WBUR's La Camera stepping down as g.m.

WBUR General Manager Paul La Camera is departing his post at the end of the year, he told the staff at a station meeting today (Nov. 19). "I'm going to be 68 next month and I think that’s an appropriate expiration date for someone to be running a dynamic contemporary media entity that increasingly has to surge into the digital world,” La Camera said after making the announcement. "To be frank, I’m more of a traditionalist, and that’s not necessarily my strength.” La Camera was appointed g.m. in October 2005.

Roger Ebert: NPR is "the voice of our better nature"

Leave it to Roger Ebert to pen a love letter to NPR. The movie critic (and prolific blogger) today (Nov. 19) came to the defense of the beleaguered network. "NPR surely is the voice of America — the voice I hope the world is listening to via the internet," Ebert writes. "It is the voice of our better nature. We are not all snarling dogs of Left and Right, feasting on shreds torn from the Body Politic. Some of us (maybe most of us, when the mood is right) are kind, curious, sane. We are interested in other peoples, other lifestyles, other choices. We do not demand that the media tell us over and over again the things we already believe. We are open to new ideas."

"Why is NPR seen a threat and not a national resource?" he continues. "I think it's a threat because it deals in information and not in the trivial. It encourages thoughtfulness. It tries to look at more than one side. It has a way of pointing out errors and drawing obvious conclusions. Its very existence is a rebuke to media outlets that depend on popularizing an ideological party line. Just think it through, if you haven't lost the knack."

Linda O'Bryon new president of South Carolina ETV

South Carolina Educational Television has hired Linda O'Bryon, former chief of content at Northern California Public Broadcasting, as its new president and c.e.o., the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting. She takes the helm Dec. 1. O'Bryon had supervised producers, editors, reporters and tech personnel at pubTV stations in San Francisco, San Jose and Monterey, and two pubradio stations in Sacramento.