens and P.O.V. One was Doc, a revelatory biography of the post-World War II literary figure and founder of The Paris Review, Harold ‘Doc'” Humes. The other was Inheritance, the searing account of a woman named Monika Hertwig and her journey to come to terms with the legacy of having a father who was a Nazi camp commandant.”

Nonprofits are worried over one aspect of President Barack Obama’s preliminary budget released last week, The New York Times reports. An analysis by one nonprofit estimates that under the proposal, donors earning more than $250,000 would see their deductions lowered from 35 percent to 28 percent. About half of wealthy donors in a 2006 survey said they’d keep giving the same amount if deductions fell to zero.

Kansas City’s KCPT has hired Nevada pubcaster Kliff Kuehl as its president, the Kansas City Star reported. The station has been headhunting since former chief Victor Hogstrom resigned in July. Kuehl managed KWBU in his home town of Waco and then KNPB in Reno. Before entering public TV, he tried a movie and video career, raising a production budget and then completing a movie called Murder Rap with John Hawkes, the Star’s Aaron Barnhart reported. He starts work in Kansas City April 6. At the Reno station, Kuehl’s team completed a $6.25 million capital campaign and tripled their number of major donors, according to KCPT’s release.

On April 3, Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va., will open its latest attraction, a Sesame Street-themed area with four kid-sized rides including a junior roller coaster for small visitors and their parents. The Forest of Fun will also have play areas, a photo studio for pictures with Sesame Street characters, and live performances by the characters.

Public television newsman Bill Moyers is speaking out in an email to the editor of Slate.com, complaining about a column by Slate writer Jack Shafer. Shafer’s piece focused on a recent story in The Washington Post by reporter Joe Stephens that said Moyers, once a special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, asked the FBI to investigate the sexual orientation of two members of that administration. In the Post story, Moyers told Stephens that his memory was unclear on the incident. Moyers wrote in part to Slate: “Jack Shafer breathlessly reported very old news as new, and in a wholly irresponsible way that distorted the record beyond recognition.