It's hardly breaking news that the
newspaper business is in deep trouble.
The "Rocky Mountain News,"
which has been around
for 150 years, is publishing
its last edition today.
A great newspaper is dead.
Denver can't support
two newspapers any longer.
It's a grim race
to see who goes under first.
The "Philadelphia Daily News"
and Minneapolis "Star Tribune"
are both in bankruptcy.
"The Boston Globe" and "San Francisco
Chronicle" have been losing...
"The Seattle Post-Intelligencer,"
the largest daily newspaper
yet to go out of business...
Tribune Company,
owner of the "LA Times"
and the "Chicago Tribune"
filed for bankruptcy...
And the Gannett Company
is faltering...
All the news that was fit
to print for 88 years...
After 146 years, the print edition
is now a thing of the past...
The "Grey Lady" is suffering from...
"New York Times" stock
is off more than 75%...
"The New York Times"... "The New
York Times," are you kidding me?!
The obituary column
these days is full
of the death notices
of American daily newspapers.
So there's been a death watch
on "The New York Times"
as long as I've been covering media.
People are sort of fascinated
with what's going
to be the demise
of this great institution.
And it hasn't come,
and it hasn't come,
but that doesn't lessen
people's certainty that it will come.
Okay, I see this as a big story.
I can probably get significant space.
What do you think the story
is that I should tell?
Lately when I finish an interview,
most subjects have
a question of their own:
What's going to happen
at "The New York Times"?
Even casual followers
of the newspaper industry
could rattle off
the doomsday tick-tock.
Bruce Headlam.
As much as we want to flatter ourselves,
ifs still this very
old-school business.
I'm the Media Editor.
You know, trees are still cut
and papers are still delivered.
I just think that helps us
sort of be in the mix.
- Yeah yeah.
- Okay.
Not to worry,
suggest the new-media prophets.
The end of "The New York Times"
wouldn't be that big of a deal,
they say, because tweets,
blogs and news aggregators
could create a new apparatus
of accountability.
Say again?
But some stories are
beyond the database.
Sometimes people have
to make the calls,
hit the streets and walk past
the conventional wisdom.
Well, trust me,
if your numbers are better
who were given the power
to rein her in,
I'm just always skeptical
when everybody tells me
that the numbers don't mean
what they appear to mean, you know.
Because everybody gives me that line,
so I don't accept it from anybody.
The collapse in advertising
happened faster
than anybody anticipated.
This year in 2009,
there's been about a 30%
decline in advertising revenue,
on top of about a 17%
decline last year,
and nobody knows
where that ends.
It might just be that something
very permanent has changed.
Two things have happened to "The Times,"
I think in a way, most oi all.
The first thing that's happened,
famously, is the advertising market
has turned upside down. So at the same
time as the revenue takes a hit,
suddenly publishing
has gone from being
something done by a specialty class
to being something that literally
every connected citizen
has access to.
So the authoritative tone with which
"The Times" has always spoken
is now one of many many
voices in a marketplace.
And that reduction
in advertising revenue
coupled with the competition for
attention- both at the same time-
has turned this
from a transition into a revolution.
So this is about WikiLeaks,
which is a website which calls itself
an intelligence agency for the people.
And yesterday they posted
this video of a US attack,
an aerial attack, where there
were 12 people killed.
The government claimed
at the time that these were insurgents,
but it turns out there were
two Reuters employees
and then some
other unknown people.
WikiLeaks somehow
from an anonymous source
gets the video
and puts it on YouTube.
It felt like a possible
front-page story to Bruce and I.
So now basically the assignment
for the rest of the day
is to keep the story
interesting to editors.
We're trying to do a front-page
story on what this means,
and what this means for journalism.
Clearly it's great for journalists in
some ways, because then it's out there,
but it's this kind
of collision of two worlds,
like this closed
old world of expertise
and classification
and information and privacy
and this new world that just
kind of wants to crack it all open.
You know, we see it ourselves.
We're a perfect example
of a kind of culture that,
you know, is having
what we do completely ripped open.
So it's... hey, did you send it?
Okay, yeah, I got it.
Yeah, thanks. Bye.
