Accuracy in Media calls for an investigation into pubcasting’s campaign this summer to restore $100 million in CPB funding.

The parent company of Minnesota Public Radio is backing a Friendster-like social networking website aimed at public radio listeners, reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The New York Times checks in with American Routes host Nick Spitzer as he prepares a post-Katrina episode of his show. “I wanted it to be music of reflection and solace and also hope, an attempt to put some balm on this,” he says.

David Freedman, g.m. of WWOZ-FM in New Orleans, considers the future of his devastated station in an e-mail posted on WFMU’s blog: “This is much bigger than WWOZ, although this station feels like it needs to be at the forefront of the bigger issue: the decimation of a culture.”

Now, the PBS news magazine hosted by David Brancaccio, will produce a one-hour town-hall meeting on the response to Hurricane Katrina on Friday, Sept. 16. During last week’s episode, Now revisited two special reports from 2002 that examined the implications of the disappearing Mississippi River Delta and the danger that hurricane flood waters could drown New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina literally hit close to home for NPR and ABC news commentator Cokie Roberts. “All 11 houses in the Roberts family compound outside Gulfport, Miss., were destroyed,” the Philadephia Inquirer reported. “I spent a huge amount of my life on that piece of property,” Roberts told the paper. “It’s very much home.”

CPB Web resources: The corporation has posted information about the status of pubcasters affected by Hurricane Katrina; links to assistance resources for broadcasters; and Katrina-related news from NPR and PBS.

A blanket waiver approved by the FCC today allows public TV stations to raise money on-air for hurricane relief, according to America’s Public Television Stations.

CPB is giving $500,000 to stations affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Director Robert Altman is bringing his trademark improvisational style to the Prairie Home Companion-inspired film, Time reports. “When I go home at night, I know we’ve got something, but I don’t know what,” Altman says. “It’s going to be a very weird movie.”

NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin questions whether Jonah Goldberg, a conservative commentator, was a suitable fill-in for Daniel Schorr on a recent Weekend Edition Saturday.

Here it is: public radio’s new mega-directory of podcasts, at NPR’s site. It should soon appear on other station and network sites.

“Journalism can teach you a lot about narrative and detail to carry a story. But a novel has to take on its own life,” says Scott Simon as he discusses his new novel, Pretty Birds.

Listeners have been complaining that NPR is airing a glut of stories about religion, and Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin says the network should consider keeping track of the airtime devoted to the subject.

WLVT-TV in Bethlehem, Pa., is still looking to expand into radio, reports the Express-Times. An earlier effort to merge with nearby WDIY-FM failed last November.