Heidi Tauber Esping, 52, an Oregon Public Broadcasting announcer, died in a head-on collision on Wednesday (March 23) night on Interstate 405, according to the Oregonian. Lynne Clendenin, OPB’s v.p. of radio programming, told the paper she hired Esping in 2009 because of her warm tone and news savvy. “The two combined made for a very nice OPB announcer, and I thought she was wonderful on the air,” Clendenin said. “She was welcoming always in her manner. You could hear her smiling.” Esping worked in local radio for several decades, including stints at KPAM, KINK, KEX and KPOJ.

Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, has good news for NPR in Wednesday’s (March 23) The Hill. The fact that all 185 voting Democrats last week rejected H.R. 1076, which would have banned federal funding to NPR, sends “a very powerful signal to the Senate and the White House,” he says. “Anything that brings together Heath Shuler and Maxine Waters,” Baker says, will gain notice from other Democratic leaders. Baker is referring to the centrist North Carolinian and liberal from California, respectively. The Hill said Republicans may take another stab at defunding pubcasting in an amendment to other measures, and similar language is included in a bill the House passed that would fund the government through September — a proposal Republican leaders want reconsidered when Congress returns next week, the paper noted.

“A generation ago,” notes Los Angeles Times media columnist James Rainey, “journalists wrote their stories and moved on to the next thing, with someone else worrying about delivery of the end product. In today’s digital world, journalists must not only create the stories but make sure they get to readers.” The Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism’s Neon Tommy is a laboratory for those practices. Its reports by USC student journos focus on everything from the Egyptian revolution to a standing feature on food called Neon Tummy. Reporters collaborate with other news entities, and each makes sure that content is electronically disseminated as widely as possible.

Joanne Bachmann, former associate general manager at KNME in Albuquerque, N.M., has filed suit against the University of New Mexico, claiming she was fired for complaining that the university took more than $2 million that should have gone to the station. Co-defendant in the suit is Polly Anderson, current station g.m., who allegedly told Bachmann to “drop the matter,” according to Bachmann’s March 14 filing in Bernalillo County Court. The suit says that Bachmann was hired at KNME in February 2001 for digital transition fundraising. She was promoted to associate g.m. in 2005. Anderson came on as general manager in September 2008.

American Routes, the New Orleans-based public radio music series hosted and produced by Nick Spitzer, is moving from American Public Media to Public Radio Exchange distribution as of July 1. Spitzer has retained pubradio veteran Ken Mills to manage the transition and “help plan a new independent future for American Routes,” he said in a statement. Spitzer and Judy McAlpine, APM senior v.p. of national content, described the split as amicable. PRX picked up distribution of Sound Opinions, the weekly rock music show from WBEZ in Chicago, last July.

As discussions of public radio’s federal funding continue, AOL’s DailyFinanceblog looks at the finances and talent compensation for top national shows such as Morning Edition, and Fresh Air, This American Life. Net earnings from each of the programs, all of which are produced by nonprofit public media companies, may be reinvested in the show itself or redirected to other operations, AOL’s Jonathan Beer reports. For two years during recession, for example, revenues from This American Life covered other operating losses at producing station WBEZ Chicago, spokesman Daniel Ash explains. “However, moving forward, there is no expectation that TAL revenues will underwrite any other…initiative.”

It’s not his job to address questions about federal funding of public radio, but Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep takes on complaints about “perceived bias” in NPR News programs in today’s Wall Street Journal . The “recent tempests,” he writes, “have nothing to do with what NPR puts on the air.”

Tom Rosenstiel of the Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism will discuss the latest State of the News Media report during a panel discussion to be webcast live at 1 p.m. on Thursday, March 24. His talk will focus on “myths” about contemporary media, drawing on PEJ’s research and insights from a panel of media experts, including Alberto Ibargüen of the Knight Foundation, Jane McDonnell of the Online Journalism Association, and Matthew Hindman of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, which is hosting the event. Broadcast journalist Frank Sesno, director of the school and host of PBS’s Planet Forward, will moderate.

WNET in New York City and DirecTV are announcing the premiere U.S. broadcast of their “Treasure Houses of Britain in 3D,” WNET’s first 3D project. The five-part series debuts Saturday (March 26) on DirecTV’s n3D channel. Producer-Director is Alastair Layzell of Colonial Pictures, cinematographer is Richard Hall. Executives in charge for WNET are Gillian Rose and Stephen Segaller. Neal Shapiro, WNET president, said in a statement that the “Treasure Houses” 3D series “showcases public media’s continued journey toward the future of television programming, which our viewers have come to expect.”

Ellen Rocco, station manager at North County Public Radio in Canton, N.Y., writes today (March 23) on the station’s blog about how staffers helped an errant shipment of turkey chicks find their way home to her farm. Well, one did manage to escape down a station hallway. But fear not: Program Director Jackie Sauter made it a little nest while Rocco was on the air with her blues show, Blue Note.

As the political battle over federal aid to public broadcasting focuses narrowly on NPR, two public media leaders describe what’s most vulnerable to funding cuts: diversity and innovation in content. “[W]hat bothers me about this debate is the lack of true understanding in the public eye about just what public media is,” writes Jacquie Jones of the National Black Programming Consortium for the Huffington Post. “Despite NPR’s and PBS’s enormous contributions to the media universe — their bedrock news and information services and their role in the documentation of American life, history, culture and experience — public media is a whole lot more than NPR and PBS.

The National Center for Media Engagement explains why today (March 23), in its first of five postings exploring the use of social media by public media. Today’s post discusses location-based social network sites. Writes Bryce Kirchoff, “Imagine: A mobile user checks into your city’s art museum on Gowalla and they’re offered a clip your station produced about the institution’s Picasso exhibit. Or, a high school student visits Washington D.C.’s Vietnam War Memorial and is prompted to stream a preview of a Ken Burns film. Both are potential parts of public media’s future.”

Pubmedia thought leader Rob Bole has posted on his Public Purpose Media blog his presentation for Media Future Now on new forms and formats of digital storytelling, from the D.C. group’s meeting Tuesday (March 22). One point: “In the seemingly coming era of paywalls (or the final, sad collapse of mainstream journalism), it is not just brand that carries the day, but quality, unique, relevant content that has editorial narrative … and this might be supplied, in part, by new forms of digital journalism.”

In a special one-day fund drive, WAMC Northeast Public Radio raised more than $188,000 for disaster relief in Japan. The station, based in Albany, N.Y., but heard through 22 transmitters in several states, asked for and received an FCC waiver from the rule that noncommercial stations ordinarily can raise funds only for their own operations. WAMC organized the drive in cooperation with American Red Cross of Northeastern New York, and the proceeds went directly to the Japanese Red Cross. “There wasn’t a moment the phones weren’t ringing, and the empathy and love for those in need came roaring through,” said station President Alan Chartock.

The University of Alabama purchased WHIL-FM from Spring Hill College on Monday (March 21) for $1.1 million, pending federal approval, reports the Press-Register. Spring Hill College, in Mobile, had lost $160,000 in fiscal 2010 on the station. The university will transmit WHIL programming from Tuscaloosa. The university already operates WUAL Alabama Public Radio.