The first-ever PubCampWest — an informal gathering of media makers, community organizers, and web developers sharing ideas for collaboration in media innovation — convened in Pasadena, Calif., last weekend. In a two-hour video of the “unconference” wrap-up session, participants talk up the importance of producing compelling online content for audiences who primarily rely on web-based media for news and information, and a proposal for collaborating on 2012 election coverage, among other ideas. A PubCamp Tumbler site aggregating Storify summaries and other social media reactions to unconference sessions, is here. Pubcasters KPCC in Pasadena, PBS SoCal in Orange County, and KQED in San Francisco collaborated in organizing the conference.

Werner Bundschuh, a WGBH alum and documentary filmmaker who co-founded Blackside Inc., which produced the critically acclaimed Eyes on the Prize series, died Friday (Aug. 19) after falling from a ladder at his home in Royalston, Mass., according to a report on the WGBH Alumni website. He was 70 years old. Werner began his career in film and television at WGBH-TV, where he wrote and produced many programs, a number of them broadcast nationally on PBS, including The Totalitarian Temptation, and The Bomb That Fizzled for the series In Search of the Real America. He also directed The Ancient Mariners for the series Out of the Past.

Starting in January, veteran newsman Bill Moyers will provide a fully funded, hourlong weekly program — Moyers & Company — to public television stations. “There will be a diversity of voices,” Moyers told stations in a letter today (Aug. 22), “one-on-one interviews with lively minds rich in experience and insight, as well as an exchange of views among people who may disagree on politics, governance, faith, religion and the state of democracy, but who nonetheless agree on the importance of a civil dialogue about their differences.” The aim, he said, is to offer viewers “some different news, some new voices and fresh thinking, and an occasional cultural grace note.”

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski says the agency will not release its Allotment Optimization Model (AOM) detailing how it will reconfigure broadcast spectrum after an incentive auction until after it gets that auction authority from Congress, reports Broadcasting & Cable. The statement came in response to a request from Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) that reflects the growing call in the broadcast industry to release the model to the public. Dingell called Genachowski’s response “deeply troubling.” He also said he would oppose any legislation that did not explicitly protect broadcasters.

Sir David Attenborough, the 85-year-old naturalist and BBC star who created Life on Earth, The Life of Birds and other nature docs on PBS and other channels will receive the International Honour of Excellence at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) Sept. 11. Sir David’s latest production — Flying Monsters 3D, a 3D IMAX film about flying dinosaurs — won a British Academy Award in May and is playing in IMAX theaters in Europe and at the Science Spectrum Museum, Lubbock, Texas. This year’s IBC will be held Sept. 8-13 in Amsterdam.

PBS filmmaker Ken Burns will call for a nationwide discourse on civility at a National Press Club Speakers Series luncheon on Oct. 3. “This year as we think about the 150th anniversary of the start of our Civil War, we must remember that the lack of civility in our political language threatens the very basis of American society,” Burns said in a press release. “I believe civility is essential to our ability as a nation to confront together difficult issues even when we may disagree.” Burns wants to use his upcoming documentary, Prohibition, as a starting point for discussion, as he sees it as “one of America’s most notorious civic failures” that serves as “an object lesson in the challenge of legislating human behavior,” with relevance to today’s political discourse.

Iowa City’s public access channel, PATV Channel 18, has joined the Alliance for Community Media to gain support of Iowa lawmakers for the Community Access Preservation Act, which would restore funding to local stations and prevent operators from discriminating against the channels, PATV executive director Josh Goding tells the Iowa City Press-Citizen. “The history of public, educational and government channels is vague to many people, but these channels are critical because they produce more original local media than all the big networks combined,” Goding said. “The funding structure that grew up around PEGs in the 1980s is now being undermined by profit motive.

Lidia Bastianich, whose latest public television series, Lidia’s Italy in America, premieres Sept. 10, is being sued by an Italian cook who alleges that Bastianich made her a “virtual slave,” reports the New York Daily News. Maria Carmela Farina is asking for $5 million in the suit, filed Thursday (Aug. 18) in Manhattan. Farina says in the suit that she came to America in 2006 thinking she would oversee Bastianich’s kitchens and prepare recipes for her shows. Instead, she claims, she became a live-in personal assistant for an elderly woman whose husband had worked as Bastianich’s handyman.

