Photo courtesy of Earl Gibson III/Tavis Smiley

Next week (October 10-14), Tavis Smiley will be featuring highlights from his August 2011 poverty bus tour with his co-host on PRI’s Smiley & West radio show, Princeton professor Dr. Cornel West.

Crossing 18 cities in nine states, Smiley spoke with Americans about their struggles in today’s harsh economy. Smiley will also interview leading anti-poverty advocates, including: Princeton professor Dr. Cornel West, Feeding America CEO Vicki B. Escarra, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, economist Jeffrey Sachs and ethics and religion commentator Jim Wallis.

Tavis Smiley airs weeknights at midnight on THIRTEEN.

Get a closer look at The Poverty Tour, with featured stories, videos, and a slideshow.

Watch a preview:

Marc Rosenwasser

Inside Thirteen recently spoke with Marc Rosenwasser, Executive Producer of Need to Know. The series recently changed its format to a half-hour program focused on the 2012 election and all the important issues that come with it — from the economy and jobs to the environment. Here, Rosenwasser discusses “Help Wanted,” a new series that takes an in-depth look at the job crisis and its impact on Americans across the country.

Need to Know airs Fridays at 8:30 p.m. on THIRTEEN. “Help Wanted” premieres tonight, and will continue the first Friday of every month through the election. Learn more about the series and watch featured segments here.

Inside Thirteen: What issues and trends will be covered in “Help Wanted”?

Marc Rosenwasser: We’re going to be reporting “Help Wanted” from all around the country over the next year. In our first “Help Wanted” special, we are shooting in Cuyahoga County in Northern Ohio with John Larson. The reason we went there is because we hope to actually revisit that in the next 15 months to see how these people are faring and to see how their situation is affecting their thinking about the presidential campaign next year. So, we have a sampling of different people of different political stripes, but more importantly, we ended up with a sampling of people who actually have jobs, who are totally insecure. So when the unemployment numbers are released this Friday (they’re released the first Friday of every month) – since we air on Friday it’s easy enough to do, and it makes the show, we hope, extremely timely. We’re going to Northern Ohio because it’s actually not a worse-case scenario, it’s actually a typical place. It has a lot of different kinds of jobs, and Ohio is a critically important political state; they’ve voted for the winner every single time since 1964. What we’re ending up with this time is a piece that’s actually about people who have jobs who’ve had their hours reduced, their benefits cut, or they’ve had to take different jobs at lesser pay, so the point of that all is that even though they’re under great stress, they’re not even in the official numbers.

The second piece, which is about minority unemployment, especially among young black males, which is a huge problem going back for a long time; we’re actually working with the author David Simon of The Wire, he wrote a book in this series 15 years ago called The Corner, and we basically went back with Scott Simon to a corner in Baltimore to see what all those young men are doing. Very few of them have work, and very few of them are counted in the numbers because they’ve long since stopped looking for work. So, what we’re ending up with on this first edition of “Help Wanted” is a show that makes a point that as troubling as the official statistics are, they don’t even measure by a long shot the full extent of the problem. The only time we get close is by including “underemployed workers” – these people are not going to be in either one of these categories and they’re under tremendous stress, but they’re not counted.

IT: Are there any angles of the country’s job crisis that you feel have not been getting enough media coverage/attention?

Photo courtesy of Need to Know

MR: Honestly, I think all of it. I think by every measurement, it’s the issue that matters most. Hopefully what we can bring to it is a much greater depth and context to the issue. Also what we’ll be doing, not in this show but in the future, we have pieces in the works about innovative solutions to try to solve the job crisis. So, at least to, if not solve it, to potentially make it less of a crisis. For instance, we have a piece in the works from Oregon about a program that enables you if you are unemployed, instead of spending the number of weeks that you’re without benefits looking for a job, this program (which was created by NAFTA) actually enables you to start your own business during that time. So instead of just looking for work, you’re actually able to try to initiate a business plan and start a business. The advantage of that of course is that if it succeeds, and they do have a high success rate, you’re actually over time able to hire other people; so it’s not just a walk for a walk, hopefully it generates several jobs from your own success. So our goal is to broaden that discussion and make people aware of these innovative programs.

IT: What do you hope will differentiate Need to Know’s election coverage from other news organizations?

