NPR President Vivian Schiller’s remarks near the end of NPR Board meeting, Nov. 12, 2010. Over the last three weeks, I’ve heard from a lot of people — we all have — challenging what NPR is, what it does, and why we’re here. We’ve heard assaults on our programming, and on our objectivity. We’ve read some critical listener letters  and comments posted on NPR.org and elsewhere. We’ve heard assumptions and conjectures about what happens at NPR, and how decisions are made, or not made. Instead of the news we report being the subject of dinner table conversations, we have become the news.

Here’s early praise for WHYY’s NewsWorks from J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at American University. “I love the whole idea of it,” writes J-Lab Executive Director Jan Schaffer on her blog. “The site has more targeted entry points for community involvement than any site that has crossed my radar.” There’s Snarl, where visitors can complain; Sleuth, for digging into local mysteries; and Sixes, a challenge to sum up news stories in six words or fewer. She also likes its Flickr photostream “Eye on … ,” and a Watchdog feature that focuses on public officials. The site officially launches Nov. 15.

Doug Mitchell, the news producer who staffed NPR’s Next Generation Radio internship and training programs for years, will be project manager for the National Federation of Community Broadcasters’ CPB-funded African American Public Radio Station Services, NFCB President Maxie Jackson announced Wednesday.  After Mitchell lost his job in NPR’s mass layoff in 2009, Public Radio News Directors gave Mitchell its Leo C. Lee Award, recognizing his work encouraging young people, particularly those of color, to get into public radio. CPB documents originally named 28 stations eligible for services under the grant, but the corporation later redefined eligible grantees to comply with recent federal court rulings.

After the mediasphere firestorm and political attack over last month’s firing of news analyst Juan Williams, critics of the controversial decision by NPR management were no-shows at this morning’s public session of the NPR Board at the network’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. NPR, which received a bomb threat after Fox News host Bill O’Reilly denounced the Williams firing and declared that he was taking NPR down, had security guards checking visitors with a metal detector and inspecting their bags. Those who wished to address the board were asked to sign-in, but no one did. In his last remarks as NPR Board chair, lay director Howard Stevenson said: “Nobody is thankful for where we are, but the past is prologue, and now we have to look to the future.

In his column today (Nov. 11), Washington Post columnist George Will says that “NPR’s self-immolation” in firing Juan Williams for his public comments on Muslims is “icing on conservatism’s 2010 cake.” He goes on: “From its inception in 1967, as a filigree on Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which in 1970 begat NPR, has been a solution in search of a problem. Forty-three years later, in the context of today’s information cornucopia, ‘public’ broadcasting — its advocates flinch from candidly calling it government broadcasting — is even sillier than would be a Corporation for Public Newspapers.” “But in 2010,” Will added, “NPR became useful.

The co-chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, created by President Obama in February to help balance the budget, are recommending an end to CPB funding as of 2015, according to a draft report released today (Nov. 10). The report also advises zeroing out the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP) and the Agriculture Department’s pubcasting grant program. “The current CPB funding level is the highest it has ever been,” the draft says, and cutting it would save nearly $500 million in 2015. The 50-page explanation of proposals insists that “everything must be on the table” for cuts or elimination.

Pubcasters topped three of four electronic journalism categories in the 2010 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards announced today. NPR won for its reporting on the Gulf Oil spill; Nova ScienceNow, a series produced at WGBH in Boston, for a segment on memory research; and Chedd-Angier-Lewis Productions for their PBS series The Human Spark, produced in association with New York’s WNET. Certificates of Merit were awarded to Oregon Public Broadcasting and Chicago’s WBEZ. The awards, presented annually by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, honor professional journalists for distinguished reporting for a general audience.

