The latest package of public radio fundraising premiums allows devout listeners to temporarily brand their passion for their favorite shows on their forearms — or elsewhere. A set of eight rub-on tattoos in colorful vintage designs tout the titles On the Media, Fresh Air, Morning Edition, All Things Considered and This American Life. They’re offered to stations by longtime pubcasting premium distributor VisABILITY in Lyons, Colo. The temporary tattoos are the second to be created for listeners who want to express their support for public radio through body art. Ira Glass, whose cleverness in creating pledge-drive premiums helped to build station carriage for This American Life when it was a new public radio series, first approached  VisABILITY owners Janice Gavan and John Burke about pubradio tattoos in 1998.

KCETLink, the independent pubmedia organization created through merger six months ago between pubcaster KCET in Los Angeles and national satellite programmer Link TV, today announced 22 layoffs as a result of a reorganization. Spokesperson Ariel Carpenter told Current that the organization is not disclosing any additional information beyond the release and confirming the number of full-time job eliminations. Five vacant positions also are not being filled. The announcement also said that KCETLink would increasingly focus on “transmedia programming opportunities” for viewing on web and mobile devices. “These are challenging and transformational times that require us to make difficult financial and operational decisions for the continued health of the organization in order to create a public media organization that can grow in the 21st century,” Al Jerome, KCETLink’s c.e.o.,

Kilowatt, a 2007 novel set in community radio station KVMR in Nevada City, Calif., is now available in paperback. The story revolves around two KVMR journalists investigating an energy company with a revolutionary process for generating clean, affordable electricity, reports the Union newspaper in Grass Valley, Calif. “The book Kilowatt itself — with some characters loosely based on KVMR personalities from the ’90s era — becomes a suspenseful page-turner as the two KVMR reporters go to Texas to track down possible corporate corruption and end up getting involved with ruthless Russian mobsters, Texas oil men and dedicated reformers,” according to the newspaper.

A crowdfunding campaign launched April 15 by Public Radio International seeks $25,000 for a “Global Stories Fund” that will support 11 international stories to be presented on PRI’s The World and other news programs.

One of the five men who filed a civil complaint against Kevin Clash has withdrawn his lawsuit alleging sexual impropriety by the former Sesame Street puppeteer. On April 13, a plaintiff identified in court records as “D.O.” agreed to drop his lawsuit against Clash. Jeff Herman, one of the attorneys representing D.O. and four additional plaintiffs, said the decision was not the result of an out-of-court settlement. “My client decided to dismiss his lawsuit so that he can focus on his career,” Herman said in a statement. “[D.O.] originally filed to support the other victims and to stand up for himself.

WPFW-FM, the Pacifica station in Washington, D.C., faces a deadline to vacate its studios at the end of month and still has no clear plan for relocating, reports the Washington City Paper. Programmers and listeners have opposed a plan to move to studios in Silver Spring, Md., that would be leased from a subsidiary of Clear Channel. Even Pacifica Interim Executive Director Summer Reese opposes the move — she’s asked WPFW’s Local Station Board to determine whether the station can back out of the sublease agreement. The building’s landlord also is questioning the lease, reportedly because Pacifica briefly lost its corporate charter earlier this year.

In a post on his website, actor Harry Shearer describes how he learned about the cancellation of his long-running show on KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif. On Monday, KCRW General Manager Jennifer Ferro told Shearer that “Le Show was being cancelled from the airwaves.” Shearer had suspected that Ferro was preparing to end the weekly program’s run on KCRW, but he was surprised by the timing, which was “‘effective immediately,’” he wrote, quoting Ferro. “Thus does public radio, in one more small way, come to resemble ever more closely commercial radio’s way of doing business,” Shearer commented. The station announced the cancellation April 15 as part of an overhaul of its weekend schedule.

The Texas Tribune, the nonprofit public policy journalism website that recently received a $1.5 million Knight Foundation grant, is the subject of an extensive piece published April 15 in the Columbia Journalism Review.

Tonight’s special edition of Greater Boston from WGBH, focused on the shocking bomb blasts at Monday’s Boston Marathon, will be distributed nationally on the World Channel, the public TV multicast service produced by WGBH and distributed by American Public Television. WGBH spokesman Michael Raia told Current the 30-minute show will extend to an hour and begin airing at 9 p.m. Eastern time on World. In Boston, the show will be broadcast on WGBH’s primary TV station at 7 p.m., its regular timeslot. Planned guests include terrorism expert Jim Walsh, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program; Jarrett Barrios of the Red Cross, who took part in the race; and Haider Javed Warraich, a resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston who wrote an op-ed in today’s New York Times about his experience growing up amid explosions in Pakistan.

Late at night on April 15, NPR.org and several NPR-affiliated Twitter feeds were hacked into by an online Syrian counter-revolutionary movement, which vandalized the homepage and posted fake articles in protest of the network’s ongoing coverage of the Syrian civil war.