Pulitzer Prize winner Jacqui Banaszynski will lead reporting efforts as collaborations editor for American Public Media’s Public Insight Network, it announced today (Oct. 6). Banaszynski holds the Knight Chair in Editing at the University of Missouri. As a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, she won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for “AIDS in the Heartland,” an intimate look at the life and death of a Minnesota farm couple. She’s also a a former editor for The Seattle Times and The Oregonian in Portland. Banaszynski will work to expand PIN’s editorial team, as well as use the network in her journalism classes to establish a partnership between APM, the University of Missouri’s journalism school and the Donald W.

During an Oct. 4 public meeting on the pending sale of university-owned WBFO-FM to WNED, listeners called for preservation of weekend music programs and local coverage, according to the Buffalo News and ArtVoice, an alt-weekly that questions whether Buffalo will be well-served by the sale of the city’s flagship NPR station on 88.7. WNED, a public TV and radio operation owned by community licensee Western New York Public Broadcasting Association, plans to tailor WBFO’s appeal to Canadian audiences, a service strategy that has been very successful for its public TV station. The Buffalo News estimated that 80 people attended the session in WNED’s studios in downtown Buffalo “with the enthusiasm so great for local public broadcasting that the scheduled 60-minute session ran more than 80 minutes.”

Oregon Public Broadcasting will produce and provide to NPR and PBS stations exclusive coverage of a Republican presidential debate at its studios on March 19, 2012. The debate “will come at a critical time in the campaign,” said OPB President Steve Bass 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.

The freeform broadcasters of Jersey City’s WFMU are producing the first-ever Radiovision Festival in New York later this month, a weekend-long confab to highlight creativity in radio and technology’s potential to unleash it. On Oct. 29, panelists from WFMU’s own talent roster will be joined by the likes of This American Life creator Ira Glass, media innovator Kenyatta Cheese, and blogger Andy Baio of Waxy.org, among many others, for a day-long symposium on the future of radio. On “Hack Day,” Oct. 30, code-writers, digital story-tellers, musicians and others will “reinvent radio” by using WFMU’s Free Music Archive to create new programs and software applications.

PBS UK, launching Nov. 1 in Great Britain, has hired the Braben firm to handle public relations and boost brand awareness, “as it looks to target ‘upmarket adults’ under the banner ‘where television matters,'” reports PR Week. “Our job is to make the channel famous,” said Braben Director James Matheson. “We will position the channel as a British curator of American content and help it gain the trust and reputation that it enjoys in America.”

Lisa Trapani Shumate is the new executive director and general manager of Houston Public Media, the umbrella organization for the University of Houston’s KUHT-TV and its KUHF (88.7 FM) and KUHA (91.7 FM) radio stations, reports the Houston Chronicle. The university announced plans in January to merge its TV and radio stations, which employ about 165 people, to streamline operations and improve fundraising. Shumate will continue in her current post as director of programming and marketing for local CBS affiliate KHOU until assuming her new responsibilities in November. Previously, she was an executive director at Belo Corp., a Dallas-based company that owns 20 commercial broadcasting television stations and two regional 24-hour cable news television channels.

Bonnie Erbé, founder and host of To the Contrary, has had a slight setback that will delay her return to the show. Erbé took a serious spill from her horse Stand Out in a show over Memorial Day weekend (see story in the Oct. 3 issue of Current) and, after months of rehab, had hoped to be back in the host’s chair this Friday (Oct. 7). But now she’s adjusting that date a bit and is aiming to return to the air in the next two weeks. Guest hosts including Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile and former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala have been filling in.

The PBS U.K. channel will be available to viewers across the pond starting Nov. 1, Bloomberg Businessweek is reporting. The pubTV network’s first international channel, bankrolled by a Canadian entrepreneur (Current, Aug. 8, 2011), will open with an episode of Nova. The biz magazine says the PBS U.K. office in East London has four full-time employees and a dozen freelancers, and “that number may grow as the channel’s distribution and viewers expand.” While PBS has sold programs to U.K. programmers through its distribution arm, which is also helping manage the new venture, some channels have become more reluctant to use its content and what does appear isn’t clearly branded as a PBS show, said Richard Kingsbury, general manager of PBS U.K.

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and two of the show’s producers will get $100,000 in a settlement over their arrests during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, the Associated Press reports. The agreement was reached Friday (Sept. 30) in Minnesota. The cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis agreed to pay $90,000 and the federal government will pay $10,000. The lawsuit named the federal government because a Secret Service agent confiscated the press credentials of three journalists. Goodman and producers Nicole Salazaar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous were among an estimated 40 to 50 journalists arrested while covering street protests outside the convention (Current, Sept.

Lakeland Public Television in Bemidji, Minn., is seeking $3 million in state bonds for construction of a new facility, and it has the City Council’s unanimous support, according to The Bemidji Pioneer. In fact, members of the council agreed that the project should be a top priority. Lakeland plans to build a $4 million facility, with $1 million in local donations. The station has been located at Bemidji State University since it went on the air in 1980.

Salt Lake City pubradio station KCPW 88.3 is facing an Oct. 31 deadline to raise $250,000 to pay off one of two loans it took out in 2008 to purchase the station, reports the local City Weekly. If the station misses the deadline, the loan goes into default and the bank will accelerate the second loan, worth $1.8 million. “That will effectively put us out of business,” KCPW General Manager Ed Sweeney told the alt weekly. “We’ve never been in default on the loan, and we’ve been able to reduce the principle amount by $100,000 since 2008. There’s no way I can come up with $1.8 million.”

California TV personality Huell Howser, who has been with KCET in Los Angeles since 1987, is donating all past and future episodes of his show California’s Gold to Chapman University in Orange, Calif. He’s also giving the university some 300 boxes of materials related to the series including papers, ephemera and memorabilia, as well as around 1,800 books about California. The trove will be housed in the university’s Leatherby Libraries, and all episodes of the pubTV show will be digitized and made available online. “I’m so proud to have a permanent home for my life’s work at a university the caliber of Chapman, and I hope it will be used by students and the public to learn about and understand California even better,” Howser said.

FNX, the first 24-hour Native American television channel, is now on the air. First Nations Experience Television is a partnership between the San Manuel Band of Indians and KVCR, a dual licensee in San Bernardino, Calif. The FNX website says that within the next year, FNX plans to “expand and lead the way as a U.S. producer and national and global exhibitor (via the Internet and over-the air, satellite and cable broadcast systems) of authentic First Nations storytelling.” “This marks the birth of an innovative project that has been in the works for seven years now,” said Larry Ciecalone, president of KVCR/FNX.

Prohibition, the latest historical documentary from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, scored a 2.6 rating among 55 metered overnight stations for its premiere episode, “A Nation of Drunkards,” on Sunday night (Oct. 2). PBS said in a statement that’s 189 percent above the PBS overnight primetime average for the 2010-2011 season of 0.9.

Bonnie Erbe’s life took an ominous turn over Memorial Day weekend, but she doesn’t remember much of what happened. The longtime host of public TV’s To the Contrary was astride her Hanoverian horse, Stand Out, that Sunday, riding in a hunter/jumper show at the Prince George’s Equestrian Center in Upper Marlboro, Md. They approached a fence on the stadium course for a jump, but something went wrong. “The last thing I remember is hanging onto the horse’s neck and thinking, ‘Oh, no,’” Erbe said. Meanwhile in Baltimore, Cari Stein, former executive producer of the 20-year-old all-female news-analysis program, was entertaining a houseful of holiday guests, purposely ignoring her cellphone.