One musical voice gaining ground on public radio sounds a little scruffier than the rest. Rather than a viola or sax, it bears a six-string axe and a heavier backbeat than your average chamber ensemble. Triple-A, an eclectic format that blends rock, folk, blues, world music and other genres, has already proven popular and lucrative for stations such as New York’s WFUV, Philadelphia’s WXPN and southern California’s KCRW. But smaller stations in fly-over country, inspired by the format’s major-market success, are also displacing jazz and classical music for newer musical genres that carry themselves like outsiders. As a result, listeners may be tuning in to the sultry lilt of young chanteuse Norah Jones or the twang of O Brother blues rather than Mozart and Gershwin.

How should NPR handle the sticky situation of reporting on itself? Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin takes on the question in his “Media Matters” column.

The Boston Phoenix profiles Christopher Lydon as he prepares to launch his new public radio show, The Whole Wide World. (Via MediaNews.)

“At first, he glanced at the tube only occasionally while doing homework. Then Mamie Till Mobley began describing the condition of her son’s body after it was pulled from the Tallahatchie River near Money, Miss.” A Washington Post columnist describes watching PBS’s “The Murder of Emmet Till” with his 13-year old son.

The South Bend Tribune previews Shades of Gray, an hourlong documentary on abortion airing this month on public radio stations. Lee Burdorf, p.d. at South Bend’s WVPE-FM, calls it “one of the best radio productions I’ve heard in my life.”

An angry WTTW staff confronted President Dan Schmidt about the company-owned Lexus he drives in the wake of last week’s layoffs of 16 colleagues, reports the Chicago Reader (second item).

“A clear sign that Armageddon is near: The ballroom, at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel, was easily twice as full for [WB reality show featuring washed-up celebs] “Surreal Life” as for “Becoming American” on PBS with Bill Moyers.” So writes the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s Jill Vejnoska of this year’s Television Critics Association tour.

Tampa’s WUSF-FM plans to convert to digital broadcasting within the next few weeks, making it one of the first public radio stations to go digital. In other digital radio news, NPR is teaming up with Harris and Kenwood to test the secondary audio channels the new technology allows.

Listeners may have booed NPR’s recent comedy miniseries on Morning Edition, but On the Media‘s extended parody of pubradio drew an “overwhelmingly positive” reaction, at least according to hosts Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield. The Jan. 2 parody needles lefty commentors and toadying general managers with equal glee and intense audio detail. Gladstone and Garfield later read the viewer mail.

WLRN-FM is weighing a newsroom partnership with the Miami Herald, reports the Miami New Times.

The Houston Chronicle reports on a Texas appeals court hearing of the Frontline jury taping case.

Media reporter and critic Mark Jurkowitz slams public radio in today’s Boston Globe, accusing NPR President Kevin Klose and WBUR General Manager Jane Christo of dodging and patronizing supporters of Israel who say the network’s reporting is biased. [Earlier article from Current about WBUR and its pro-Israel critics.]

A new CPB-backed website for producers offers guidance on enhancing education in public TV programs. It includes case studies that assess educational outreach strategies for recent PBS series and specials.

Joanne Kaufman writes in The New York Times of her 11-year-old son’s love for radio, which includes public radio. Writes Kaufman, “If I were not afraid of going out on a limb, I would say that he likes Scott Simon almost as much as Scott Simon does.”

Documentary producer and director Jaime Kibben died Jan. 11 in a car accident in Tel Aviv. Kibben worked as a sound engineer for PBS’s NewsHour from 1990 to 1996.