MR: PBS features wonderful, mostly studio-driven analysis of issues. What we hope to do is, just so we can create our own identity, and carve out a place that we hope makes us valuable, is to do much more of a field approach. In the past three weeks we’ve done case studies that illustrate bigger issues, which is what we want the model to be – character-driven stories that illustrate an important issue. From Greenville, Michigan, from Endicott, NY; this week we’re going to Cuyahoga County in Ohio and to Baltimore – so that will be our approach. We’ll probably be doing one-topic shows that will be piece-driven, that will often but not always include an interview. And to go deeper into that, to devote all 30 minutes to one topic…we think we can bring greater depth to whatever topic we’re covering, and to do it from the eyes of real people who are affected by the issue.

IT: Who is on your wish list of guests/experts to interview on the show?

MR: It really depends on what issues we cover. When we book major players, what we’re hoping to do is share them with shows like the NewsHour, so that we would do a big segment and hopefully give them part of it – that would be useful for them and useful for us as well.

Watch last week’s episode of Need to Know, which goes to Michigan to explore the challenges faced in creating a new economy for “green jobs”:

Bill Baker, President Emeritus of WNET, reflects on his experience of 9/11 while working at the station.

He recalls the installation of WNET’s first digital transmitter on Tower One of the World Trade Center in July 2001, and how just two months later, engineer Rod Coppola, tasked with maintaining the transmitter, lost his life on the day our nation, our city, and our company were changed forever.

Steve Adubato with Neal Shapiro, President & CEO, WNET at a One-on-One with Steve Adubato taping at the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center

Beginning on August 15, THIRTEEN will air One-on-One with Steve Adubato weekdays Monday — Thursday at 12:30 a.m. One-on-One discusses real life stories and features political leaders, CEOs, television personalities, professors, artists and educational innovators who each share their experiences and accomplishments.

“We are thrilled that One-on-One now joins THIRTEEN/WNET’s prestigious late night television line-up airing nightly after Award winning PBS programs Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley,” says Adubato, President/Executive Producer at Caucus Educational Corporation.

Watch last week’s episode of One-on-One with Steve Adubato here:

Today, PBS NewsHour will be presenting a live stream of President Obama’s address on the debt ceiling at 12:15 p.m. ET from the Rose Garden of the White House.

The statement follows the measure passed by the House of Representatives on Monday evening to increase the U.S. debt ceiling by a vote of 269-161. If approved by the Senate Tuesday afternoon, the measure would immediately grant the Treasury Department $400 billion in additional borrowing authority only hours before the Aug. 2 deadline.

Watch the live stream here:

Live broadcasting by Ustream

Today, WNET launched the MetroFocus website, marking the first phase of the multiplatform initiative to bring local news and culture coverage to the tri-state region.

In addition to analysis and opinion, the MetroFocus site features MetroLife, a multimedia section of voices from diverse communities and constituencies that explore our identity as New Yorkers, and a Toolbox for tips and resources to help New Yorkers cope with life in the nation’s biggest metropolis.

The site also includes (among other features) reporting from the investigative journalism nonprofit City Limits about poverty in New York on the 15-year anniversary of welfare reform; and a slide show of  post-9/11 photography and an audio interview with the editor of the new book, “New York: A Photographer’s City.”

“MetroFocus will examine the diverse ways in which we each live our lives here and our identity as New Yorkers,” said Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer Laura van Straaten.

In late 2011, MetroFocus will evolve into a mobile application and a half-hour local television broadcast on both THIRTEEN and WLIW21 to be produced at the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center in New York City.

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MetroFocus is a production of the Interactive Engagement Group in association with WNET New York Public Media, the parent company of THIRTEEN and WLIW21, New York’s public television stations.

On June 16, 2011 at 8 p.m., the Caucus Educational Corporation simulcast Governor Chris Christie: On the Line, a special one-hour live broadcast taped at the Tisch WNET studios at Lincoln Center that aired in prime-time on THIRTEEN, and a variety of PBS and National Public Radio (NPR) member stations.

On this interactive program, Governor Chris Christie responded to viewer questions on a range of issues including education, health care, the economy and bringing business back to New Jersey.

Additional stations that aired the broadcast include WHYY (Philadelphia’s PBS affiliate), WLIW (Long Island’s PBS affiliate), WLIW WORLD, NJN-Public Television, FiOS1, online at NJ.com, as well as on NPR member stations WNYC AM 820 (one of the highest-rated NPR member stations in the country) and WBGO 88.3 FM.

Watch highlights from Christie: On the Line.

Catch PBS NewsHour’s  live coverage of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress. Netanyahu will address the Israeli-Arab conflict and is expected to present an alternative to President Obama’s plan for peace in the region.

