Public Media Exchange, a consortium of 10 Gulf Coast pubTV and radio stations led by Louisiana Public Broadcasting, has expanded its website content to cover Mississippi River flooding and the aftermath of recent tornadoes that ripped through the South. The GulfWatch section of the website was originally set up last year with a grant from CPB to examine the environmental, economic, legal and social implications of the massive BP oil spill. LPB is now providing live coverage of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s news conferences from the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness center. There are also updates on the potential record flooding along the Mississippi, and disaster resources on flooding and tornadoes.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism today (May 9) released an in-depth study of Web news behavior, using detailed Nielsen audience statistics. The study examines the top 25 news websites in the United States, drilling down into four areas of audience actions: how users get to the top news sites, how long they stay, how deep they go into a site and where they go when they leave. Among the findings: — Even top news sites depend greatly on “casual users,” those persons who visit a few times per month and spend only a few minutes on the site.

A group of young journalists finishing their studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism today (May 9) launch FastForwardNews.org, a collection of videos exploring the hurdles and possibilities for reporters in the digital age. In the videos, the 18 aspiring newsmakers examine subjects including the use of “crowdfunding” stories, computer-assisted reporting, content farms, the New York Times’ new paywall, and the response to Al Jazeera English by American cable companies.

The Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) and DEI (Development Exchange Inc.) have received a $923,310, two-year CPB grant to expand their Grant Center (password protected). For the past 18 months the center has focused on identifying new sources of federal and foundation funding for pubcasters; now it will concentrate on assisting CPB-qualified pubTV and radio stations in applying for the support. Meegan White directs the Grant Center, coordinating with Amie Klempnauer Miller. White has been working with APTS since 2000 on federal grant strategy, grant writing and project management. Miller, DEI Foundation development adviser, has more than 20 years of experience in fundraising and has written successful grant proposals raising more than $20 million for public media.

The Organic Consumers Association, an advocacy group that campaigns on food safety and agricultural sustainability issues, launched an online campaign objecting to a May 4 Marketplace story on how to feed the world’s growing population. “The Non-Organic Future,” reported by Adrienne Hill, concluded that organic food movement caters to a niche market, and that the future of farming involves wider acceptance of genetically modified foods and other commercial agricultural practices. The association described the report as a “biased and inaccurate story that sounds as if it was written by its major underwriter: Monsanto Inc,” and urged its members to demand that local pubradio stations drop the program.

The Independent Television Service (ITVS), CPB and PBS announced today (May 9) the Women and Girls Lead initiative, a multi-year engagement campaign to focus independent documentaries on the leadership development of women and girls. CPB alone is investing $2.7 million in the project, in film financing and outreach work, according to the New York Times. More than 50 related docs are scheduled to air on PBS over the next three years. ITVS also will soon announce a deal to bring Half The Sky, the bestseller by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Pulitzer Prize winner Sheryl WuDunn, to PBS in fall 2012 as a four-hour prime-time special on Independent Lens.

Army Lt. Col. Howard Gutin, Ret., a former board chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Texas public broadcaster, died April 27 in Indialantic, Fla. He was 80. Gutin became interested in broadcasting during his 32-year military career, serving as director of the Brooke Army Medical Center TV facility in San Antonio. After his 1979 retirement from the Army he spent seven years producing KLRU’s popular Austin City Limits. He went on to head up the Southwest Texas Public Broadcasting Council. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan appointed him to the CPB Board. Gutin was voted vice chairman in 1986 and was chairman from 1987 to ’89.

Michael Rinzel is the new director of digital content at Classical 105.9 FM WQXR in New York City. Rinzel will oversee the relaunch of WQXR.org, scheduled for this fall, and oversee web content generated through live productions from the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, WQXR’s multiplatform live event venue. Rinzel previously directed digital programming and production VH1’s TV programming at MTV Networks. Prior to VH1, Rinzel directed the digital team at Fuse, a music TV cable channel.

Friends and colleagues of the late Bill McCarter filled Kenilworth Union Church in the Chicago suburb “to hear tributes to the man credited with transforming WTTW-Channel 11 into one of the nation’s premier public television stations during his 27 years as president and general manager,” writes Chicago media reporter Robert Feder today (May 6). One speaker was Newton Minow, the former FCC chairman who recruited McCarter to the post. Minow recalled a visit with McCarter to the station’s transmitter atop what was then the world’s tallest building, the Sears (now Willis) Tower: “That signal is pure, it is powerful, it is innovative, it is fair, it is trusted, and above all, it stands for public service,” Minow said.

Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society has launched its new-and-improved Media Cloud. According to the site, it’s “an open source, open data platform that allows researchers to answer quantitative questions about the content of online media.” It displays what stories media sources are covering, the language various media use to report the news, and how items spread from one outlet to another. For more than a year, the site has been tracking 50,000 English-language stories daily from 17,000 media sources, including major mainstream media outlets, left- and right-leaning American political blogs and 1,000 popular general-interest blogs. “We’ve used what we’ve discovered from this data to analyze the differences in coverage of international crises in professional and citizen media and to study the rapid shifts in media attention that have accompanied the flood of breaking news that’s characterized early 2011,” the center said today (May 6) in a statement.

PBS Hawaii has hired two new staff members. Jared Kuroiwa is vice president of digital networking. He is a broadcast engineer with a background in web development, including social messaging. Roberta Wong Murray is vice president of programming and communications. She began her career as a news reporter and anchor at KRON-TV in San Francisco. She owned her own public relations firm, and was Hawaii’s media specialist for the U.S. Census in 2010.

In the run-up to Mother’s Day, StoryCorps released its latest heart-warming animated short. “No More Questions!” — featuring a strong-willed grandmother who reluctantly shared life stories with her son and grand-daughter in a StoryCorps recording booth — has topped 600,000 views since being featured on YouTube May 5. The animation is one of three to be featured on the upcoming season of P.O.V., PBS’s summer showcase for independent film.

U.S. Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) and Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) have jointly introduced the Community Access Preservation Act (H.R. 1746), which would put content, reception and signal-quality requirements on carriage of public, educational and government access channels and require cable operators to pay for them, according to the Alliance for Community Media. The bill, introduced Thursday (May 5), would amend the Communications Act to require cable operators to carry PEG channels without alteration or degradation, and make them viewable without additional equipment charges to every subscriber. American Community Television (ACT) , which advocates for PEG channel access, told Broadcasting & Cable that the bill is “critical to the survival of these important local television channels.

Former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson is urging Florida residents to complain to the Federal Communications Commission regarding the upcoming sale of WMFE-TV, the Orlando Sentinel reports today (May 6). Grayson, a Democrat who served from 2009 to ’11, is hoping to stop the pending sale of the PBS affiliate to Daystar Television Network, a Texas-based religious broadcaster (Current, April 18). “For 46 years, Orlando, Florida has enjoyed public television and radio,” Grayson wrote in an email. “And if the Religious Right has its way, that’s over.” He urged recipients to submit comments to the FCC, which is soliciting public input on the license change.

Under a license transfer agreement announced this week, Cleveland’s commercial classical music station WCLV will become a subsidiary of ideastream, the Northern Ohio pubcaster that operates WVIZ-TV and WCPN-FM. The transfer is a donation, not an acquisition, intended to preserve the existing service and staff by sharing facilities, services and programming, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Both WCLV and ideastream are grounded in the same philosophy — that broadcasters have a great opportunity and hence a great responsibility to use the medium to enrich and enlarge the lives of the public they serve,” says Robert Conrad, WCLV president and co-founder, in Crain’s Cleveland Business.