Twin brothers Leigh and Leslie Keno, known for their appraisal work since 1997 on the pubcasting hit Antiques Roadshow, premiere their own program, Buried Treasure, Aug. 24 on Fox. The two go on location, and “sleuth for worthy finds from basement to attic for people who are often down on their luck, facing money problems or illness,” according to ArtFix Daily, an online arts news site. Leigh Keno reports: “We have found treasures from all over the world, valuable and rare objects ranging from 1000 B.C., a Minoan bronze bowl with inscriptions that was buried under a pile of magazines … and a rare Egyptian tomb figure with the figure of Osiris, polychrome painted, that was just sitting in a dresser.”

Bob Friedman, a Nightly Business Report correspondent back in the 1980s, left pubcasting for a life in … barbecue. And it turns out he’s still enamored of it. As Friedman tells the News & Observer newspaper in Raleigh, N.C., “I still have pig fat in my blood.” While reporting for NBR, a conversation on foreign trade with then-U.S. Rep. Don Sundquist of Memphis led to a discussion of barbecue and an idea for a restaurant, Red Hot & Blue. It eventually grew to 35 outlets when Friedman and his partners sold it three years ago. But the sale to a private equity firm wasn’t lucrative enough to retire, he says.

The Public Insight Network, a reporting tool from American Public Media that invites audience members to volunteer as sources, wants to increase the number of conservative voices in its database of some 100,000 names. So Michael Caputo, a Minnesota Public Radio analyst with PIN, wrote to the right-leaning Powerline blog for help surveying its readers. “We recognize the need to have more Republican and/or conservative citizens in this network, especially with the GOP nomination up for grabs,” Caputo writes. “So we are making a specific plea for you to become part of this network and help inform what the media sees as news.

The local City Pulse in Lansing, Mich., is reporting that sources say as many as 10 staffers have been laid off from WKAR at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Kirsten Khire, communications manager for the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, told the paper that MSU Broadcasting Services, which includes WKAR-TV and WKAR Radio, issued layoff notices Monday (Aug. 15) but declined to say how many. Khire cited “sizable budgetary challenges” at the station as the reason for the terminations. She said the cuts took place “across the organization of Broadcasting Services.” The College of Communications Arts and Sciences took over WKAR in July, and replaced former g.m.

KET in Louisville is consolidating its facilities into one downtown production center, it announced today (Aug. 18). The new space on Main Street will combine its outreach office (right) and production facility, which since 1997 has been in the basement and first floor of a building owned by the county school district. Improvements will include a high-speed fiber-optic line connecting the Louisville facility to KET’s Network Center in Lexington. The move gives KET the second street-side public television studio in the country, along with the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center in New York City. “With Main Street as a backdrop, this studio space will become a part of the community itself,” said Executive Director Shae Hopkins.

Story Exchange, a crowd-funding experiment piloted by Public Radio Exchange and Louisville Public Media, has garnered full funding for two long-form reporting projects: Erica Peterson’s three-part series on disposal of coal ash produced by electrical power plants, and in-depth coverage of the environmental effects of the Ohio River Bridge project, a reporting assignment that’s now in the works. PRX received a 2010 Knight News Challenge grant to pilot the project with LPM and Spot.us. PRX’s John Barth recently reported for MediaShift on the progress so far, and tentative plans to expand Story Exchange to additional public radio markets and indie producers.

Humorist, author and playwright Kevin Kling has signed on for a three-year residency with Minnesota Public Radio, the network announced Wednesday (Aug. 17), prompting speculation that Kling could be waiting in the wings to step into hosting duties for A Prairie Home Companion following Garrison Keillor’s retirement next spring. MPR says Kling will present original works exclusively on the Fitzgerald Theater stage (gee … that’s home base for APHC … ), conduct storytelling workshops and provide radio commentaries. He is the author of books The Dog Says How, Holiday Inn and Big Little Brother. According to his website, Kling was born with a congenital birth defect: His left arm is about three-quarters the size of his right, and his left hand has no wrist or thumb.