Sesame Workshop has asked the Obama for America campaign to remove an online ad that contains a cameo appearance from its Big Bird character. The 31-second video plays off GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s statement during the recent debates that he would end funding to PBS. The spot says Romney implies that “it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about, it’s Sesame Street,” comparing Big Bird to disgraced financiers including Bernie Madoff. In response, Sesame Workshop, nonprofit home to Sesame Street, posted that it is a “nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns.

The series covered the 30th anniversary of the year the Centers for Disease Control reported that five previously healthy young men in Los Angeles had come down with a rare lung disease, later identified as HIV. For The California Report series, Scott Shafer interviewed medical researchers and activists involved in the early days of the epidemic. Established in 1993 to recognize excellence in journalism about issues related to the LGBT community, the NLGJA’s Excellence in Journalism Awards were presented at the UNITY 2012 Convention and NLGJA Awards Reception Aug. 3 in Las Vegas. The UNITY: Journalists, Inc. coalition consists of the NLGJA, the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Native American Journalists Association.

Presented by AAJA Minnesota, the Leadership in Diversity Award honors someone who has made great strides in promoting and demonstrating diversity in the news industry. Worthington, managing director of MPR News since 2006, received the honor based on his commitment to developing the next generation of journalists, his efforts to bring more diverse voices to MPR News and his support for groups such as AAJA, even during challenging economic times. “In my mind, a commitment to newsroom diversity and accurate coverage always starts at the top,” said Tom Horgen, AAJA Minnesota chapter president, “and Chris has shown time and again that he has a thoughtful and unwavering passion for these issues.”

DEI gives its Benchmarks Award each year to a consistently top-performing station in terms of net revenue per hour of listening. While the median station raises .95 cents in underwriting revenue per listener-hour, HPR last year sold 2.25 cents per listener-hour — all handled by HPR’s single underwriting salesperson. In presenting the award, Robin Turnau, president and c.e.o. of Vermont Public Radio and DEI treasurer, cited HPR’s peculiar challenges. “Their location is one of the top vacation destinations in the world. They deal daily with the challenges of serving a transient population, while raising funds from a permanent listenership where the local median income is only modest, while the cost of living is extraordinarily high,” said Turnau, noting that HPR’s net-revenue-per-listener-hour stat put it in the top 10 percent of DEI surveys for both membership and mid-level giving.

Since becoming WPR’s director of membership director in 2005, Rebecca Dopart has upped membership revenue by 30 percent — from $5 million to $6.5 million — and increased the number of donors from 40,000 to almost 49,000. Since she assumed the additional title of director of corporate support two years ago, sales have risen nearly 30 percent, to around $1.8 million. “She turned a team that suffered from low morale into one that has sold so many spots that their underwriting rates had to be increased and new avails created,” said Gordon Bayliss, v.p. of sales and marketing at WBFO-FM/WNED-FM/WNED-TV in Buffalo, N.Y.,

Maria Hinojosa, reporter and anchor for PBS, NPR and CNN, was selected by a panel of eight judges who cited “the courage and independence she has shown over the course of her career reporting on those whose stories might not otherwise make it into the mainstream media.” The anchor/executive producer of NPR’s long-running Latino USA and anchor of Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One from WGBH/La Plaza was hailed for more than 25 years of reporting on the marginalized and powerless in the U.S. and overseas. In 2010 Hinojosa launched the nonprofit Futuro Media Group, which produces multiplatform, community-based journalism. And in 2011, she became the first Latina to anchor a PBS Frontline report, “Lost in Detention,” which probed the issues of deportation and immigrant detention and abuse.

The Public Radio Program Directors Association gave its 2012 Don Otto Award to audience researcher Peter Dominowski, who co-founded PRPD in 1987. PRPD bestowed the award Sept. 13 in Las Vegas, where it observed its 25th anniversary as an organization. Dominowski is president of Market Trends Research, a market-research company based in Matheson, Colo. In presenting the award, Jeff Hansen, p.d. at Seattle’s KUOW, cited Dominowski’s many focus groups and research studies, and his work with the Morning Edition Grad School training sessions for stations and as a member of the Strategic Programming Partners consultancy. “His work has improved the listening experience for millions of our audience members around the country,” Hansen said.

PBS topped all the other broadcast networks, as runners-up ABC and CBS each won seven. POV’s “Last Train Home,” a film about Chinese migrant workers who go home to celebrate New Year’s, won in two categories — best documentary and outstanding business and economic reporting (long form) — while “Armadillo,” which tracked Danish soldiers in Afghanistan, was cited for editing in the documentary and long form category. Also in the long-form category, “Enemies of the People,” which examined Cambodia’s killing fields, won for outstanding investigative journalism; and “Where Soldiers Come From,” about National Guard recruits from northern Michigan, was cited for its continuing coverage of a news story.

Masterpiece has signed a co-production deal with BBC World America for two titles. The eight-episode, hourlong Victorian-era series The Paradise finds a young shop girl navigating her way through the power struggles behind the scenes in Britain’s first department store. And The Lady Vanishes, a 90-minute film, is an adaptation of the 1930’s thriller about a woman aboard a train who unwittingly becomes embroiled in a dangerous plot. In the Oct. 9 announcement, Masterpiece Executive Producer Rebecca Eaton said the two are “the latest in a long line of beautifully-made, award-winning co-productions. The BBC has been our trusted partner, and fellow public broadcaster, for over 40 years.”

As a Masterpiece production competing against other miniseries, movies and specials, Great Expectations received Emmys for outstanding achievement in costume design (Annie Symons, Yvonne Duckett), art direction (David Roger, Paul Ghirardani, Jo Kornstein), main title design (Nic Benns, Rodi Kaya, Tom Browich) and cinematography (Florian Hoffmeister). In addition, the Masterpiece production Page Eight won an Emmy for original main title theme music (Paul Englishby). Other PBS winners included the Independent Lens production Have You Heard From Johannesburg, a seven-part series about the global anti-apartheid movement that received a juried award for exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking.

In the first of a two-part interview on the NetNewsCheck website, Planet Money reporters Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg talk to writer Michael Depp about what he calls the “curious, humane, approachable style” of the multimedia team covering the global economy for pubradio. Exactly what the program is continues to evolve, Blumburg said. “We’ve been searching for the one word answer. We’re an economics reporting unit, a project. What is the core thing that we do? That’s the question we’re asking all the time.” “Do we want to do more cohesive projects where there’s a huge digital component and there’s an audio component and they’re all working together.

The Lyda Hill Foundation has donated $1 million to Dallas pubcaster KERA to expand regional news coverage. The donation comes on the heels of the foundation’s 2011 support for KERA’s reporting on health and science issues that included sponsorship of the station’s weekly “Health Checkup” segment. The Lyda Hill Foundation focuses on funding organizations “that make game-changing advances in nature and science research.” “As a KERA viewer, listener and donor, I recognized the importance of funding such a vital community resource,” Hill said in a prepared statement. “This gift is also meant to inspire others to support the kind of local news stories and reporting not found anywhere else in North Texas.”