KRWG staffers were out early yesterday morning to chat with viewers and listeners, reports the Deming (N.M.) Headlight. “With coffee in one hand and a donut in the other,” as the paper said, folks from the New Mexico State University PBS affiliate met with customers at the 5 a.m. Donuts shop in Deming to get their input on programming and other station matters. “When we added Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me, it will be a year ago in July, it was because of these conversations,” said Glen Cerny, executive director of university broadcasting at the station, in Las Cruces, N.M.

The Public Media Working Group (PMWG) and American University’s Center for Social Media will focus on two “signature collaborative opportunities” for this year, according to the Center. PMWG sprung from the Center’s 2009 paper, “Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics,” and is comprised of advocates with “a commitment to increasing users’ access to and engagement with public media.” PMWG provides an opportunity for much-needed collaboration, the Center noted. “Innovators within the system are currently isolated, lacking spaces for sharing best practices and identifying joint strategies.” This year, the partners will first work on the National Black Programming Coalition’s Public Media Corps.

“Ethics for the New Investigative Newsroom” (PDF), a report with recommendations from a round-table meeting of leaders in nonprofit journalism, stresses that the news entities be transparent about funding, vet donors carefully, and establish walls between reporters and funders. The paper is one of the first attempts to establish best practices for the growing field of nonprofit journalism. It was published by the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, based on a roundtable there in January. More from the Columbia Journalism Review.

The Alliance for Community Media, representing more than 3,000 PEG (public, educational and governmental) access organizations, helped compile a map showing providers of local cable access TV channels nationwide (click to enlarge). Included are nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, government agencies and multi-jurisdictional authorities; still to come are libraries and cable providers. For more information, visit the Sustaining Democracy in a Digital Age blog from the New America Foundation, a D.C. think tank.

Ted Garcia, CPB’s senior vice president, television content, is departing effective Saturday, according to a note to public broadcasting stations and an internal CPB memo. Garcia had been in the post since February 2008. His duties included overseeing and managing CPB’s national public television programming initiatives. Previous to that work, he had been g.m. of KNME-TV in Albuquerque, N.M. Garcia will remain as a consultant through Sept. 30. Korn/Ferry is searching for his successor. Meanwhile, Vice President John Prizer — vice president, television program development and senior adviser to the president, television programming special projects — will fill in.

Citing an impending $400,000 budget shortfall, PBS affiliate KWBU in Waco, Texas, is ending its broadcast at the end of May, according to a statement from Joe Riley, station president. The move will not affect its NPR broadcast. Riley told Current that it hasn’t yet talked to nearby PBS affiliates to as to the future of its channel. “The first thing we had to do, was let our staff know,” he said. Ten full-time and four part-time employees are affected, about two-thirds of the staff. KWBU is a community licensee but associated with Baylor University and housed on campus, Riley said.

The National Center for Media Engagement, along with ITVS and CPB, are offering a Peer Webinar tomorrow on resources and tools for multiplatform outreach and engagement. It’ll feature an exploration of how ITVS uses its content in unique ways, such as a Garbage Dreams online game (“Start with one neighborhood, one factory and one hungry goat … “). There’ll also be a preview of the new ITVS website for broadcasters, producers and teachers. It all kicks off at 2 p.m. Eastern, register here.

Joseph Tovares is the new senior vice president for Diversity and Innovation at CPB. Pat Harrison, CPB president, said in a statement that Tovares “will work to extend public media’s reach and service through innovation.” The statement said Tovares “was responsible for overseeing the implementation of the NPS/Diversity and Innovation fund agreement for CPB,” which was yet to be publicly announced (Current, April 19). He has also served as senior director of operations for Television Programming. Before his CPB tenure he was executive producer for La Plaza, the Latino production unit at WGBH; and series editor and director of New Media at American Experience.

The FCC is assembling a spectrum task force to coordinate long-term planning and implementation of recommendations in the National Broadband Plan, reports Broadcasting & Cable. One main goal is promoting the possible auction of spectrum to create more space for wireless broadband (Current, Feb. 8). Heading up the task force will be Julius Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering Technology; and Ruth Milkman, chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. Members will include heads of the Enforcement, International, Media, and Public Safety and Homeland Security bureaus, and the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis.

Since its conversion into a listener-supported public radio station last fall, New York’s classical WQXR has gained more than 127,000 listeners–enough to make it the top-rated public radio station in the country, the New York Times reports. This despite its move to a less powerful frequency last fall under new owner WNYC. The WQXR audience is also responding generously to on-air fundraising appeals. The February pledge drive blew past its $750,000 goal to raise $1.3 million from some 10,000 WQXR listeners, 57 percent of whom had never donated to WNYC before. Likewise, Boston’s classical WCRB–now under the ownership of WGBH–recently set a new record for the most money raised from radio listeners in a single day.

Public and noncom media is the focus of the next FCC “Future of Media” workshop Friday in Washington, D.C. Subjects include: Potential for greater collaboration among public broadcasters, PEG channels, noncommercial web-based outlets, and other new media entities; infrastructure needs and assets of public and other noncommercial media; and possibilities for new kinds of noncommercial media networks and associated funding models. The speaker and panelist list is a who’s who of pubcasting, including CPB Board Chairman Ernest Wilson, CPB President Pat Harrison, NPR President Vivian Schiller, Frontline Executive Producer David Fanning, PBS President Paula Kerger, APM’s Digital Innovation Senior veep Joaquin Alvarado, PRX Executive Director Jake Shapiro, NPR’s Digital Media Senior veep Kinsey Wilson, and APM President Bill Kling.

The University of Texas is looking for a new entity to manage the Cactus Cafe, a campus music venue and bar, and KUT-FM is the hands-down favorite among student leaders, the Austin American-Statesman reports. The public radio station has offered to work with student organizations to program music events, but it doesn’t want to manage the bar. “I don’t want a line item in KUT’s budget for alcohol,” says Stewart Vanderwilt, g.m., during a public forum on options for the cafe. Early this year the university announced plans to shut down the money-losing venue, but, after an outcry from students and Austinites, it’s now looking for ways to make it self-supporting.

Two of public radio’s youth media training units received 2010 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for radio reporting. Youth Radio won in the international category with Rachel Krantz’s investigation of hidden abuses of homosexuals in the military. Her story aired on NPR’s All Things Considered. WNYC’s Radio Rookies earned top recognition for domestic reporting with “This is the South Bronx,” first-person narratives of teens living in poverty, by Miguelina Diaz, Keith Tingman and Amon Frazier.

The Virginia General Assembly rejected a proposal to end subsidies for the state’s public television and radio stations. Republican Governor Bob McDonnell proposed the two-year phase-out as part of a package of budget amendments that lawmakers took up yesterday. House legislators debated vigorously before voting 52-43 to maintain funding for the next two years, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “Broadcasters say that previous budget cuts have forced them to use nearly all state aid for programs in public schools,” the Washington Post reports.

Michigan Radio will end national production of The Environment Report, a news service producing daily interstitial news spots, in June. Three staff working on the show will be reassigned to local reporting: Lester Graham, host and senior editor, will create a new investigative/enterprise reporting unit; Mark Brush, senior producer, becomes the network’s online news content specialist; and reporter/producer Rebecca Williams will host a local/regional version of the show, covering environmental issues affecting Michigan and the Great Lakes. The Environment Report went national in 2008 but didn’t secure carriage in enough major markets to secure underwriting, according to Graham. Michigan Radio, which has been subsidizing the production, is restructuring its news room to focus on local news gathering, online reporting and investigative coverage.