Tavis Smiley will leave his NPR show Dec. 16. In an e-mail to stations, he appears to blame NPR for failing "to meaningfully reach out to a broad spectrum of Americans who would benefit from public radio, but simply don't know it exists or what it offers."

Milwaukee's school board voted unanimously last week to outsource management of WYMS, their noncommercial station, to local nonprofit Radio For Milwaukee.

"The common thread for us is secrets, that sense of revelation," says Kitchen Sister Nikki Silva in a New York Times profile.

A Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist draws a distinction between the "corporate" nature of Minnesota Public Radio and the "small, funky and extremely local" stations in the state that are banding together to raise their profile against MPR's.