Longtime pubcaster Fred Flaxman, a former vice president for development of WXEL in West Palm Beach, Fla., speaks out against the station’s recent deal with Classical South Florida in a letter to the editor of the Palm Beach Post Wednesday (Jan. 5). “The community advisory board of WXEL opposes the sale of WXEL-FM to Classical South Florida,” he writes. “As mandated by federal law, the board represents the community served by the public broadcasting station. Thus, selling to an out-of-state owner violates the wishes of the community the station serves and should not be permitted by the Federal Communications Commission, which has to approve any broadcast license transfer.”

NPR News Chief Ellen Weiss resigned today as the board of directors concluded its review of the dismissal of former news analyst Juan Williams. Weiss was the news exec who dismissed Williams by telephone last October, igniting a controversy over public radio’s news values and a political attack on public broadcasting’s federal funding. NPR President Vivian Schiller, whose public remarks about Williams fueled outrage over the dismissal, retains the confidence of the NPR Board, according to a statement issued this afternoon. But the board voted to deny her 2010 bonus. The review, initiated weeks after the controversial firing, found that Williams was dismissed according to the terms of his contract.

Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) on Wednesday (Jan. 5) reintroduced two bills to defund public broadcasting. H.R. 68 would end all federal appropriations for CPB, while H.R. 69 would specifically deny federal money to NPR. Both would take place after fiscal year 2013. “While I like much of NPR’s programming, the fact is, it is luxury we cannot afford to subsidize,” Lamborn said in a statement. “This effort to cut government spending should be part of the larger push from this new Republican Congress to cut spending and get our nation’s fiscal house in order.” Both bills have been referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

As PBS SoCal/KOCE shifts to primary station status in the Los Angeles market, some viewers are complaining about losing favorite programs. Once KCET went independent Jan. 1, the popular talk show Charlie Rose migrated to KVCR; not all local cable systems carry that station. And PBS SoCal was obligated to carry late-night tele-courses. But now, due to budget cuts at Coastline Community College, that programming is being dropped. So Charlie Rose will run at midnight on KOCE starting Jan. 17. More updates on programming shifts and viewer reaction in the Los Angeles Times TV blog.

Nancy Pearl, a regular commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition, Seattle’s KUOW and Tulsa’s KWGS, was named Librarian of the Year by Library Journal, the magazine announces in its issue next week. The University of Washington professor developed the widely imitated One City, One Book citywide book discussions in 1998 before she retired from the Seattle Public Library. A former librarian in Detroit and Tulsa, Pearl remains already one of very few library science personalities to have an action figure made in her image (with shushing action, $8.95 for standard or $12.95 for deluxe). Though Pearl still loves printed books, she admits to occasional reading on her iPad.

CPB Ombudsman Ken Bode looks back over the past year and the various notes he received along the way, including this: “I will dedicate my short life to de-funding you socialist bastards.” Bode observes: “If the majority leadership of the incoming Congress acts on its pledge to de-fund public broadcasting … it doubtless will generate more expressions of that opinion.” “On the other hand,” he notes, “it appears that the community is preparing to mount a strong, coordinated case in support of public broadcasting” (Current, Dec. 13, 2010). Bode also gives high praise to “the public affairs sector of public broadcasting.”

The highly respected nonprofit investigative news site ProPublica will now carry advertising. So will its daily e-mail, and its mobile site, and its iPod app. “We’re doing this for the usual reason: to help raise revenue that can fuel our operations, promoting what people in the nonprofit world call ‘sustainability,'” said Richard Tofel, ProPublica general manager. Website advertising will be handled by National Public Media, a subsidiary of NPR owned in partnership with PBS and WGBH. National Public Media also works with other nonprofit news sites, including the Texas Tribune and MinnPost.

Had enough of “hyper local” “citizen journalists”? Knight Digital Media blogger and news consultant Michele McLellen has. Those are the two phrases she wants to remove from public media conversations this year. Hyper local, she notes, “is a mass term for what is, in reality, a lively emerging collection of niches.” And the ongoing debate over just what a citizen journalist is “gets in the way of discerning in a practical way what functions need a high level of professional skill, such as investigations, and which ones can easily be handled by interested non-journalists, paid or volunteer, like listings, calendars and short breaking news stories.”

Will Los Angeles viewers looking for news coverage on KCET really be interested in “traditional Korean wedding ceremonies, the finer points of conveyor-belt sushi, Japanese trade policy or men in diapers wrestling over a large ball”? That’s what Los Angeles Times media reporter James Rainey is wondering in a column today (Jan. 5). Those stories ran one recent evening on Newsline from NHK, which KCET substituted for PBS NewsHour. Now that the station is independent from PBS, its main programming, particularly its news, comes from different sources, including the Japanese broadcaster. Rainey sees that as an “attempt to fob off Asia- and Euro-centric news of the day on an audience that may be interested in a worldwide reach, but would much prefer it delivered by known personalities.”

Two Florida newspapers, an indie filmmaker and WPBT2 in Miami are joining to present “Nou Bouke: Haiti’s Past, Present and Future,” an hourlong documentary that provides a comprehensive overview of the ongoing challenges to the island nation following the devastating earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010. The Miami Herald used its online video footage to create the TV program, said WPBT2 spokesperson Neal Hecker. “This might represent a new model for public media in print and broadcast to work together in a less traditional way,” Heckler told Current. A videographer for the El Nuevo Herald, the Miami Herald’s Spanish-language publication, is director of photography for the film.

KQED is enlarging its coverage area to include San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria, Calif. In a statement, the station said the expansion will reach viewers lost by the departure of KCET from PBS on Jan. 1.  The residents will receive both analog and digital; KQED also has plans to also provide HD in the future.

Lonna Thompson has been promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Association of Public Television Stations, APTS announced today (Jan. 5). She had been general counsel, and served as interim president and c.e.o. during the advocacy group’s recent presidential search. The promotion is effective immediately. Thompson also serves on the Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council of the Federal Communications Commission, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Community Service Grant Review Committee, the CPB Digital Funding Advisory Committee and the PBS Interconnection Committee.

This American Life, the wildly popular pubradio show hosted by Ira Glass, is going international: It will be heard on CBC Radio One this season.

Marketplace from American Public Media and KCET’s SoCal Connected are partnering on a program that will run simultaneously on radio and TV. The special report, “Lot 354: A Tale of America’s Housing Meltdown,” will premiere on Jan. 13. Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal traces that specific property over several years. He speaks with the couple who bought the home for a bargain in 2002, improved it, and sold it four years later at almost triple the price; the couple who then bought the home at a high price but lost it to foreclosure; and the couple who recently purchased it at a fraction of that high price.

Two California cable systems have shifted Los Angeles’s KCET from its VHF position into the harder-to-find digital tier, now that the station has departed PBS. Charter Communications and Cox Cable made the move to keep PBS’s new primary station, PBS SoCal/KOCE, “in the more trafficked VHF band,” according to Variety (free registration required to view story). KCET President Al Jerome said it made “a strategic decision to retain its digital multicast channels … This has impacted our channel positions with some cable services.” The move affects around 377,000 Charter viewers; Variety did not list the number of Cox subscribers. Jerome said the channel remains the same on other cable outlets, including Time Warner and Comcast.