Nonprofit newsrooms, often critical of lobbies and political players that hide their funding sources, increasingly are open about their own fiscal support. Of 60 nonprofit news orgs, surveyed last year and again this year, the number disclosing their major donors grew from 47 to 53 (from 78 percent to 88 percent), American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop said this week. The IRW survey doesn’t include public broadcasters. Its authors speculated that the gain may be related to the adoption in January of formal membership standards, including donor transparency, by the Investigative News Network, a consortium of news orgs. INN requires member news orgs to disclose donations above $1,000.

Oregon Public Broadcasting has fired KC Cowan from Oregon Art Beat. She was the original host of the show and worked on it for 10 years, according to Portland’s Willamette Week, most recently as a producer and writer for the web. “I’m deeply saddened that my relationship with OPB has come to an end,” Cowan told WW in an email. Dave Davis, OPB’s v.p. for television production, told the publication, “She no longer works here, we wish her well, and we thank her for the great work she did on Oregon Art Beat. Beyond that, we can’t say anything else.

NPR took four honors, and Minnesota Public Radio received one, in the 16th annual EPPY Awards, announced Wednesday (Nov. 30) by Editor & Publisher. The international awards recognize the best media-affilated websites in 43 categories. NPR.org won for journalism website with more than 1 million unique monthly visitors. NPR’s “Wanna Live Forever? Become A Noun” by Adam Cole and Robert Krulwich on Morning Edition also was awarded best animation on a website with more than 1 million unique monthly visitors. The enterprise/investigative video with more than 1 million unique monthly visitors was went to NPR for “Brain Wars: How The Military Is Failing Its Wounded”, an investigation with ProPublica.

The House Communications Subcommittee today (Dec. 1) approved a GOP spectrum auction bill that would give the Federal Communications Commission authority to conduct auctions and share proceeds with participating broadcasters, reports TVNewsCheck. The measure passed 17-6.

In an op-ed pegged to Gary Knell’s first day on the job as president of NPR, journalist and author Barbara Cochran urges the veteran pubcasting exec to ignore those who say public radio should shield itself from political pressures by giving up federal funding. Such a move would make a small dent in NPR’s budget — the news organization derives only 2 percent of its revenues from the congressional appropriations provided to CPB — but would do “tremendous damage” to local stations, writes Cochran, former president of the Radio and Television Digital News Association, for Huffington Post. Nearly all of the $100 million in federal funding distributed to public radio goes to 400 stations, and outlets in small markets and rural areas depend on this aid to continue operating.

Roger Ebert has pulled the plug on his movie review show, for now. “At the end of December, our public television program Ebert Presents At The Movies will go on hiatus,” he wrote Wednesday (Nov. 30) on his blog, “while we find necessary funding. This move is necessary to allow the public television stations that carry our show to plan their programs for the beginning of the new year. We held off as long as possible but we had to give notice today.” Ebert said he hopes the hiatus will be brief, and the show is considering a Kickstarter campaign.

The Los Angeles Business Journal (no link available) is reporting that KOCE soon will begin programming for Los Angeles audiences, taking on KCET, which went independent from PBS in January. “We need to convince people in L.A. and surrounding regions that we’re not just concerned about Orange County,” PBS SoCal/KOCE President Mel Rogers told the publication. The station is renaming its public affairs show Inside OC as SoCal Insider for the new season in January. “The move will allow KOCE to grow its audience without incurring the production costs of an entirely new program,” the Journal notes.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Dick Meyer downplayed the management turmoil at NPR this year as a factor in his decision to leave his job as executive news editor. The offer to lead U.S. news operations for the BBC was too good to turn down, he explains. “I couldn’t ever think of saying no to an opportunity like this,” Meyer told the Post‘s Paul Farhi. “The BBC is the world’s dominant news organization. It has the same news values as NPR and a global footprint. . . . It might be the only news organization I would leave NPR for.”

Six films funded by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) have been selected to screen at the  Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 19-29, 2012, in Park City, Utah. ITVS domestic co-productions claimed four of the 16 spots in the U.S. Documentary competition and two of the 12 spots in the World Documentary competition. The films are: DETROPIA by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, The House I Live In by Eugene Jarecki, The Invisible War by Kirby Dick, Love Free or Die: How the Bishop of New Hampshire is Changing the World by Macky Alston, 5 Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, and Putin’s Kiss by Lise Birk Pedersen.

Penn State Public Broadcasting is producing and broadcasting a live Town Hall Forum at 6 p.m. Eastern tonight (Nov. 30) for students and university administration to discuss the ramifications of the sexual abuse allegations surrounding former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.  The Town Hall will air on WPSU’s World multichannel with additional feeds provided by WPSU to the Pennsylvania Cable Network and the Campus Cable Network as well as online.

PBS President Paula Kerger spent an hour on KQED’s Forum program Wednesday (Nov. 30), taking listener questions on public broadcasting and its future. She revealed that to raise revenues, PBS is considering a “subscription model” that would enable paying subscribers to have access to “a larger library” of archived material, reports Adam Powell of the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. Kerger said some new PBS programs might be available “for a fee,” which she compared to PBS selling DVDs of shows. Listen to the audio here.

Dick Meyer, executive news editor at NPR, has accepted a new position as executive producer for BBC News, America. His last day at NPR is Dec. 9. A memo from Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s senior v.p. and g.m. of digital media. and Margaret Low Smith, its acting senior v.p. for news, said Meyer was “instrumental in establishing NPR.org as a serious force in digital journalism.” Meyer joined NPR in March 2008 from CBSNews.com. He also produced political and investigative reports for the CBS Evening News, and is author of the book Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium. 

Four public broadcasting stations will participate in a Mobile Emergency Alert System (M-EAS) pilot project funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and LG Electronics to assess the potential of sharing crisis information via Mobile Digital TV services. WGBH in Boston, Vegas PBS and two Alabama Public Television stations (WBIQ in Birmingham and WAIQ in Montgomery) will serve as test markets. “By using terrestrial over-the-air TV broadcasting, rather than cellular network connectivity, M-EAS is expected to meet critical needs for emergency alerts,” a PBS announcement said. The goal is to prove the viability of M-EAS using existing standards, and to create a template for use by all broadcasters, public or commercial.

Gary Knell, former head of Sesame Workshop and incoming NPR c.e.o., will be chatting live on Twitter from 3 to 3:30 p.m. Eastern Thursday (Dec. 1), his first day of work. Hashtag: #nprceo

Veteran pubcasting exec Mark Vogelzang has been appointed president and c.e.o. of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, operator of statewide public television and radio networks with a budget of about $10 million. He succeeds Jim Dowe, MPBN president since 2006, who is retiring next month. The appointment, announced Nov. 29, comes as Vogelzang completes an interim appointment as g.m. of WBFO-FM, the university-owned NPR News station in Buffalo that’s being sold to WNED, a community-licensed pubcasting operation that serves radio and TV audiences in Buffalo and Canada. The proposed $4 million sale has gained approval from New York state policy makers — including Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — and is now pending before the FCC.