This just in from NPR…

“Today at the UNITY 2012 Convention, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced it will award NPR a $1.5 million grant to launch a major journalism initiative to deepen coverage of race, ethnicity and culture, and to capture the issues that define an increasingly diverse America. With this expansive effort, NPR will produce compelling stories and present new voices and conversations online and on-air, staffed by a six-person team.”

“We want to dive beneath the surface and capture real conversations that people are having about race and ethnicity,” said Margaret Low Smith, NPR’s Senior Vice President for News. “America is a fascinating and complex place – we want to shed light on that with original and nuanced coverage.”

Undoubtedly the initiative comes in the reverberating negative reaction the station endured after the firing of Juan Williams in October 2010. Williams is a political analyst at FNC.

NPR has won several Peabody Awards for an investigation into inequalities in the South Dakota foster care system for Native Americans, coverage of the Arab Spring, and remembrances of 9/11 collected by StoryCorps and broadcast on Morning Edition. The news was announced today.

Receiving Peabody Awards are the NPR News Investigation “Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families,” reported by correspondent Laura Sullivan and producer Amy Walters; and NPR’s foreign desk, namely Jerusalem Correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, for coverage of the Arab Spring in 2011. The oral history project StoryCorps’ response to the 10th anniversary of 9/11 also received an award; interviews with survivors and victims’ relatives were broadcast in a series on NPR’s Morning Edition.

“This is an enormous honor,” said Margaret Low Smith, Senior Vice President of NPR News, in a release.

NPR announced a “new executive structure” today to create a “shared vision and greater alignment” across all content areas. Kinsey Wilson has been promoted to the new role of Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer. He will set the direction and oversee the operations for all of NPR’s content areas: news, programming and digital media. Margaret Low Smith will permanently lead NPR News as Senior Vice President, a position she has been acting in since January 2011.

These changes are effective immediately.

The upshot (according to a release): “The new structure will allow for closer coordination of NPR’s news, digital and programming strategies and a more seamless integration of its news operations.”

Eric Nuzum will step into Smith’s former role as VP of Programming. There will also be an “expanded role” for Keith Woods, V.P. of Diversity in News & Operations. He will report directly to CEO Gary Knell. “In Kinsey and Margaret, we have two journalists, strategists and leaders with a keen understanding of the craft that distinguishes NPR – and how we must continue to innovate and evolve,” Knell said in a release.

NPR will celebrate its 40th anniversary at GWU next Monday night with a “lively look at the history and future of public radio and its impact on our society.”

NPR’s Acting Senior Vice President of News Margaret Low Smith will be joined by Emmy Award winner Cokie Roberts, Susan Stamberg, and Audie Cornish, all of NPR. Also taking part: former CNN Washington bureau chief Frank Sesno and GW professor Christopher Sterling, considered to be an expert on radio and broadcast journalism and who has authored several books on radio.

The event begins at 6:15 p.m. on Monday and is followed by a reception. Get more details and RSVP here.

NPR announced to staff and stations this morning that Carl Kasell will leave his newscaster job at the end of 2009. He will continue his second role as official judge and scorekeeper of the weekly NPR news quiz “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!”

Kasell has been in broadcasting for more than 50 years. He joined NPR as a part-time newscaster in 1975 and was on staff by 1977; he did the first newscast during the debut of Morning Edition in November 1979, and has been with the program since.

Staff memo announcing Kasell’s departure after the jump.

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