Here’s a Q&A from KUT in Austin, Texas, with two of the creators of Lights. Camera. Help., who discuss the only festival for nonprofit and cause-driven films. “It’s just like a great day out watching any film at your local movie theater. Except all our films make you want to get up and kick some butt!,” said co-founder David J. Neff. “All of our films have great call-to-actions that cause you to get up and do something about the issue you just watched. We like to call them light switches.” Proceeds go to the three winning movies as well as Lights.

In a retort to media critics who question news competitors’ motives in devoting so much coverage to the phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show takes a look at how Fox News pundits are downplaying the troubles of their parent corporation as a great big news media pile-on. “Maybe your competitors are taking an unseemly amount of pleasure but perhaps…they don’t have the ability to spot stories of real criminality of, let’s say, NPR,” Stewart says in introducing a clip reel of Fox News punditry on NPR’s dismissal of news analyst Juan Williams.

V-me Kids, V-me’s cable channel for Latino preschoolers, is now running on WIPR in Puerto Rico, which just dropped its membership to PBS in part over lack of Spanish-language children’s shows (Current, July 12). V-me Kids, which targets children ages 2 to 6, is the exclusive carrier for Spanish versions of shows including Barney, Bob the Builder, Angelina Ballerina, and Thomas & Friends. “WIPR will add newly created interstitial programming in English to continue to introduce this young audience to learning in both languages; a key element of WIPR’s success,” a V-me statement today (July 19) said.

At least two anonymous contributions are assisting WHYY in Philadelphia in its takeover of five FM stations from the NJN Network, reports Shore News Today. The expansion deal cost the station $926,000, which was donated by someone who requested anonymity “with good reason,” said Bill Marrazzo, WHYY president. He said the station would have been willing to identify the donor during sale negotiations, but that was ultimately not necessary. Another donor, who also wanted to remain nameless, is giving WHYY funds to launch a market study in South Jersey to look at programming, branding and advertising. Marrazzo would only say it’s a six-figure contribution.

WXEL-TV in Boynton Beach, Fla., has laid off three staffers, station President Bernie Henneberg told the Palm Beach Post Monday (July 18). The station lost around $300,000 in May when Gov. Rick Scott vetoed $4.8 million lawmakers had included in the state’s $69.7 billion budget for public television and radio stations. “We laid off three very valuable employees as a direct result of Gov. Scott zeroing out our Community Service Grant,” Henneberg said in an email. “We simply have to make cuts in order to survive.” Henneberg’s WXEL Public Broadcasting Corp. is hoping to buy the station for $700,000 from Barry University, which has owned it since 1997.

The hosts of Monday night Public Media Chats, who have been conversing with the system in 140-character bursts since February 2010, signed off for the final time last night (July 18). “After well over a year (or has it been 2?) we feel that we have reached our initial goal — to get the #pubmedia community talking & sharing,” they wrote. “All of your hosts love #pubmedia but due to personal, and professional obligations it’s no longer feasible for us to host a weekly chat. Please continue to use the #pubmedia hashtag here, and be sure to join the Public Media Facebook group for further conversation.

Rob Flynn, communications and marketing v.p. for MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, is departing after 11 years to accept a newly created position as sales and marketing v.p. with FORA.tv, a San Francisco-based digital media company. Flynn will open a Washington, D.C., office for FORA focusing on corporate sponsorships and content partnerships — “generally trying to grow the brand,” he said in an email to colleagues. FORA (Latin plural of “forum”) curates and distributes a massive video library of live events, lectures, and debates at universities, think tanks and conferences. It currently works with partners including the Aspen Institute, the New Yorker, the New York Times and the Economist.

The PBS Foundation last week received a $250,000 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations to support PBS Kids Go! interactive content. The grant will fund website expansions, game development, research and PBS station and producer support for PBSKidsGo.org, which includes a video player with more than 3,000 video clips from series such as Wild Kratts, Arthur and WordGirl and averages 4.8 million streams per month. Upcoming projects include new short-form episodes of web-originals such as Fizzy’s Lunch Lab, customized user features and more content on new media platforms such as mobile devices and interactive white boards.

