Texas Southern University Library to Receive Rare Speech Recordings

The Pacifica Radio Archives will donate digital copies of recorded speeches by Malcolm X, Langston Hughes and others to Texas Southern University, reports Diverse. The Archives is donating recordings to universities as part of its Save Our Sound tour. (Via Rolas de Aztlan.)

"Public media content delivery is happening without us."

Dennis Haarsager lays out his plea for a unified content delivery network in this blog post, which follows the February release of the Digital Distribution Committee report and commentary on that effort.

LA Times columnist critiques Frontline's "News War"

Los Angeles Times media columnist Tim Rutten reacts to the third installment of Frontline's "News War," which examined the ongoing turmoil at his newspaper.

Saluting Robert Schenkkan, public broadcasting pioneer

The public stations in Austin, Texas, honored public broadcasting pioneer Robert Schenkkan over the weekend with a celebration of his 90th birthday, reports the Austin American-Statesman. Schenkkan helped to create Austin's KUT-FM and KLRU-TV, and also defended public broadcasting against a defunding threat from President Nixon in the 1970s. "Bob Schenkkan is a hero to me and everybody else in public broadcasting," said Jim Lehrer. "He gave us life and then he saved us."

Larry Bensky will leave Pacifica

Longtime Pacifica host and reporter Larry Bensky announced last week that he will retire from the network at the end of April. In his farewell letter, he cites frustration with the state of the network: "As I see it, the so-called 'democratization' of our local and national governance structure has not enhanced our effectiveness as a media outlet, or as a force for peace and social justice. In fact, despite the best intentions of a few people involved, Pacifica's current governance and administration is a wasteful, counterproductive, and far from transparent distraction."