Coverage begins at 11 a.m., here:

Live TV : Ustream

On Thursday, May 5, PBS NewsHour will be livestreaming coverage of President Obama’s visit to Ground Zero to mark the death of Osama bin Laden and honor the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Watch the coverage live, beginning at 1:25 p.m.:

Check out PBS NewsHour’s full coverage of the death of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, and view highlights from Obama’s visit on their YouTube channel.

View NewsHour’s Remembering September 11 Flickr stream:

Inside Thirteen recently spoke with Religion & Ethics Newsweekly’s Kim Lawton to discuss the complex path to sainthood in the Catholic Church, and the upcoming beatification of Pope John Paul II on on Sunday, May 1 at the Vatican.

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly airs Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. and Sundays at 5:30 p.m. on THIRTEEN.

Watch a preview of Religion & Ethics Newsweekly’s coverage of Pope John Paul II’s beatification, and check out Lawton’s full reports on sainthood in the Catholic Church:

Path to Sainthood:

Sainthood Process: Thousands of Pages explains the documentation that must be gathered before someone can be proclaimed a saint.

The Saints: “Flesh and Blood Human Beings” explores the deeply personal roles saints can play for individual Catholics.

Inside Thirteen: What are the qualifications for being declared a saint in the Catholic Church?

Kim Lawton: A lot of religious traditions have holy people or people they refer to as saints. But, the Roman Catholic Church has a very unique, complicated process that has to take place in order for someone to be declared a saint. It can take years – centuries, in some cases. First off, a local bishop will authorize what’s called a cause, a case to be investigated about whether this person was indeed worthy of becoming declared a saint. They do a very thorough investigation of everything that person wrote, said and did to get a sense of whether they lived a holy life – a life of heroic virtue. All that evidence and documentation then gets put together and if it appears that the person did live a life of heroic virtue, they are declared “venerable.” After that, they start looking for whether or not a miracle happened that could be attributed to the intercession of the potential saint. They have a pretty rigorous standard of looking at any reported miracles, assessing whether or not it’s something that could be explained by any other means. If a miracle has been found, the person gets beatified – meaning that they are called “blessed.” The miracle is seen as confirmation that the person really is in heaven. After that, they have to find a second miracle that has taken place after beatification. If that is verified, and only then, can someone be declared a full saint.

IT: What does the beatification ceremony itself entail?

KL: A beatification ceremony is a celebration, basically, that says the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church are acknowledging that this person is someone who’s blessed, someone that is indeed in heaven. Usually a mass is involved and lots of music.

IT: There has been a lot of controversy over the rapid decision to beatify Pope John Paul II. How did this come about so quickly in this instance, and what makes this case so unique?

Pope John Paul II (Religion & Ethics Newsweekly)

KL: Normally, the rules say that you need to wait five years before launching into the case for sainthood. That is because a lot of times when someone dies, there can be an immediate rush of emotion. They want to make sure they do it in a careful way. But, in the case of John Paul II, as was the case with Mother Teresa, that five year waiting period was waived by the pope. So, their clauses were fast-tracked. Some people feel that wasn’t fair, that they shouldn’t have gotten special treatment. The Vatican says that there was such a strong outpouring of devotion for both of those people that they were listening to the voice of the people.

IT: Does the quick beatification of John Paul II and Mother Teresa signify a change in Church policy or tradition?

KL: Well, John Paul II had a very long papacy, almost 27 years, during which he declared more saints than all of his predecessors combined. After he died, the Vatican released new rules and urged local bishops and others who were moving these cases forward to be a little more careful when putting up causes for sainthood, and take the time to really investigate them thoroughly. As a result, Benedict hasn’t proclaimed saints at quite the same rate that John Paul II did.

IT: Are there any modern-day misconceptions about sainthood in the Catholic Church?

KL: Saints play an interesting role for Catholics – they can be models for a spiritual life, but many Catholics pray to saints on a regular basis. That can be confusing for Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Some people might ask, “Why do they pray to the saint, why don’t they just pray directly to God?” What the Church teaches is that when Catholics pray to a saint, they are asking that saint to intervene before God. Just like you might ask someone to pray for you, that’s what Catholics do, they’re asking the saint to bring their request to God with the idea that the saint is closer to God and therefore, God will listen. That’s something that I think is misunderstood and sometimes people think that it’s the saint that’s doing the miracle. Church teaching says that it’s God who’s doing the miracle, but through the intervention of the saint.

Many people also tend to think that saints were perfect people. But that’s not the case at all. Saints were human beings, complete with struggles and flaws. The Church teaches that they overcame that, and they lived holy lives in spite of their faults. Many people I interviewed for my story talked about how they were inspired to learn that the saints were “real” people just like they are.