“My situation is that if I had to choose between losing my stations and losing my direct podcast fundraising, I’d pick the one that would allow me to continue to pay my rent and . . . lose the stations,” says Jesse Thorn, host of the The Sound of Young America, a comedy podcast and weekly public radio show from PRI, in a two-part interview with the Neiman Journalism Lab. Thorn describes how efforts to attract younger and more diverse audiences with shows such as Day to Day, News and Notes, Bryant Park Project and Fair Game failed because they were expensive to produce and didn’t gain the station carriage needed to cover their costs.

Unemployed folks in Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire are producing and appearing in The New England Job Show on 26 public access channels in the two states. The half-hour program was created by “a group of people who didn’t even know each other a few weeks ago,” according to its website. The current show is available on its blog, and the Elevator Pitch page features short videos from job seekers.

An upcoming theatrical production will be the first time longtime Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie will be portrayed by humans instead of Muppets. Bert & Ernie, Goodnight! will have its world premiere in September at the Children’s Theatre Co. in Minneapolis, according to a Sesame Workshop statement on the Animation World News website. Sesame Workshop spokeswoman Lauren J. Ostrow confirmed to Current that yes, this is indeed the duo’s first performance as humans, “with the exception of one short, comical segment performed by actors from The Sopranos as part of a larger project.” And yes, she’s serious!

Pacifica Radio went on the air 60 years ago today at KPFA in Berkeley. Founder Lewis Hill had been working toward that first day on the air since 1946, according to the station’s website. The station says it is the first listener supported noncommercial radio broadcaster in America. But now KPFA is “bogged down by behind-the-scenes bickering,” according to The San Francisco Chronicle. Pacifica recently announced severe financial problems.

“Public broadcasters need to get over themselves, [they’re] as bad or even worse than many of the print journalists about the high-priesthood thing.” So says Persephone Miel, head of the Media Re:Public and fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. She was interviewed on the website of Reclaim the Media, a grassroots media reform group. Miel thinks that the public media movement should be led by the existing structures of CPB, PBS and NPR. One suggestion: “Maybe what we really need to do is expand the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s charter, so that they can fund online-only resources.”

Several minority advocates who received the report said they appreciated PBS’s effort, but they found it wanting.

NPR leads public broadcasters in nominations announced this morning for the 13th annual Webby Awards, the international competition for “Best of the Web” recognition. NPR Music, Podcasts, and NPR.org each received nominations in the Web division; Project Song, a video series presented online by All Songs Considered, and the NPR iPhone application were nominated in divisions for online film and video and mobile Web divisions, respectively. For PBS, Frontline/World garnered three nods (here, here and here). Also in the running for Webbys are P.O.V., Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, WNET.org and the public radio series America Abroad.

Melissa Harvey, a graphic designer for WETA, has triumphed in The Washington Post’s annual Peeps diorama contest. Her entry, “NightPeeps,” placed marshmallow Peeps bunnies into the famous painting by Edward Hopper (extra credit for that wordplay!). “I wanted to re-create the bleak urban landscape and the fluorescent light, and add a little pink and yellow,” Harvey said. The work took 45 hours over two weekends. Judges were enthusiastic: “A work of staggering genius . . . a technical triumph . . . cinematic . . . artistic and moody . . . [with] seriously sick and twisted detail . .

North Carolina’s public television network would be overseen by the University of North Carolina’s School of the Arts if a state senator has her way. The provision, inserted into the state budget by Democrat Linda Garrou, surprised pubcasters at the TV network as well as school officials, reports The Winston-Salem Journal. Currently, UNC-TV is an 22-station network licensed to UNC but reporting directly to the board of governors that oversees the university system.

The controversy surrounding Frontline’s “Sick Around America” doc is the subject of PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler’s latest column. He reports receiving notes from viewers complaining that the show failed to discuss, or even mention, the “single-payer system” of national health insurance, which some activists say is a solution to the nation’s health-care crisis. Those critical comments “escalated and then exploded, producing another round of critical mail and a serious journalistic dispute.” Journalist and author T.R. Reid, who did reporting for the program and was to be its on-air correspondent, dropped out of the project before it aired March 31 in a dispute over the content.

Funding of journalism and public media are on the agenda of the full-day FreePress Summit “Changing Media” set for May 14. The media reform group FreePress puts the questions at stake in these words: “What can we do to support hard-hitting journalism? Who will fund quality public broadcasting? How will we safeguard an open and neutral Internet? When will we have Internet access for everyone?” The group says top policymakers will speak at the event, but registration is now open for 250 participants who will have their voices, too, in discussion groups and individual voting using wireless keypads. PBS will be wrapping up its four-day annual PBS Showcase event in Baltimore as the FreePress event begins.

KERA in Dallas is eliminating four and a half positions “so that resources can be reallocated to other areas within the organization,” it said in a statement. Affected are staffers in volunteer services, data management, education programs and TV production. President Mary Anne Alhadeff said the station will use the funds to increase news and public affairs reporting and advance online services.

Amanda Hirsch, former editorial director of PBS Interactive, interviews Angela Morgenstern, senior director of PBS Interactive, in this Q&A about storytelling online. Morgenstern praises PBS KIDS GO! Broadband, “specifically, their pioneering efforts to overlay games directly onto online video. They are pushing the creative boundaries of the technologies daily, and as a result, creating an experience that will draw kids ‘inside the story’ in a way we haven’t seen to date.”

A North Carolina congresswoman is accusing Worldfocus of airing “propoganda” from the Al Jazeera English television network. “My concern is that the American people should be pretty darn upset about the fact that their tax dollars are going to fund this,” said GOP Rep. Sue Myrick. “I mean, they’re already upset about what their tax dollars are going to fund, and now they’re funding propaganda.” The show originates from WNET and features international news. In response, e.p. Marc Rosenwasser issued a statement explaining that Worldfocus reports come from several networks including Channel 10 of Israel, Britain’s ITN, Deutsche Welle of Germany, TV Globo of Brazil, Africa 24 and ABC of Australia.

Why is NPR cutting into its radio newsroom while continuing to invest in digital operations? It’s a question that’s been repeatedly posed to President Vivian Schiller as she leads the network through its latest round of budget cuts. “I’m here to tell you today, and I will continue to say this . . . until I’m blue in the face–this is a crisis we will not waste,” Schiller said during a March 30 speech at NVision 2009, a conference on the future of journalism. “The answer for us is not to retrench and just go back to what we do best, but to regroup.