The 2013 budget approved by the NPR Board Sept. 14 projects a $5.1 million operating deficit, with expenses adding up to $185.5 million and revenues projected at $180.4 million. Management plans to cover the shortfall with working capital and operating reserves. The 2013 spending plan anticipates a 5 percent gain in sponsorship income, which fell far behind projections this year. NPR expects to close fiscal 2012, which ends Sept. 30, with a $6 million shortfall that’s primarily attributable to a decline in corporate sponsorship, according to Dana Davis Rehm, senior v.p. for marketing, communications and external relations. After hitting a new record in underwriting income in fiscal 2011, NPR overestimated sponsorship revenue for this year, Rehm said.

An audit by the CPB Inspector General’s Office of Pundit Productions, the nonprofit that operated a public radio news bureau on Capitol Hill until its shutdown last fall, found violations of several CPB grant requirements and recommended that Pundit return more than $35,000 in grant monies. At CPB management’s request, the IG examined how Pundit spent a $300,000 grant provided by CPB in 2011 for a “transition project” intended to develop a long-term business plan and pricing model. The nonprofit bureau, run by Melinda Wittstock, relied heavily on CPB’s assistance, receiving grants totalling $2.3 million since its start-up in 2003. For the 2011 grant, CPB covered slightly less than half of the $688,036 budget for the business planning.

Madeleine Brand has left KPCC “in order to pursue other career opportunities,” the station announced today (Sept. 21). Stepping in for her on Monday is Alex Cohen, the Pasadena, Calif., station’s local anchor for All Things Considered and Marketplace. In August, KPCC announced it was revamping The Madeleine Brand Show, which had premiered in September 2010, as Brand & Martinez, adding another hour and former ESPN newscaster A Martinez as co-host. The expansion was backed by CPB’s $1.8 million grant to the station in December 2011 for reporting and programming for and about Latinos and other minority listeners.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – At a forum of leading public media professionals, participants expressed mixed feelings about whether public media can, or should, replace newspapers as primary gatherers of news. At the fourth Public Media Futures forum, held Thursday at Bloomberg’s offices in San Francisco, more than two dozen public media professionals debated whether the industry’s non-broadcast capabilities are robust enough to allow it to fill the role of a daily newspaper. In some respects, public broadcasting websites have already moved into the up-to-the-minute newsgathering space. Kinsey Wilson, executive v.p. and chief content officer at NPR, said NPR.org functions much like a newspaper website, with breaking news, a story flow that shifts multiple times a day and large quantities of original content apart from radio pieces rewritten for the Web.

The fourth in a series of Public Media Futures forums exploring the next steps for public broadcasting will be streamed live from San Francisco from 8 a.m. to noon Pacific Time Thursday (Sept. 20). This meeting will focus on new research on the future of news, information and public-service media online and on mobile devices, with special attention to the technological requirements for pubcasters’ objectives over the next five years. The more than 30 participants include Kinsey Wilson, chief content officer, NPR; Carol Varney, managing director, Bay Area Video Coalition; Olivia Ma, news and politics manager, YouTube; Chris Satullo, news director, WHYY; Brant Houston, chair, Investigative News Network; Linda Fantin, director of network journalism, American Public Media; and Stephen Engleberg, managing editor, ProPublica.

The Hawaii Independent began as a small for-profit corporation five years ago. But earlier this year the news venture morphed into a co-op, offering both subscriptions and ownership benefits. “In the past two years,” Publisher Ikaika Hussey tells MediaShift, “one of our newspapers bought the other one and then it was bought by a Canadian company. So there was the feeling of a loss of a local institution. We need an institution that’s going to be here for the long haul. And I think the only way to do that is still the community-owned, truly community-owned institution — not just one that’s owned by a person of large wealth.

Todd Mundt, editorial director of NPR’s Digital Services, is concerned for the future of public radio. “I think there’s great opportunity,” he tells Nieman Journalism Lab’s Andrew Phelps, “but what I’m afraid of is that many stations won’t embrace the opportunity and they will have the emperor-has-no-clothes moment. They will be revealed as rather pedestrian repeaters of national content.”