KTOO-TV in Juneau, Alaska, is streaming coverage of the state’s midterm election recount to determine its next U.S. Senator. Visit the station’s 360North live feed page to take a peek at the recount “action” in Anchorage — 15 teams of election officials sitting at tables eying write-in ballots, set to a soundtrack of soothing yet determined vote-counting music. (Right click the image to enlarge.) “While we don’t expect much drama or excitement, every Alaskan will be able to watch through our cameras,” Bill Legere, KTOO’s general manager, said in a statement.

The fight over staff cuts at Berkeley’s KPFA-FM has moved from the streets to the airwaves. A Nov. 8 decision by Pacifica Foundation Executive Director Arlene Engelhardt to dismiss the staff of the KPFA Morning Show — the local program that earns the most financial support from listeners — came under immediate fire. Engelhardt proposed to replace the morning news staple with another program from Pacifica’s Los Angeles outlet, KPFK. The KPFA Morning Show team — Aimee Allison, Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Laura Prives and Esther Manilla — were ordered off the air after Monday’s program, but they managed to mount a “renegade broadcast” on Tuesday Nov.

WNED’s popular live WNED Cooks is returning after six years, the Buffalo station says. A new show on “Family Favorites” airs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Feb. 26, 2011. Viewers submit recipes, and eight will be selected to create the dish in the studio that day. All recipes are compiled in a cookbook. Eileen Koteras Elibol returns as host (Image: WNED). No word yet on whether the episode will grow into a series.

KCET in Los Angeles, which is cutting ties to PBS on Jan. 1 (Current, Oct. 18), announced early programming details to its members through a mailing this week. The Los Angeles Times reports that the station is “relying on a programming schedule that is largely available on DVD, and in some cases is decades old,” in addition to longtime local faves such as Huell Hower’s show and SoCal Connected. There’ll be several English-language shows from Japanese broadcaster NHK including NHK Newsline, a daily half-hour Asian news roundup; Asia Biz Forecast; Journeys in Japan and Your Japanese Kitchen.

Triple-A music’s 11th annual NON-COMMvention will be held next May 19-21 in a new branch of the WXPN-FM-affiliated music venue World Cafe Live, to be opened just seven weeks before in Wilmington, Del. World Cafe Live At The Queen will open April 1 after a $25-million renovation of an old downtown movie house called the Queen. WXPN and a partner opened the original World Cafe Live restaurant/bar/music hall in Philadelphia six years ago. The station, co-presenter of the NON-COMMvention (with TheTop22.com), describes the event as “the music industry conference where contemporary, noncommercial radio stations, artists and music industry professionals from all of the country convene to discover new music and discuss current industry trends.”

Colorado Public News, a nonprofit news project of Colorado Public Television/CPT12 in Denver, has received a $386,250 grant to cover the cost of reporting on healthcare for three years, it announced this week (Nov. 8). The health-oriented Colorado Trust is providing the support, which will cover a full-time health reporter to produce multimedia reports. Colorado Public News supplies weekly coverage to a network of 14 news media on several platforms: television, radio, Internet, print and mobile. Donors fund journalists in particular subject areas, including state government, science, education or the economy.

Cheryl Halpern, who headed the CPB Board from 2005 to 2007, writes about what she sees as “A last chance to save CPB” in Monday’s (Nov. 8) Congress Blog from The Hill, coming at a time of increasing calls to zero out funding for public broadcasting. “The question that Congress needs to address is not whether the national providers of public programming should be shut down,” she writes. “It’s how to reform the legislation that created these institutions, given the changing media landscape.” She said Congress should consider amending the authorizing legislation so public broadcasters are “expected to adhere strictly to measurable and definable standards of accuracy and transparency.”

A study released Monday (Nov. 8) of 54,000 American households shows that between 2001 and 2009, broadband Internet use rose sevenfold, from 9 percent to 64 percent. But “Exploring the Digital Nation: Home Broadband Internet Adoption in the United States” also reveals that significant gaps persist along racial, ethnic, and geographic lines, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Also, nearly a quarter of households did not use the Internet at home, with most of those respondents citing lack of need or interest. The report is here in PDF format. It was compiled by the NTIA and the Department of Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration.