Finalists for this year’s National Book Awards will be revealed live on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud, from the new Literary Arts space in Portland. It’s a public-radio first, said Sarah Jane Rothenfluch, the show’s executive producer. Beginning at 9 a.m. local time on Oct. 12, host Dave Miller will interview past winners, finalists and judges, who will announce the finalists.

Essential Public Media has completed its purchase of Pittsburgh’s WDUQ/90.5 FM, reports the local Post-Gazette. The call letters will change to WESA-FM. Under the terms of the agreement, seller Duquesne University will receive $4,004,500 in cash. Essential Public Media also will provide $1 million in underwriting to the university over the next 10 years, along with $500,000 worth of internships to Duquesne students. The deal was announced in January (Current, Jan. 24).

WNET will distribute its own content internationally beginning at next month’s MIPCOM program marketplace, according to entertainment news site C21. Previously, overseas distribution was handled by PBSd, a partnership between PBS and WGBH in Boston. “We thought we could do better,” said Harvey Seslowsky, managing director of sales and global content distribution for WNET in New York City. “What we’re trying to do is find ways to kick up our sources of revenue,” and perhaps funnel those funds into new programming or expanded seasons of existing shows, he said. PBS will continue to handle domestic distribution of the station’s content, while WNET will take over international sales.

Shelley Lewis, the executive producer who just left WNET’s Need to Know, has landed as executive vice president of programming at Current TV, it announced today (Sept. 15). Current President David Bohrman called Lewis, right, “a great idea person” with the “perfect combination of relationships, experience and entrepreneurial drive to help us establish Current as a new kind of multi-screen news experience for a new kind of news viewer.” Prior to her time at NTK, Lewis was a co-creator of Air America Radio and also worked at CNN and ABC News. She starts Sept. 19 at Current. (Image: WNET)

Association of Independents in Radio launched the beta website for its new CPB-backed initiative, Localore. Inspired by Maker’s Quest 2.0, AIR’s 2009 project for indie-led cross-platform media experiments, Localore will pair radio and TV indies with pubcasting stations on projects that blend digital with broadcast media. The site that launched today features the Station Runway, a series of digital video presentations by six “incubator” stations that hope to recruit producers to work with them. AIR and CPB will announce more grant details and identify as many as 20 participating stations on Sept. 22 during the Public Radio Program Directors conference in Baltimore.

Actor and former Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton has raised $3 million for his RRKidz reading app for iPad and Android users, reports Venture Beat. He’s partnering with PBS affiliate WNED in Buffalo, which was Reading Rainbow’s presenting station, on the project. (The show ended its 26-year run in August 2009.) “With RRKidz, Burton is introducing a reading, discovery and exploration platform (enhanced eBooks) that could have more than 300 interactive books by the time it launches,” according to Venture Beat. “We are slipping on the world’s stage in education, very precipitously,” Burton said. “To remain a world leader, we have to do a better job educating our children.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is awarding $4.1 million to help American Public Media expand its digital Public Insight Network, it announced today (Sept. 15). PIN gathers more than 120,000 citizen sources who share their knowledge with reporters in 45 newsrooms, including 15 of the top 20 media markets (background, Current, Jan. 24, 2011). CPB said its investment will add more than 100,000 new sources and  bring PIN to 50 additional newsrooms.

Mike Schneider, a familiar anchor and reporter who has worked with the four major commercial nets and major station newsrooms in the Northeast in the past 30-plus years, was announced Wednesday (Sept. 14) as anchor and managing editor of NJTV’s nightly state news program, NJ Today. He and his physician wife raised their children in Bergen County, N.J., and he ran for Congress there as a Democrat in 1998. He’ll work with new Executive Producer Bob Males, a New Jersey native and resident who previously worked as e.p. of New Jersey and Long Island news for Verizon’s Fios service, and Michael Aron, longtime senior political correspondent at New Jersey Network, NJTV’s predecessor, who joined NJTV as political correspondent in August.