Audio from last week’s Public Radio Program Directors conference in Las Vegas is now available on PRPD’s website, including the keynote address by June Cohen, executive producer for TED Media; a Q&A with content chiefs Kinsey Wilson of NPR and David Kansas of American Public Media; and the closing address by NPR “founding mother” Linda Wertheimer. Not all of the recordings are freely available, however — only PRPD members can access recordings of the conference’s breakout sessions. PRPD’s David Hollis has also posted photos from PRPD on Flickr. I’m sifting through my notes from the conference and will have a wrap-up coming your way soon, plus additional coverage inspired by conference conversations in weeks to come.

Independent Lens just announced that actor Stanley Tucci will be this season’s host. This year, the 11th season of the documentary showcase, now on Monday nights, also will join 62 broadcasters in 180 countries to present “Why Poverty,” a series focusing on the global problem.

Chicago Tribune columnist Rick Kogan will serve as interim host for WBEZ’s The Afternoon Shift, in the wake of Steve Edwards’ announcement he’s leaving the station, reports Time Out Chicago media writer Robert Feder. Edwards departs Friday (Sept. 21) for the Institute of Politics at University of Chicago. Kogan starts Sept. 24 and will fill in “for a month or two,” Feder says, as the pubradio station conducts a nationwide search for Edwards’ permanent replacement.

WNET has renewed its national weekly newmag, Need to Know, through June 2013. Marc Rosenwasser, series executive producer, said in a statement that he thinks the formerly hourlong program “has really hit its stride,” adding that its current single-story, 30-minute format “gives us an opportunity to go very deeply into important topics that don’t get as much time as they deserve on many commercial news magazines.” Original Need to Know reporting includes stories on Christian persecution in Iraq, the aftermath of the revolution in Egypt, renewable energy in Germany and war crime tribunals in Cambodia. Partnering with the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute, the program produced two half hours documenting widespread abuses in the Border Patrol, leading to Congressional calls for action and a federal grand jury investigation.

Dennis Adkins, the executive director of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, will retire Dec. 21, according to the Charleston Gazette. The announcement came after an hourlong executive session of the Educational Broadcasting Authority on Thursday (Sept. 13), and after “months of Adkins being at odds with authority members over finances and the future of public broadcasting in the state,” the newspaper said. West Virginia Public Broadcasting faces a 7.5 percent state funding for 2013-14, amounting to a $420,000 reduction. In August, Adkins had proposed some $200,000 in cuts that included dropping APTS membership. He’s been at the station since 2007. Board members also directed the chair to begin a search for Adkins’ replacement, and  appoint a task force to study the future of public broadcasting.

Detroit’s WDET admitted in an August letter to donors that it used suspect advertising tactics in on-air fundraising spots promoting an ambitious music-restoration campaign.

Six new professional directors have been elected to the PBS Board in nationwide member-station voting that concluded at the end of August. New members are Tom Karlo, g.m., KPBS in San Diego; Linda O’Bryon, president, South Carolina Public Television; and Brian Sickora, president, WSKG, Binghamton, N.Y. Members returning for a second term are Jon Abbott, president, WGBH, Boston; Jack Galmiche, president, Nine Network of Public Media, St. Louis; and Lloyd Wright, president, WFYI, Indianapolis, Ind. Each will serve a three-year term, beginning Oct. 26 at the fall board meeting.

NPR White House Correspondent Ari Shapiro sparked an interesting journalistic debate Tuesday (Sept. 11) with two of his tweets from a campaign event for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney: “As a reporter I’m torn about joining in the pledge of allegiance/national anthem at rallies. I’m a rally observer, not a participant.” Then: “Yet most reporters around me stand for the anthem & pledge. I’m one of the few that doesn’t. Setting myself up for accusations I guess.” “I expected a flood of vitriol,” Shapiro writes on NPR.org. “Instead, a thoughtful Twitter dialogue unfolded about what it means to be a journalist, what it means to be American, and what role the Pledge of Allegiance plays in our society.”