Washington Week host Gwen Ifill rejects the accusations of blogger Michelle Malkin and other right-wingers that she is “in the tank,” as Malkin wrote, for Barack Obama and therefore unfit as moderator of Thursday’s Palin-Biden debate. “They can watch the debate tomorrow night and make their own decisions about whether or not I’ve done my job,” Ifill told the AP.Ifill’s book The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama is coming out on Inauguration Day, and Malkin says “Ifill and her publisher are banking on an Obama/Biden win to buoy her book sales.” (In a publicity video, Ifill says her book profiles the new generation of rising black politicians including Obama, Massachusetts Gov.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama joined his Senate colleagues in asking Arbitron to delay roll-out of its new electronic ratings measurement system, the Chicago Tribune and Radio Ink report. But, judging by a statement issued yesterday by Arbitron Chairman Steve Morris, the ratings company is proceeding as scheduled with the introduction of Portable People Meters into eight new markets on Oct. 8. Arbitron is also pushing back against a proposed FCC investigation [PDF] of the PPM’s impact on broadcast diversity. A second round of comments are due at the FCC next week, according to MediaWeek.

In this week’s “Ask the Elders” column in The Concord (N.H.) Insider, “Amanda” writes in: “Dear Elders, Do you REALLY donate to public TV when they play Lawrence Welk during the fund drive?” The five responses include: “You bet I do. I love the champagne sounds of the old master and his flock of singers and players…The innocence of the mid-’50s TV was pure joy”; “Not only do these stations think we actually enjoy the programs they present during these fund drives, they make us suffer and listen to beg-a-thons every two weeks it seems”; and, directed at Amanda, “All of your music seems to be just loud and emotional, noisy, deafening.”

Listen to audio of radio consultant Mark Ramsey’s Sept. 20 keynote address at the Public Radio Programming conference here and read reactions from Louisville Public Media’s Todd Mundt and The Sound of Young America‘s Jesse Thorn. On his own blog yesterday, Ramsey offered this MediaPost piece on the future of radio as recommended reading.

NPR’s push into reinvent itself as a multimedia news organization, and the challenges of retraining its journalists and renegotiating its relationships with member stations, are examined in this in-depth feature to be published in the next edition of American Journalism Review and this Associated Press story. The AJR piece looks closely at the Knight Foundation digital media training program that’s being offered to NPR’s entire editorial staff, and it reveals some misgivings about the new demands being placed on NPR journalists. “The Knight training stuff, it just feels like running away from my job,” says All Things Considered producer Art Silverman.

NPR Music is offering an exclusive stream of Bob Dylan’s forthcoming release Tell Tale Signs. The 2-CD set, previewed in advance of its official release on Oct. 7, is the 8th installment of Dylan’s Bootleg Series. It features alternate versions of songs recorded during sessions for Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind, as well as Dylan’s take on “32-30 Blues” by Robert Johnson. Dylan fans who joined NPR Community, the brand-new social network, began posting comments late last night, 30 minutes before the stream went live.

NPR.org is “late to this game” of launching its own online community, writes Dick Meyer, editorial director, in a blog posting about the social media network that went live today. He attributes NPR’s caution to the desire to “do it right” and create a useful and friendly discourse between users and NPR staff. “We are not launching the project to get more ‘hits’ that will make more money. We are doing it because it is the respectful thing to do for the NPR community.”

Two non-profits established to preserve local public radio service made some progress last week. Wasatch Public Media completed the purchase of Salt Lake City’s KCPW-FM, long time sister station to KPCW in Park City, and Rhode Island’s attorney general set some conditions in approving the pending sale of WRNI-AM. Buyer Rhode Island Public Radio took over operations of the state’s two AM pubradio outlets last month under agreement with the seller, Boston University’s WBUR.

Broadcasting & Cable reports that the Senate Commerce Committee approved President Bush’s slate of CPB Board nominees late last week, but two Democrats on the panel voted against the renomination of former chair Cheryl Halpern.

As Hurricane Ike swirled toward the Texas coast on Friday, Sept. 12, more than 20 staffers of HoustonPBS and KUHF-FM hunkered down in the Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting on the University of Houston campus with their dogs, cats, children and ...

NPR has hired a new digital media chief: Kinsey Wilson, executive editor of USA Today and usatoday.com since 2005. He joins NPR on Oct. 20 as senior v.p. and g.m. of digital media. Wilson helped lead the merger of USA Today‘s newspaper and online newsrooms in 2005, the same year that he discussed the impact of technology on the news business in this Online NewsHour interview.

Young British actor Matthew Goode, who starred as Charles Ryder in Julian Jarrold’s recent Brideshead Revisited movie in theaters, starts Oct. 5 as host of Masterpiece Contemporary, the upcoming third sub-series in the imported drama series on PBS, WGBH announced. Goode has already acted in Masterpiece presentations My Family and Other Animals and Inspector Lynley and Miss Marple mysteries. In theaters, he has acted in Woody Allen’s Match Point and Scott Frank’s The Lookout, and will play the villain in Zack Snyder’s Watchmen next March.

Explaining that she “was continually thwarted to do the job I was hired to do,” Nicole Sawaya announced yesterday that she had resigned as executive director of Pacifica Radio. Sawaya, who had given the job a second chance after quitting for several months last winter, said she gave the Pacifica National Board notice Aug. 3 that she would be out of the budget by Sept. 30. In the form of a letter to the late Pacifica founder Lewis Hill, Sawaya regretted the present state of the lefty pubradio net, which she said has “dysfunctional” governance, “shoddy and opaque” business practices and a work force that includes both “dedicated and smart” broadcasters as well as those who merely protect their self interest and resist change.

Five months before all TV broadcasting goes digital, Public Telecommunications Facilities Program is still spending $9 million of its $19 million grant pool on digital conversion of 31 pubTV grantees, according to the Commerce Department announcement on Thursday. Among the 110 grants, 20 will extend pubcast service to new areas, including the first pubTV service to Great Falls, Mont., and Canton, N.C. To keep stations on air in emergencies, PTFP made 12 grants to assist the installation of electrical generators or uninterruptible power supply systems at six pubradio stations and 15 pubTV stations. Here’s the complete list of grants.

CPB and the Association of Independents in Radio announced today a $400,000 grant program to encourage independent producers to try bold projects that have one foot in broadcasting and the other in new media (though with broadcast dominant). AIR will administer the grant program, Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0, which will spend $20,000 to $40.000 on each of about a dozen projects. Ingrid Lakey, former e.p. of Justice Talking and once p.d. of WETA-FM, will head the project as talent manager. AIR posted this Q&A.