Silver batons go to five public broadcasting projects

Five public broadcasting projects won 2011 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Awards. The silver batons are among the most prestigious honors in broadcast journalism.

PubTV and radio winners are:

— KCET, Los Angeles, for "Up In Smoke,"
"Protected or Neglected: Workplace Safety" and "Hung Out to Dry?"
— NPR and Laura Sullivan for "Bonding for Profit."
—  P.O.V. and Geoffrey Smith for "The English Surgeon."
— West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Trey Kay for "The Great Textbook War," distributed by PRX.
— WGBH, Frontline and reporter/videographer Najibullah Quraishi, for reporting on Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

The awards ceremony is scheduled for Jan. 20 at Columbia University's Low Memorial Library. Here's a list of all the winners.

After nearly half a century at WEMU pubradio, Art Timko to retire

Art Timko is retiring after 42 years at WEMU, Eastern Michigan University's pubradio station. Timko, 64, started at WEMU as a student in January 1968, when he enlisted served in Vietnam. He returned in 1970 for graduate school, finished that year, and started working at the station again. "I was hired in August of 1971 as a producer and have been here ever since,” he told AnnArbor.com, adding that he has no regrets about working at just one station for his entire career. Molly Motherwell, the station’s general manager/marketing and development director, will be interim executive director during the search for Timko’s replacement.

Foundation pledges $2.4 million for Philly collaborative news project

The William Penn Foundation has approved a $2.4 million grant for a Networked Journalism Collaborative project in Philadelphia, based in part on input from the American University School of Communication's J-Lab. Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab, announced the grant in her blog. A c.e.o. search begins in January.

The money will come in a three-year grant to Temple University to create a center to incubate a new organization to produce original journalism, aggregate other news, and support the city's growing group of news websites.

J-Lab’s mapped the Philadelphia news ecosystem in late 2009. "Philadelphia has become a hotbed of journalistic networking and innovation," Schaffer noted.