NPR social media specialist Andy Carvin received a Knight-Batten Award for innovation in journalism. Carvin, whose job as the network’s senior social media strategist this year evolved into round-the-clock tweeting of Arab Spring protests, received a Knight Batten Award of Special Distinction honoring his pioneering use of Twitter in newsgathering. The Knight-Batten awards panel chose Storify as this year’s Grand Prize winner and honored three other innovators with Special Distinction Awards. The panel selects winners for innovative uses of new technologies in newsgathering and civic engagement. Carvin and his “Twitter community” were both cited for the award. “By using his Twitter account as a newsgathering operation, he has demonstrated how reporting can be done remotely, and created a highly engaged community of more than 50,000 Twitter followers,” said J-Lab in its award announcement.

New Hampshire Public Radio was cited for outstanding performance in fundraising. NHPR, based in Concord, ranks among the most efficient public radio outlets in converting listeners into givers, and it raises more net underwriting revenue per listener-hour than peer stations, according to DEI’s Benchmarks analysis, which evaluates fundraising performance across the public radio system. The New Hampshire network’s achievements in major-gift fundraising are especially impressive, according to Joan Kobayashi, g.m. of KMFA in Austin, Texas, who announced the award this summer during DEI’s Public Media Development and Marketing Conference in Pittsburgh. NHPR’s program for soliciting donations of $1,000 and higher has increased its revenues 60 percent over the past five years.

KJZZ, WBEZ, WBGO and KLCC led the annual contest among local pubradio newsrooms. Each took three or more first-place PRNDI awards in a competition among peer-group stations. PRNDI groups stations into tiers based on the number of full-time news staffers they employ. In division A, comprising stations with the largest newsrooms, KJZZ in Phoenix and Chicago’s WBEZ each received three top prizes. All three PRNDI awards to WBEZ recognized Inside and Out, a special series on juvenile justice that aired across a six-month period in 2010. WGBO, a news and jazz station in Newark, N.J., won six first-place awards in division B, including stations with three or four full-time journalists.

PBS Kids unveiled last week its largest offering of math-skill games for preschoolers — a cache of 40 games that can be played on computers, mobile devices and interactive whiteboards. “As the nation’s children continue to fall behind, we need to embrace new technology to help them learn,” said Lesli Rotenberg, PBS’s senior v.p., children’s media. Games include Monkey Jump from Curious George, which has kids hop along with George and count as they fill a toy-store bin with bouncing balls; Hermit Shell Crab Game from The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, in which players help the Cat, Nick and Sally fit hermit crabs into shells of corresponding sizes and patterns; and Carnival Count-off from Fizzy’s Lunch Lab, which teaches children how to estimate added sums and count by fives and tens.

Oregon Public Broadcasting will produce and provide to NPR and PBS stations exclusive coverage of a Republican presidential debate from its Portland studios March 19, 2012. The 90-minute debate “will come at a critical time in the campaign” before anyone sews up the GOP nomination, OPB President Steve Bass predicted in a memo to stations. “Super Tuesday is on March 6, but delegate counts indicate that it will not be possible for the nomination to be won by any candidate by then. Political observers believe that the nomination contest could very likely go into the late spring.” The Republican National Committee has officially sanctioned the debate, which “virtually assures the participation of the front-running candidates,” Bass said.

Producers of the progressive pubradio/TV news program Democracy Now! are receiving $100,000 to settle their federal lawsuit against police authorities over their arrests while reporting on demonstrations outside the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. Host Amy Goodman and producers Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous sued the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and the U.S. Secret Service for violating their constitutional rights to gather news independently and to be protected from unlawful search and seizure. In their 2010 suit, they also sought compensatory and punitive damages for medical expenses and damaged equipment. In addition to the cash payment, the settlement includes an agreement by the city of St.

In producing The Hidden World of Girls, the new documentary specials offered during NPR newsmags this month, producers Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva — the Kitchen Sisters — didn’t limit themselves to following the lives of five girls, as indicated erroneously in a Current brief Oct. 3. Comic writer/performer Tina Fey hosts the specials, which expand on dozens of stories “about the lives of girls all around the world and the women they become.”

“There are only so many channels for noncommercial television in the United States. If those are lost, they will never come back.”

Should preserving noncommercial television licenses be the top priority for public broadcasters, or should financially unstable public TV stations be sold, become unstaffed repeaters or allowed to die off to right-size an extensive system of stations? Independent Public Media says: Save those licenses. And it’s volunteering to take over failing pubTV stations to do just that. IPM, founded by John Schwartz, a public media activist in Colorado and founder of several stations, announced Oct. 5 that it would draw on a pot of some $40 million to save stations at risk of going dark or being sold to station operators outside of pubcasting.