Minnesota Public Radio President Bill Kling attributes the turbulence at NPR to its old-fashioned governance structure in today’s New York Times. “NPR has been a victim of its own success,” he tells media columnist David Carr. “It never matured in terms of governance as quickly as its news capabilities did. It is controlled by a board from member stations that think of it as primarily a provider of programming for their stations and not the giant media company it has become.”

Rob Bole, CPB’s veep of digital media strategy, says on the Media Future Now website that public broadcasting isn’t yet making sufficient use of digital media. “To be frank, public media is not capitalized nor organized to take full advantage of emerging connective technologies,” he says. “We have a reliable, strong broadcast infrastructure that provides free, universal service to every American. However, we are not funded to the appropriate level to build the same strength in the digital media space.” He did praise last month’s unique coverage of Mideast revolution news by Andy Carvin, NPR’s senior social media strategist, across multiple platforms.

Nell Minow, a corporate governance expert, today (March 14) blogged a chat she had with her father, pubcasting pioneer Newton Minow, about the current federal funding battle. With the budget being cut to control the soaring deficit, how can America justify spending tax dollars on public broadcasting? “All of us should work to reduce federal spending,” Newton Minow replied. “Cuts should be made for all programs, but what is being proposed now are not cuts — the proposals are to eliminate and end public broadcasting completely. Current federal support for public broadcasting is about $1.35 per person per year — or about two cents per person per day.

Boston public broadcaster WGBH’s Media Library and Archives is partnering with the Boston Public Library, Cambridge Community TV and Northeast Historic Film to develop “The Boston TV News Digital Library: 1960-2000,” an online collection of the city’s television news heritage, it announced today (March 14). The initiative will draw on some 70,000 news stories from commercial, noncommercial and community cable television to create a central online catalog. Among the footage: A young Harvard student, Barack Obama, speaking at its law school in 1990; civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 after leading a local march of 5,000; and Pope John Paul II’s 1979 visit.

Was the 11-minute NPR sting video that blasted through the mediasphere on March 8 edited in a deceptive way? Two different analyses — the first published by The Blaze, a news and opinion website published by Glenn Beck, and the latest from David Folkenflik, NPR’s media reporter — find it was. “It was clearly unethical — you don’t do that unless there’s no other way to get the story,” said Terence Smith, former media correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, in an appearance on CNN’s Reliable Sources with NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard. Host Howard Kurtz also interviewed James O’Keefe, the conservative activist who produced the video sting through his right-wing investigative organization Project Veritas.

A “Press Conference to Defend, Not Defund, Public Media” kicks off at 1 p.m. Tuesday (March 15) on Capitol Hill, sponsored by Free Press, “to shine a spotlight on the negative impact that cuts to federal funding for public broadcasting would have on local jobs, local journalism and local communities,” it says. Speakers include Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), NABET-CWA President Jim Joyce, AFTRA President Roberta Reardon, and Craig Aaron of the Free Press Action Fund. MoveOn.org, CREDO Action and Free Press Action Fund will deliver 1 million signatures they collected defending pubcasting from funding cuts.

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) is working with the House GOP leadership office to redraft H.R. 69, which currently targets NPR program funding. A Lamborn aide today (March 14) told Current that they anticipate the bill to be on the House floor Thursday for debate and vote. The new bill will prohibit direct federal funding of NPR, as well as ban the use of federal funds from CPB for payment of dues by local radio stations to NPR.

PBS says stations raised $32 million in the last pledge period in December, down 8 percent on average from a year ago, reports the New York Times today (March 14). So far the March drive shows a 31 percent increase in the number of dollars pledged compared with March 2010. Since 2005, the average amount of time PBS member stations pledge has increased by 9 percent; some stations now devote 10 weeks a year to the special shows, the Times notes.

The State of the News Media 2011 from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism was released this morning (March 14). “The biggest issue ahead may not be lack of audience or even lack of new revenue experiments,” its overview says. “It may be that in the digital realm the news industry is no longer in control of its own destiny. News organizations — old and new — still produce most of the content audiences consume. But each technological advance has added a new layer of complexity—and a new set of players—in connecting that content to consumers and advertisers.” The authors of the eighth annual report estimate that 1,000 to 1,500 more newsroom jobs will have been lost in 2010, translating to a 30 percent drop in newsroom staff since 2000.

Texas Tech’s KTXT/Channel 5 in Lubbock “has been the absolutely worst-managed television station in America for the past 50 years,” John Kirby tells the Lubbock Avalance-Journal in a story today (March 13). And he’s the station’s general manager. In fact, when he was considering the job, broadcasting buddies around the country warned him not to take it — some even saying, “Are you nuts?” But last October Kirby left his spot at the helm of Eastern New Mexico University’s PBS station KENW and took over at Lubbock, determined to turn KTXT around. He’s made personnel changes, and is inserting local filmmakers’ work into the schedule.

The Texas Tribune in Austin and the Bay Citizen in San Francisco, nonprofit online regional news organizations, will share a $975,000 Knight Foundation grant to create a free, open-source publishing platform for other online news groups, the foundation announced Friday (March 11) from SXSW in Austin. The new platform will manage an integrated library of text, video and audio files; improve the way articles are linked, aggregated and tagged for increased search-engine hits; integrate sites with social networks and bloggers; and offer membership tools and integration with advertising networks to cultivate new revenue streams.

Former CBS News London Bureau Chief John Paxson has joined Murrow Public Media/Northwest Public Radio and Northwest Public Television, in the new position of news director. While at CBS News he supervised staff in London, Paris, Bonn, Tel Aviv, Moscow and Johannesburg. He oversaw the network’s coverage of conflicts in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. He also spent 10 years as a Voice of America correspondent based in Chicago, as well as a CBS News producer in Dallas, Los Angeles and New York. In his new position he will direct increased regional news coverage for the 15 radio and two TV stations licensed to Washington State University in Pullman.

The Jane Matteson Outstanding Jazz Educator Award, presented annually by the Dakota Foundation for Jazz Education in Minneapolis, Minn., generally honors an individual. But the 2011 recipient is a public broadcasting station: KBEM/Jazz 88 radio, one of the few outlets in America playing 24-hour jazz — and which operates out of studios in Minneapolis North High School. “After 40 years of introducing jazz to new listeners, encouraging young musicians, providing the public with access to the best jazz has to offer — and teaching countless individual students about radio broadcasting and jazz — we could think of no more appropriate recipient for our ‘Jane Award’ than KBEM-FM,” said foundation President Tom Trow.

President Obama defended public broadcasting in a press conference on Friday (March 11), reports The Hill. “I think it’s going to be important for us to have a conversation after we get the short-term budget done, about how do we really tackle the problem in a comprehensive way,” Obama said. “And that means not just going after Head Start or Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That’s not where the money is.” “These aren’t really budget items; these are political statements,” Obama said.

“Consideration of legislation relating to the federal funding of NPR” will occur in the House of Representatives on Thursday, March 17, according to the new weekly schedule posted by Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). The schedule notes that the timing complies with the House’s new three-day notice requirement. The 112th Congress established a minimum three-day scheduling notice to give members and the public time to review bills. The schedule does not specify what bill is under discussion, but several are pending to zero out public broadcasting money. H.R. 69, sponsored by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), targets federal funding specifically for NPR programming.