Fellowships galore for public radio reporters: a Knight Fellowship from Stanford University for Andrea Bernstein at WNYC in New York; a Knight-Wallace Fellowship from the University of Michigan for NPR’s Anthony Brooks; and a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Clark Boyd of The World.

Todd Mundt assesses this week’s New Realities forum for public radio halfway through and finds enough “mediocrity buttressed by self-satisfaction . . . to last me a lifetime.” Consultant Rob Paterson, who helped organize the conference, responds that he saw “evidence of a shift in culture to a more self-sufficient, confident and adult way of being” at the end of the event. More observations from Paterson on his blog and on a New Realities blog of opinions, photos and reports. One new blog to come out of the event: HD Public Radio.

Laura Cantrell, a musician and a DJ on WFMU-FM in Jersey City, N.J., contemplates the art of conjuring a distinct atmopshere on radio, whether the host is live or recorded. Along the way she makes examples of public radio’s Garrison Keillor, Eddie Stubbs and Vin Scelsa.

Louis Rukeyser, 73, died Tuesday after a long struggle with a rare bone marrow cancer. The son of one of the first financial columnists in U.S. newspapers, he became the first financial reporting star in TV. “He was the franchise — proof that the star system worked even for PBS,” said media professor Douglas Gomery in the Baltimore Sun. Rukeyser outlived the new version of Wall Street Week devised by Maryland Public Television to replace his original WSW, which he hosted for 32 years. Rukeyser refused to take a reduced role in the new program planned by MPT.

The contextual ads that pbs.org began introducing in January will begin expanding onto more of its websites, Cindy Johanson tells paidcontent.org. “Once we have more inventory in place, we see sponsored links as one of several strategies to help generate revenue,” Johanson writes in an e-mail Q&A.

Two of the San Francisco Bay Area’s five public TV stations — San Francisco’s KQED-TV/FM and KTEH– announced they are merging into a new nonprofit, Northern California Public Broadcasting. KQED’s Jeff Clarke will be president. Both stations are in good financial shape, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The combo also includes TV station KCAH in Monterey and KQEI-FM in Sacramento. Mergers in public TV have been rare. Two recent ones involved New York’s WNET, which combined with neighbor WLIW in 2001 and acquired control of WXEL in Palm Beach, Fla., this year. In 1994, Seattle’s KCTS took responsibility for a KYVE in Yakima, Wash.

Edtech expert Andy Carvin hosts PBS’s new blog for K-12 educators, learning.now. Carvin’s first column, posted today, challenges school districts to develop more reasonable approaches to filtering Internet content.

The Berkman Center and the Stanford Center for Internet and Society have published an online legal guide to podcasting. Writes Lawrence Lessig in the foreword: “Something fantastic has changed: technology now invites the widest range of citizens to become speakers and creators. It is time that the law remove the unnecessary burdens that it imposes on this creativity.”

Kilgore College in Texas decided to sell its public radio station to a religious broadcaster in part because its audience growth had stagnated and few of its members lived near the college. “What obligation does the board have to expend college funds to bring a service well beyond its service area or tax district?” asks Kilgore College President Bill Holda in the Longview News-Journal.

The Washington Post‘s Rob Pegoraro reviews HD Radio: “Seeing this technology inch its way into the market is getting to be as frustrating as trying to find some originality on your FM dial.” Mark Ramsey links to Pegoraro’s article and comments: “For the life of me, I don’t understand why we’re planting receivers with print guys.”

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports on the return of public radio’s American Routes to a damaged city and a new home there. “The question we’re all facing with the culture so disrupted is how we’ll make a living — not just financially, but how will we live here and feel whole?” says host Nick Spitzer.

“This thing called public radio is a club, and they’re not trying to let everybody in,” says Tavis Smiley in a Washington Post profile that touches on his disagreements with NPR and with WAMU-FM in Washington, D.C., which airs his show at 2 a.m. (Related coverage in Current from 2003.)

Consultant Robert Paterson shares some thoughts about public radio’s New Realities forum, which takes place Monday and Tuesday in Washington, D.C. “For many who will attend, the issue is much more than the survival and health of public radio but the survival of the last large media space in America that can be trusted,” he writes.

Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media said yesterday it’s creating a new Center for Innovation in Journalism, which will further develop its Public Insight Journalism system. APM’s national programs are now starting to use PIJ after three years’ development at MPR. In a Nieman Foundation report (PDF) last year, Michael Skoler, the MPR news exec who will direct the new center, described the system that uses Internet and database technologies to gather a large pool of volunteer news sources. MPR raised $2.25 million for the project in its capital campaign and topped the new wing of its St. Paul headquarters with a meeting room designed for in-person gatherings of PIJ sources.

Mara Liasson, filling in this week as NPR’s Mixed Signals blogger, says she was “jolted” by a MasterCard ad — uh, underwriting credit — packaged with the web-only All Songs Considered.