Reporter

I've got it on good info that we should all be parked in front of HBO tonight at 9:30 for "Reporter."

Stuever's take: The world feels big and yet way too small in "Reporter," Eric Daniel Metzgar's ennobling, intentionally depressing documentary about the relentless work ethic of Nicholas D. Kristof, the New York Times op-ed columnist who writes firsthand about the worst situations every hemisphere has to offer.

"Reporter," which airs Thursday night on HBO, follows Kristof, 50, and two young idealists (a doctor and an inner-city English teacher) into the fractiously ravaged nation of Congo, where Kristof wants to write a column about the reigning warlord. Ideally, he hopes to teach his companions, who won a contest to travel with him, about the value of witnessing the world's atrocities and scintillating them into stories that will call on people to act. Which is what Kristof did with his work in Darfur, Sudan: He caused people -- from George Clooney on down -- to do whatever they can.