The nation’s capital will pick up a new commercial news/talk station that’s described in The Washington Post as “NPR on caffeine.” The Post, in fact, will program the station and previously sought a similar partnership with the city’s WETA-FM.

Broadcast technicians represented by NABET Local 31 voted to reject “best and final” contract proposals offered separately by PBS and NPR. To pressure PBS to reconsider its offer, the union plans to appeal to workers to withhold their donations to PBS stations, according to the Washington Times.

By the end of 2006, WGBH aims to raise $40 million for its new headquarters under construction in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood, according to its website. Included is a $10 million endowment to cover operating costs of a planned event hall, a 200-seat theater and other new spaces. Also online: a live webcam showing construction, architect’s renderings and the plan’s eco-friendliness. [Earlier Current article.]

Public Radio International named Alisa Miller its new president. Miller formerly served as senior v.p. of PRI’s content wing and joined the corporation in 2001.

Looking back to a Sept. 30 segment on PBS’s Now, correspondent Maria Hinojosa did “some good work” providing insights into FEMA’s post-Katrina Gulf Coast problems, writes PBS ombudsman Michael Getler, but he’s troubled by her unsupported claim that FEMA had treated Florida much better in 2004 because it was a swing state in an election year. A segment on Rep. Tom DeLay’s legal problems was also “noticeably one-sided.” In the stories, Getler says, Now‘s valuable reporting is diminished by unnecessary “political touches” and the omission of even a file clip of DeLay’s self-defense.

A New York Times feature contrasts next week’s PBS doc, Country Boys, with predictable accounts of the poverty cycle. “Everyone wants things to be all black and white, but with me everything is nuance,” Sutherland says. Shot in 1999-01, the project debuts Jan. 9 on Frontline. The filmmaker estimates it’s “a half-million dollars over budget, and two and a half years late.” Current profiled the project and two other Appalachian doc series in 2004. Sutherland is known for the earlier observational doc, The Farmer’s Wife, aired in 1998. Sutherland says he still gets 30 e-mails a week about that series.

Seven listeners have sued Detroit pubradio station WDET for fraud, claiming they were tricked into pledging for a music-oriented station in October while management was planning to switch its daytime schedule to national news programming, the Detroit Free Press reported. The change took place Dec. 13. The worst time to make such a switch is after a pledge drive, commented Chicago Public Radio’s Torey Malatia, quoted in the Chicago Tribune. Via Romenesko.

StoryCorps, the oral history project launched by pubradio producer David Isay, has announced 2006 stops for its two traveling audio studios. One MobileBooth visited Gulfport, Miss., earlier this month and the other will come to New Orleans in May. The project has taped nearly 2,000 personal stories in 26 cities so far. Booths also operate at Grand Central Terminal and the World Trade Center in Manhattan.

The bones of former Masterpiece Theater host Alistair Cooke were illegally sold after his death, reports the New York Times. “At this point, we’re just reeling,” said his daughter. “It’s so horrific on so many fronts.”

NPR’s reporting is less liberal than critics charge, and The Newshour with Jim Lehrer hews close to the political center, according to a forthcoming study of media bias led by a political scientist at the University of California Los Angeles.

“I believe NPR relies too much on think tanks in general and on conservative think tanks in particular — especially when it comes to economics, and defense policy issues,” writes NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin, clarifying views expressed in his previous column.

The format change at Detroit’s WDET-FM is “a very risky move,” says former General Manager Caryn Mathes in the Detroit Metro Times.

PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler faults producers of Now for their handling of a Nov. 18 field report about wages paid to Latino electricians hired for reconstruction work in New Orleans. Complaints about the report from BE&K Inc., the subcontractor whose wage and hiring practices were examined, and the producer’s response are posted on Now‘s website.

Meanwhile, CPB Ombudsman Ken Bode faults Getler for being too easy on PBS and producers of Breaking the Silence: Children’s Stories in Getler’s Dec. 2 critique.

Students at Swarthmore College and pubradio veteran Marty Goldensohn are producing War News Radio, a show about Iraq reported entirely from stateside. “We thought we were at a disadvantage not being on the ground in Iraq,” a student tells The New Yorker. “But when you hear from reporters there that they can’t even leave their hotels you start to think.”