The Association of Independents in Radio and Public Radio News Directors Inc. have published guidelines to assist freelance reporters in negotiating pay rates with stations. The guidelines use a scale model that assigns three tiers to the experience levels of producers and also accounts for the effort spent on pieces. They also take station budgets into account. The suggested pay for a beginning-level reporter working on a “superspot” — a short-turnaround story involving minimal effort — is $100–$150. On the high end of the scale, an advanced-level reporter working on an “advanced feature” involving extensive research and a sophisticated narrative would command a pay range of $500–$900.

A government-wide spending bill containing more than $1 trillion in appropriations, including $445 million for CPB through fiscal year 2016, passed the Senate Thursday by a wide margin on its way to President Obama’s desk. The Senate voted 72-26 for the measure after it cleared the House the previous day. Republicans cast all of the dissenting votes. In addition to CPB funding, the bill allocates $2 million for rural noncom stations that qualify for CPB’s Community Service Grants. Federal aid for CPB has remained relatively stable over the past three years, though appropriations took a hit with the automatic spending cuts that took effect in March 2013.

Even as it prepares to defend itself before the U.S. Supreme Court, online TV service Aereo Inc. continues to roll out in new markets — most recently in Cincinnati, the company announced today. Aereo will launch in the greater Cincinnati region Jan. 21. It initially launched in New York City and expanded to Baltimore, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Detroit, Denver, Houston and Salt Lake City. The company plans to launch in additional cites throughout the year. With the Cincinnati launch, viewers will be able to watch online 30 over-the-air channels including ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS affiliates as well as CET, the PBS station in Cincinnati.

NPR is mounting a second pilot performance of Scott Simon’s Wonderful Town, a variety show featuring the Weekend Edition Saturday host. The live taping will take place Jan. 22 at the Bell House in Brooklyn, N.Y., where NPR’s trivia show Ask Me Another also tapes. It will feature appearances from comedians and musicians including Eugene Mirman, Nellie McKay and Daily Show contributor Aasif Mandvi. This is the second Wonderful Town pilot to be taped; the first was in February 2013. The program has a “progressive couch” format, said NPR programming VP Eric Nuzum. Guests arrive on the show’s couch one at a time and stick around to chat with each other and Simon.

PBS has created its latest augmented-reality app, this one based on the television math series Cyberchase. The development of Cyberchase Shape Quest was funded with a Ready To Learn grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The free app, announced Jan. 9 and offering three games, uses a tablet’s camera to combine real-world images with digital content. Users follow characters Buzz and Delete through various environments, applying spatial memory, visualization and modeling skills to solve problems by taking apart and putting together two- and three-dimensional shapes. It’s aimed kids ages 6–9. The app launched exclusively for iPads and should be available for Android devices within the next month.

The operator of KMBH-TV in Harlingen, Texas, announced Tuesday that it will pursue a local management agreement (LMA) with a commercial entity as part of the station’s sale. The PBS member station serves the Rio Grande Valley in the southern tip of the state. The board of RGV Educational Broadcasting Inc., a nonprofit formed by the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville in 1983, oversees the station. Directors authorized Washington, D.C., attorney Larry Miller to petition the FCC to convert the station to a commercial broadcaster. Because the station does not operate on a channel reserved for noncommercial use, it is eligible for such a conversion, Miller told Current.

Southern California Public Radio/KPCC in Los Angeles has bulked up its news department in recent months, adding eight staffers to its team and promoting several employees. Since mid-October the station has hired Stephen Gregory as science and environment editor; Doug Krizner, business and emerging communities editor; Dorian Marina, reporter and producer for Take Two, a locally produced weekday newsmagazine; Kristen Lepore, digital producer for social media; Jed Kim, environment reporter; Adrian Florido, community health care reporter; Jeremy Hoffing, software developer; and Joel Withrow, project manager for mobile news experience. KPCC has also promoted Steve Profitt to program developer for broadcast, Molly Peterson to environment correspondent and Stephanie O’Neill to health care correspondent.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced today $2 million in new grants to 18 documentary film projects, including some from frequent collaborators with public TV. Individual grant amounts range from $50,000 to $225,000. The latter amount goes to the film 500 Years, which follows the genocide trial of former Guatemalan President General Efraín Ríos Montt. The film is a follow-up to co-director Pamela Yates’s previous film about the Guatemalan genocide, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, which became a 2012 episode on PBS’s POV. A couple of the projects incorporate multiplatform outreach, according to the release: Immigrant Nation is “a multi-platform project that explores the interconnectedness of U.S.

Several news organizations’ Twitter accounts, including some public media accounts, emitted a deluge of cryptic messages reading “f gwenifill” today. The tweets trace to social media strategist Kate Gardiner, who has consulted for public media and nonprofit news organizations and has access to many of their Twitter accounts through TweetDeck, a Twitter client. Gardiner initially tweeted that she had been hacked but told Current that the tweets were a mistake on her part, caused when she was “cleaning up” her TweetDeck account. “f gwenifill” was a test tweet she had created for PBS NewsHour when she worked for the program as its first social media desk assistant, and she accidentally sent it via all the accounts she still has access to. 

Chris Kohtz is no longer in a position to tell you about portfolios of programs available for airing on public radio stations. But he’s definitely your guy if you’re craving a good cheddar or Camembert. After 25 years in broadcasting, Kohtz has shifted careers to pursue his dream of opening a cheese shop. The Wedge & Wheel opened for business Jan. 2 in Stillwater, Minn., on the outskirts of Minneapolis, offering a selection of domestic and foreign-made cheeses to an enthusiastic bunch of cheese connoisseurs. And Kohtz is taking wholeheartedly to the labor of love. “I wanted to do something fun,” he says about his 2012 departure from the St.