A survey of the emerging field of nonprofit news organizations found that roughly half produced coverage that was ideological in nature. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism examined 46 news sites covering national or state-level news. Ideological sites “tended to be funded mostly or entirely by one parent organization,” which in some cases may have various contributors, and “they tended to be less transparent about who they are and where their funding comes from,” according to the study’s authors. Nonprofit news groups that collaborate with pubcasting news units, such as ProPublica, California Watch, and Texas Tribune, received high ratings for non-ideological coverage, transparency and productivity.

Mexico is planning a $45.5 million boost to public broadcasting, to rough triple national coverage from 2010 to 2012, Variety reports. That initial investment for 2011-2012 will mainly fund 19 new repeater substations to help boost signals across the nation. An additional $3 million yearly will go to operations through 2020. The government hopes to improve the coverage of Once (Spanish for 11) TV, the largest educational broadcast network (owned by Instituto Politecnico Nacional, or the National Polytechnic Institute), from 50.7 percent to 76.8 percent of the country, an additional 26.9 million viewers. Its goal is to reach more than 91 million viewers by 2020.

DEI honored veteran fundraiser Jim Lewis with its President’s Award, presented at the discretion of DEI chief Doug Eichten for outstanding contributions to public radio development. Lewis, who recently retired as a fundraising consultant with Lewis Kennedy Associates, has “dedicated his life and long career in public broadcasting–not only to serving the American public as a reporter, station manager and fundraising executive for public stations–but he also worked to help all of us,” Eichten said during a July 15 session at DEI’s Public Media Development and Marketing conference in Pittsburgh. “He has played a major role in the professionalization of development of public broadcasting.”

Spanish-language pubTV multicaster V-me premieres an interactive weekly show for gamers, GAME40, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern July 22. V-me said in a July 14 statement that Hispanics, especially bilingual young Hispanic males, over-index in the use of video games of all kinds. GAME40 is “not just a television series,” V-me said, but “spans multiple platforms to engage gamers from the novice to the junkie,” providing updates on new and upcoming titles, the latest innovations and the week’s best releases. The show is already “a smashing success in Spain,” V-me notes.

CPB is backing development of Essential Public Media, the nonprofit whose purchase of Pittsburgh’s WDUQ is pending before the FCC. CPB President Patricia Harrison announced a $250,000 grant supporting start-up of EPM’s digital journalism newsroom during a July 14 luncheon at the Public Media Marketing and Development conference in Pittsburgh. “We are confident this will be a model for public media news operations across the country,” she said. EPM began managing day-to-day operations of WDUQ on July 1, adopting an all-news format and scaling jazz music programming back to a six-hour weekend slot on 90.5 FM, its flagship channel. It’s begun exploring collaborative editorial partnerships with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and PublicSource, an investigative news start-up that launched with foundation backing this spring, according to Lee Ferraro, manager of Pittsburgh’s WYEP, one of the public media nonprofits that’s a partner in EPM.

PBS is eliminating 13 current staff positions and eight vacancies, PBS President Paula Kerger said in a letter to the system today (July 13).”This was not an easy decision to make, and we wish our departing staff the best as they pursue other opportunities,” Kerger said. Six “new or restructured” positions also will be added, including two new vice presidents of general audience programming to support the ongoing revamp of PBS’s primetime lineup. “Change can be difficult, but I remain convinced that by focusing on our larger goals, we will come out on the other end as a stronger organization prepared to support our mission and stations,” Kerger said.

The Federal Communications Commission is getting closer to creating new low-power FM stations and approving rebroadcasting programming from other stations, according to the Blog of the Legal Times. With a 4-0 vote Tuesday (July 12), the FCC “breaks a longstanding logjam on spectrum,” said chairman Julius Genachowski. The problems have been ongoing since 2000, when Congress put low-power radio in urban areas on hold after commercial broadcasters complained about interference. In Tuesday’s Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (PDF), the FCC approved lifting a freeze on processing translator applications and resuming licensing of translator stations in most smaller and rural markets.