Friday roundup: Parachutist gets stuck on St. Louis tower; PBS station’s finance manager pleads guilty to embezzling

• The broadcast tower of St. Louis’s Nine Network picked up an unexpected Halloween decoration Thursday night: a parachutist who was stuck for two hours about 120 feet off the ground, reports KMOV-TV. Firefighters rescued 27-year-old Timothy Church after he attempted to jump off the tower. The illicit leaper and an accomplice were charged with trespassing. https://twitter.com/CoryStarkKMOV/status/528035355585695744/

• Elsewhere on the crime beat, a former finance manager for WFWA-TV in Fort Wayne, Ind., pleaded guilty Thursday to embezzling money from the station in July 2010, according to the News-Sentinel.

Pubmedia symposium examines how to define, quantify impact

“Impact” is a feel-good media buzzword of the moment, increasingly required by the funders of many projects and invoked by some PTV stations, news organizations and documentary producers as key to demonstrating the social good derived from their work. But defining the concept and then measuring whether a media project has demonstrated its value remain elusive challenges for many. During “Understanding Impact,” a two-day symposium convened last month at American University in Washington, D.C., participants explored a number of the ad hoc systems for tracking impact that are taking form. Organizations including the Center for Investigative Reporting in Emeryville, Calif., and KETC, the Nine Network of St. Louis, have developed their own methodologies and hired staff members to measure the impact of their work.

St. Louis culinary magazine hits pubmedia airwaves on Feast TV

Nine Network in St. Louis is partnering with the local Feast Magazine on Feast TV, a unique culinary show. Filmed in Producer Catherine Neville’s home kitchen, each program links segments on regional food news with a cooking demonstration that progresses through the half-hour magazine. “This medium lets viewers meet the farmers, the chefs, the brewers and winemakers who make up our culinary industry,” said Neville, also Feast Magazine publisher. Feast TV had been airing on the local Fox affiliate, said Terri Gates, Nine Network spokesperson.

Nine Network breaks ground on Public Media Commons project

The Nine Network of Public Media in St. Louis kicked off a yearlong construction project on Tuesday to build the Public Media Commons, an interactive “urban space” in the city’s midtown district. Designed to be a “powerful expression” of the future of public media, the Public Media Commons is a pedestrian-friendly and interactive space that will give visitors the opportunity to view content on wall-size screens as well as curating content via interactive and touch displays. The community space will also have concert space and public art including a digital “tree.”

The Nine Network’s partners include the University of Missouri-St. Louis and St.