MinnPost and Voice of San Diego — two online nonprofit news outlets often held up as models for the future of local news coverage — actually receive scant web traffic, according to a new report, “Less of the Same: The Lack of Local News on the Internet” (PDF). The study was commissioned by the FCC as part of its quadrennial review of broadcast ownership regulations. The author is Matthew Hindman, assistant professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University. (Details on the 11 FCC studies here.) Hindman used comScore panel data tracking 250,000 Internet users across more than a million Web domains, focusing specifically on online local news within the top 100 U.S.

The City Council in Chattanooga, Tenn., has voted down a plan to contribute $275,000 to WTCI/Tennessee Valley PBS to launch a Chattanooga Channel, reports the Chattanoogan. Paul Grove, WTCI president, had proposed that all City Council meetings, including committees, would be aired live and streamed on a website. Grove said the channel would bring new “access and transparency” to city government. Councilwoman Pam Ladd said the channel “is a wonderful idea,” but not a priority at this time. The council will pay WTCI $60,000 to continue televising its meetings; the county is dropping that spending.

Despite WMFE’s dire warnings to the FCC about its financial stability, trustees chairman Bob Showalter said the Orlando, Fla., station will not fail because the radio presence remains strong. “90.7 is hugely viable,” he told the Orlando Sentinel Tuesday (June 14). “Things are not dire at 90.7.” He said trustees plan on putting the $3 million from the pending TV sale in a quasi-endowment, spending the dividends on 90.7 and increasing local news coverage.

The BBC is developing an app for its reporters in the field to file video, still photos and audio directly into the BBC system from an iPhone or iPad, according to Journalism.co.uk. “Reporters have been using smart phones for a while now but it was never good quality,” said Martin Turner, head of operations for newsgathering. “You might do it when there was a really important story. Now it is beginning to be a realistic possibility to use iPhones and other devices for live reporting, and in the end if you’ve got someone on the scene then you want to be able to use them.

What is lost when a city’s college radio station is sold and converted to a public radio outlet? It’s a question that free-form radio fans are asking with increasing frequency as student-operated FMs drop off the left end of the dial. In Nashville, where Vanderbilt University’s WRVU ended its nearly 60-year run as an FM station last week, radio audiences gained a full-time classical music service from the city’s NPR News station, WPLN. But WRVU’s fans and advocates lamented the sudden loss of a station that essentially operated as a community radio outlet. WRVU was “one of the only venues for Nashville artists of all stripes to get airplay — rappers, punks, headbangers, even blues and bluegrass bands,” the Nashville Scene reported.

Lefty TV talker Keith Olbermann announced last month that PBS documentarian Ken Burns would be a “key contributor” and “regular part” of Olbermann’s new show on Current TV — which surprised Baltimore Sun TV writer David Zurawik. “Yes, I was surprised, too,” Burns told Zurawik in a column today (June 14). “I appeared on Countdown a lot. And he’s been a friend for a long time. And when he moved [to Current TV], I said, ‘Oh, I’ll come and do it [the new show]’. And I think that’s what it is.” However, Burns said, he refused to accept a salary as a regular contributor.

David Fanning, executive producer of Frontline, raised his concerns about public broadcasting on-air fundraising while accepting Quinnipiac University’s Fred Friendly First Amendment Award on Tuesday (June 14). An excerpt: “Where once stations were lead by broadcasters and educators who believed deeply in the mission of public broadcasting, now as money gets tighter a new generation of leaders comes in, brought in by worried board members who almost inevitably turn to the person in charge of fundraising to help manage the station. “With that comes programming choices that are safer, and the pursuit of audience for the sake of audience, and membership for the dollars.

In 2011, as partisan critics attacked NPR, Frontline chief David Fanning urged public media to specialize in strong journalism. Fanning, who was accepting Quinnipiac University's annual Fred Friendly First Amendment Award, quoted the famed CBS News producer: public TV's "most precious right will be the right to rock the boat."

NPR, Vermont Public Radio, and Austin’s KUT led public radio news outlets in National Edward R. Murrow Awards announced today by the Radio and Television Digital News Association. NPR won Murrows in four categories of the radio network/syndication division; VPR bested small-market radio stations in three categories; and, KUT won two trophies in the competition among large-market stations. Four additional pubradio outlets — Michigan Radio; KUNC in Greeley, Colo.; WSHU in Fairfield, Conn.; and WITF in Harrisburg, Pa. — won Murrows in news reporting categories. WBUR.org, a leading pubradio website published by Boston’s WBUR, took the national Murrow for news websites in the large-market radio division.

The websites for PBS and NPR took home several Webbys from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences at ceremonies Monday night (June 13) in New York City. PBS.org won a People’s Voice for charitable/nonprofit orgs, and NPR.org scored both People’s Voice and Webby for news. NPR News’ “Election 2010: It’s All Politics” received a People’s Voice for politics. And in podcasts, NPR was a double winner again. Here’s a full list.

Media analyst Jessica Clark says that consensus on the “Information Needs of Communities” report from the Federal Communications Commission seems to be, the diagnosis is sound but remedies are lacking. Clark writes on MediaShift that the report makes a clear case that local reporting is dying — “yet, bafflingly … stops short of offering bold solutions.” She notes that in a statement in reaction to the report, Commissioner Michael Copps also observed that “the policy recommendations … don’t track the diagnosis.” She also compiled reactions to the report in the news using Storify. (Editor’s note: Clark is a senior fellow at American University’s School of Communication, which acquired Current in January.)

For 40 years New Jersey has justified having its own public broadcasting network by pointing to the limited reporting on its area by the Philadelphia and New York media. Now the state is moving to dismantle the New Jersey Network and entrust that reporting and its broadcast channels to public TV and radio stations in those two adjoining cities. The state has notified the NJN staff of about 120 that their jobs will disappear at the end of June, and observers doubt that a majority of the legislature will stop the process for more discussion as it did last summer. Republican Gov.

Ira Glass didn’t know what he was in for when he walked into the post office in the seaside burg of Brunswick, Ga., and asked the first person he met to name the most interesting character in town. Glass and his This American Life production team had given themselves a special assignment: to collect the best stories they could stumble upon far off the beaten path of their day-to-day reporting routines. They followed the standard operating procedure of the Atlanta Journal’s “Georgia Rambler” columnist Charles Salter, who researched more than 500 columns in the late 1970s by roving around small towns of the Peach State in a company car.

Software vulnerabilities, including an outdated operating system used by PBS.org, allowed the pirate band of hackers LulzSec to sail deep into the innards of the network’s main website over Memorial Day weekend. The marauders were retaliating for a Frontline documentary about WikiLeaks broadcast five days earlier. The hackers gave their assault a playful air, invading PBS NewsHour’s site and briefly posting a false report that the late rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were actually hanging out in New Zealand. Techs at PBS.org and at the NewsHour spent hours regaining control as the cyberattack exposed contact information for hundreds of staffers, stations, producers and press, as well as several internal PBS databases.

The board of trustees at Daytona State College could vote to drop PBS programming from affiliate WDSC at its Thursday (June 16) meeting. Interim president Frank Lombardo told the Daytona Beach, Fla., News-Journal that the school contributes about $700,000 to the overall operation of the station, including non-PBS programming. “We just can’t afford to do it,” he said. “There is limited money. We have to make sure the academic side, the classrooms and teaching and learning functions at the college are supported.” The trustees are voting on the fiscal 2012 budget, which begins July 1. They may use the channel to run government programming and lease parts of its spectrum.