In the first of a two-part interview on the NetNewsCheck website, Planet Money reporters Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg talk to writer Michael Depp about what he calls the “curious, humane, approachable style” of the multimedia team covering the global economy for pubradio. Exactly what the program is continues to evolve, Blumburg said. “We’ve been searching for the one word answer. We’re an economics reporting unit, a project. What is the core thing that we do? That’s the question we’re asking all the time.” “Do we want to do more cohesive projects where there’s a huge digital component and there’s an audio component and they’re all working together.

The Lyda Hill Foundation has donated $1 million to Dallas pubcaster KERA to expand regional news coverage. The donation comes on the heels of the foundation’s 2011 support for KERA’s reporting on health and science issues that included sponsorship of the station’s weekly “Health Checkup” segment. The Lyda Hill Foundation focuses on funding organizations “that make game-changing advances in nature and science research.” “As a KERA viewer, listener and donor, I recognized the importance of funding such a vital community resource,” Hill said in a prepared statement. “This gift is also meant to inspire others to support the kind of local news stories and reporting not found anywhere else in North Texas.”

The Independent Television Service has launched a social-media campaign to steer viewers from Thursdays to Monday nights, as Independent Lens prepares to take its new spot in the PBS lineup, with POV. ITVS is urging fans to fans to download an “I stand with independents” sign, take a photo, tweet the picture to #StandWithMe, add it to a Facebook page and submit it to the ITVS Tumblr. “We need your help in the long haul to drive audiences to Monday nights,” ITVS President Sally Jo Fifer said on the organization’s website.

In an interview Hispanic news site Voxxi, Sandie Viquez Pedlow, executive director of Latino Public Broadcasting, talks about raising the profile of a growing segment of America. “If you look at the Census, you see that Latinos right now are 50 million strong and represent 16 percent of the American population,” Pedlow said. “By 2050, nearly one-third of the total American workforce is going to be Hispanic. We, organizations such as Latino Public Broadcasting and other Latino organizations, really need to look at that and we need to translate those numbers into the many stories that are out there and distribute them across all media platforms, so that these stories can be seen and understood by the American public.”

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney may have said during last week’s debate that he would eliminate funding to public television, but during his time as Massachusetts governor WGBH in Boston received millions from the state’s film tax credit program that Romney signed into law, according to the Boston Globe. Last year alone WGBH received $4.2 million for programs including American Experience, Antiques Roadshow and Nova. Also, Watertown, Mass., animation studio Soup2Nuts received about $300,000 in subsidies last year, mainly for the PBS series WordGirl. “It has been very helpful for us to make our budget,” WGBH spokesperson Jeanne Hopkins told the newspaper.

Margaret Drain, longtime head of national programming for production powerhouse WGBH in Boston, is stepping down in February 2013, the pubTV station announced today. Drain has overseen the production of icon series such as American Experience, Frontline, Masterpiece, NOVA and Antiques Roadshow, as well as numerous specials. During her 10 years in the position, the station has won 44 Emmys, 10 du-Pont-Columbia awards and 14 George Foster Peabody awards. “Through her deep commitment to quality journalism, Margaret Drain has advanced WGBH’s mission to serve our audiences across the country with programming that sets the standard for public television,” said WGBH President Jon Abbott.

St. Louis Public Radio and the nonprofit St. Louis Beacon have signed a letter of intent to explore an alliance, they announced today. The two already work together in a Beacon news bureau in Washington, D.C., and on “Beyond November,” a comprehensive election-coverage project that also includes a partnership with the Nine Network of Public Media. “We see the digital revolution as a historic opportunity to further establish St. Louis as a leader in journalism innovation,” said Tim Eby, St. Louis Public Radio g.m. “As we plan together, the core idea that will guide us is the question ‘Will this help us better serve the community?’”

Public broadcasting became a trending topic during and after Wednesday night’s presidential debate, as GOP nominee Mitt Romney repeated his pledge to defund PBS and the NewsHour’s Jim Lehrer was roundly criticized for his performace as debate moderator.

Two acclaimed filmmakers whose work has been featured on the documentary showcase  POV on PBS were among the 2012 “Genius Grant” recipients, announced Monday by the  John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Natalia Almada and Laura Poitras, along with the 21 other grantees, will each receive $500,000 paid over five years. Almada, based in Brooklyn and Mexico City, produces works that spotlight the conflict and turmoil of individual lives in Mexico, as well as the complex realities of immigration. Three of her films have been featured on POV, including 2005’s Al Otro Lado and 2009’s El General.

Video of the fourth in a series of Public Media Futures forums, held Sept. 20 in San Francisco, is now online at the website of one of the sponsoring organizations, the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. This forum highlighted news content innovation and social media integration within the pubcasting system. Here’s background on the forums in Current (Jan. 30). More than 30 participants at the event included Kinsey Wilson, chief content officer, NPR; Carol Varney, managing director, Bay Area Video Coalition; Olivia Ma, news and politics manager, YouTube; Chris Satullo, news director, WHYY; Brant Houston, chair, Investigative News Network; Linda Fantin, director of network journalism, American Public Media; and Stephen Engleberg, managing editor, ProPublica.

The FCC has released a 205-page Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the upcoming spectrum auctions to clear bandwidth for mobile devices, and is requesting comments. In the notice, the FCC says that it anticipates participation in the auction by noncommercial educational licensees “will promote the overall goals of the broadcast television spectrum incentive auction and serve the public interest by providing NCE licensees with opportunities to strengthen their financial positions and improve their service to the public.” The FCC also notes that channel sharing by commercial stations and NCE stations operating on reserved channels, one option for broadcasters in the auction, “raises special concerns.”

WTVI in Charlotte, N.C., will return to carrying first-run PBS programming for the first time since 2004, reports the Charlotte Observer. The move will cost the station about $200,000 annually, according to the newspaper. The struggling pubcaster was taken over by Central Piedmont Community College in March. The station had dropped the primary PBS schedule eight years ago because it duplicated programming on overlap stations UNC-TV in Chapel Hill and SCETV in Columbia. At first the station’s plan to focus on local shows worked, but over time viewership and donations declined. WTVI memberships fell from 20,000 a decade ago to about 7,000 last year, said Elsie Garner, the station’s executive director.

Legendary comedian Jerry Lewis will do a rare television special for PBS premiering in March 2013, the month of the entertainer’s 86th birthday. The program will be available to member stations as a pledge special. “We have been thinking about doing something with or about Jerry Lewis for some time,”  Joe Campbell, PBS v.p., fundraising programming, told Current. “Jimmy Osmond pitched this specific show in early August. The Osmond family has a long relationship with Jerry and convinced him to do the show.” An Evening with Jerry Lewis – Live from Las Vegas! will feature Lewis in performance as well as reminiscing about his long career.

The Sunday night premiere of Call the Midwife, PBS’s eagerly anticipated limited-run drama series from the BBC, earned a 1.5 rating in Nielsen overnights, according to PBS. That’s 50 percent above the usual 1.0 PBS overnights for 8 p.m. Sundays last season, but far less than Downton Abbey’s Season 2 premiere of 2.7. A PBS spokesperson said the Midwife’s 1.5 figure is expected to be higher in full national ratings, which also count DVR hits and within-week repeats. In Britain, Call the Midwife earned bigger ratings than even Downton Abbey, which is now a mega-hit for Masterpiece.