For the professional media, Public Insight Journalism is the way it can remain relevant [RealPlayer audio file], says Michael Skoler of Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media in an interview with Bob Garfield of On the Media. MPR is sharing the online/database system for expanding journalists’ sources with several other pubradio stations. In Current, Skoler describes five ways PIJ helps reporters do their job better.

A Los Angeles Times writer examines the conservative’s distaste for A Prairie Home Companion. “With the arrival of Robert Altman’s new film ‘A Prairie Home Companion,’ Keillor and ‘APHC’ have the opportunity to be hated by a much wider audience,” he writes.

Hear what happens when an NPR producer processes the network’s programming through a Dada filter.

Here’s another chance for public broadcasters to demonstrate their trustworthiness … or not. Even Advertising Age says: “Something’s rotten with the state of media.” In a survey of 266 senior marketing execs cited by the magazine, almost half said they’ve paid for product placement in glossy periodicals, TV or other media. Ad Age has reported that auto marketers are pushing hard for paid placements.

The House Appropriations committee restored $20 million to CPB’s 2007 funding, but didn’t alter its proposals to eliminate $104.5 million in federal aid for digital conversion and edtech programs, report the Los Angeles Times and Broadcasting & Cable. The committee also declined to provide a 2009 advance appropriation for CPB.

Another change to the PBS executive ranks: Los Angeles-based Co-Chief Programmer Jacoba Atlas will leave her job at the end of the month, reports the New York Times. John Wilson, programming co-chief working at PBS headquarters, keeps his job and will report to Boland. Wilson’s claim to fame, according to the Washington Post‘s Lisa de Moraes, is being “the guy who moved Masterpiece Theatre from Sunday.”

John Boland, executive v.p. of San Francisco’s KQED-TV/FM, will join PBS in September as chief content officer. His hiring, announced at today’s PBS Board meeting, is the first change to PBS’s executive ranks since President Paula Kerger signed on in March.

“New-media’s consumer-supported business model is not much different from public broadcasting’s long-standing membership pledges and corporate sponsorships,” observes media writer Diane Mermigas in a column examining the challenges ahead for PBS.

Robert Conrad, president of WCLV-FM in Cleveland, says the technological shortcomings of HD Radio “[are] really very discouraging and [are] leading us to wonder why we should bother to promote HD. To do so will only disappoint, and, perhaps, antagonize a significant segment of the audience who finds that the system doesn’t deliver.” (Via The Future of Radio.)

Charlie Rose returns to his round table tonight after emergency heart surgery interrupted on overseas trip in March, AP reports. Topic No. 1 will be heart surgery. Guest hosts have included WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, ABC’s Barbara Walters, NBC’s Brian Williams, CBS’s Bob Schieffer and The New Yorker‘s David Remnick. Interviews from his show are available on demand for 99 cents each through Google Video.

James Barrett, NPR’s first public relations director and a former director of public information for New York’s WNET, died of pneumonia June 4 in Fairfax, Va., according to the Washington Post. He was 75.

Board members and senior staffers are running the Public Radio Partnership in Louisville, Ky., in the absence of a permanent president, reports the Courier-Journal. The article details further strife among staff and members of the board, with one member resigning last month and two others stirring up controversy.

As pubcasting girds for another fight over federal funding, the Washington Times asks “public TV insiders of a conservative bent” whether the rightward cause they championed has been lost.

National Endowment for the Humanities announced yesterday $5 million in TV grants to projects including WETA’s four-hour The Jewish Americans; WGBH’s We Shall Remain, a five-parter on Native American history; and KCET’s three-hour In the Name of God and King: The Spanish Empire. The broadcast projects were among 171 receiving aid. Details were posted online, organized by grantees’ states: Alabama to Illinois (10-page PDF), Indiana to New Mexico (9-page), and New York to Wyoming (11-page).

KTOO in Juneau, Alaska, is buying two FM stations to offer a wider selection of programming. It already operates one FM outlet — the most listened-to station in Juneau, it says. The broadcaster will consult with listeners as it works out the stations’ formats.