New Hampshire Public Television is in collaboration talks with WGBH, as well as stations in Vermont and Maine, according to Foster’s Daily Democrat, which covers New Hampshire and Maine. Grace Lessner, spokesperson for NHPTV, confirmed the discussions but said no further details are available. Jeanne Hopkins, vice president of Communications at WGBH, told the paper: “We’re in conversation to see if there’s ways to collaborate. We’re looking at if there are things that would make sense.” In June, NHPTV laid off 20 full-time employees in an effort to offset a loss of about $2.7 million in state funding. That’s about a 30 percent reduction for the station’s $8.8 million operating budget.

KCRW, the Los Angeles station whose taste-making sensibilities for new music extend from its airwaves to digital platforms, is releasing its first iPad app today. Music Mine, offered for free in the iPad app store, displays up to 100 artists that have been recommended by the station’s deejays. Users can listen to a deejay’s full show, learn more about the featured artists or — for those who want a “lean-back” music experience — tap into KCRW’s all-music stream Eclectic 24. The app was designed as a “new mode of music discovery” — one that departs from long-form audio content of KCRW radio broadcasts yet still provides “a human-curated experience that is knowledgeable, passionate, unpredictable and even quirky,” said Anil Dewan, KCRW director of new media.

There is no evidence that PBS altered a transcript of President Obama’s recent speech to Congress to cover a “major gaffe by the president,” PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler writes. However, he adds that leaving the prepared remarks on the NewsHour website “from Thursday night until bloggers, and the ombudsman, shook their tree Saturday morning — long after the White House and the [New York] Times had published actual transcripts — was a serious lapse.” During the speech, Obama mistakenly said that Abraham Lincoln was the “founder” of the Republican party, but that statement was not in the original transcript supplied by the White House and posted by NewsHour.

WBGO launched the public phase of a $3 million capital campaign fundraising for a major signal improvement project. The jazz and NPR News station plans to put a new antenna on the spire atop 4 Times Square, one of the tallest structures in New York City, which is home of Condé Nast magazines and a huge NASDAQ display above street level. The upgrade will improve signal quality for listeners throughout metropolitan New York and New Jersey and expand the station’s potential audience by 1 million listeners. Several funders, including the defunct Public Telecommunications Facilities Program, brought WBGO to the half-way mark in its capital campaign.

After covering Congress for dozens of public radio stations for more than eight years, the nonprofit operator of Capitol News Connection will wind down operations by the end of the month. The news service faltered late last year, lost subscribing stations and finally lost further support from CPB, which itself suffered a $30 million cut from its digital project funding. “[A]fter a careful review of our finances and cash flow, we have concluded that it would be impossible to replace those funds in time to ensure the continuation of the service,” CNC announced today. The service held down its fees to stations, which rarely exceeded 32 percent of its annual revenue, but that made it dependent on aid from CPB and foundations, said Melinda Wittstock, founder and chief exec — who also served as one of CNC’s handful of Capitol Hill reporters.

Rhode Island Public Radio will move its NPR News service to WELH 88.1 FM in Providence in October. The signal transition, which was negotiated this summer, provides for Latino Public Radio to expand into a full-time broadcast service on 1290 AM, the channel that served as a beachhead in establishing an independent public radio service in Rhode Island under the call letters WRNI. By moving off the AM dial onto the reserved FM band, RIPR strengthens its channel position in the most populated region of the state. The Wheeler School, a private prep school in Providence, agreed to provide 88.1 FM to RIPR through a programming partnership, not a sale.

WJCT/89.9 FM in Jacksonville, Fla., is dropping A Prairie Home Companion along with two other shows due to the loss of state funding, according to the St. Augustine Record. It’s the station’s most expensive weekly show, at $26,682 for 2011, station President Michael Boylan told the paper. As of Oct. 1, the show will be replaced with Bob Edwards Weekend at a cost of $1,871 a year. Also on Oct. 1, the BBC’s World Have Your Say will sub for Tell Me More and locally produced music shows will run instead of World of Opera. Boylan said that the dual licensee is facing a $500,000 shortfall on its planned $5.7 million budget, after Gov.