This is... these are watching
people get killed
in an incredibly graphic way
in a war
and hearing the reactions
of the soldiers.
Roger.
Roger.
Stelterz
I didn't see that- the van flips over.
I didn't notice that last time.
God, what a fuckin' terrible story.
"The release of the Iraq video
is heaping attention
on the once-obscure website,
which aims to take advantage
of the global reach of the internet
and to bring to light hidden
information about governments
and multinational corporations."
They didn't have
to drop this off on the front step
of NBC News
or "The New York Times."
They just dropped it off
on YouTube
and waited
for everybody else to find it.
Even with "The Pentagon Papers,"
they had to be delivered by hand
and they can stop the presses.
This, they're just
taking it and they're just
putting it up there
where everybody can see it.
- Hello.
- Yes sir.
Hi, Al, anything new on your front today?
Very significant...
this goddamn "New York Times" expos
of the most highly-classified
documents of the war.
Well, God damn it,
I am not going to have it.
I mean,
could "The Times" be prosecuted?
Look, as far as "The Times"
is concerned, hell, they're our enemies.
I think we just oughta
do it and anyway, nobody
from "The New York Times"
is to be talked to.
The decision
to publish "The Pentagon Papers"
was the moment
when the American news media
stood up and said,
"We are independent of the presidency
and we are going to do what
we think is the right thing to do."
Do you feel, Mr. Sulzberger,
that the national security
is endangered,
as charged by the administration?
I certainly do not.
These papers, I think
as our editorial said this morning,
were really a part of-
a part of history
that should
have been made available
considerably longer ago,
and I just didn't feel
there was any breach
of national security
in the sense that we were
giving secrets to the enemy.
Julian Assange,
editor for WikiLeaks,
denies that the site
has put troops in danger.
Assange is clearly an advocate
and opponent of the war.
Assange made a name
for himself as a hacker,
and was arrested
for computer crimes
before starting
his whistleblower website.
We would like to see the revelations
that this material gives
investigated by governments,
and new policies
put in place as a result,
if not prosecutions.
I gotta try Julian again,
because I have not heard
back from him at all.
Hello?
Hi, it's Brian Stelter
calling from "The Times."
There is a traditional definition
of journalism that is objective,
totally legal, never breaking
the law to obtain content.
Do you view yourself as trying
to achieve that definition,
or is your definition
of journalism broader?
And tell me what the goal is.
Tell me what the goal is.
I don't know whether what
he's doing is good or bad.
I mean, clearly, you know,
in an open society,
you know, information is,
you know, is important.
It's vital for people to make decisions.
On the other hand, there are things
that can get people in trouble.
The video was edited in a way
that did not show the full story.
It was presented as journalism,
but it had, you know, an agenda.
Is "journalist" a word
you attach to yourself?
Okay.
The video has been
edited to the extent
that you really have
a hard time knowing the greater context.
There is, there is.
- So they have both, right?
- They did do both, it's true.
But the unedited version
clearly shows a guy carrying an RPG.
They're shifting from being
a clearinghouse to being advocacy.
It's a big decision they make
to suddenly edit a 30-minute thing.
- Are you writing separately on this?
- We are, we are.
I certainly had not heard of
WikiLeaks before that moment.
And I think probably
a lot of my colleagues hadn't either.
That was the time
it kind of burst out
into broader public view.
- Hey hey, did you send it?
- Oh, I saw a...
- there was a note in there.
- Did you?
I didn't see it from you.
I'm going to open it up.
He's lying.
Oh, he didn't send it.
I knew he didn't send it.
There's two A1 meetings.
There's the 10:30 where
we discuss the stories of the day,
what we're going to offer.
And there's a 4:00,
when the top editors
make that decision.
It's all the desk heads,
or at least somebody from each desk.
You make your pitches
and they ask questions.
Then they decide what they want to put
in the newspaper the next day.
You know,
it's kind of a competition.
You go in there and lots
of people want stories
and we tight to get on A1.
But it's very constructive fighting.
All right, folks,
we're still waiting for a few people
but I think we can get started.
First, I think... Bruce.
This is our follow on the video that was
released yesterday on the web.
We're taking a look at WikiLeaks, which
is the organization that leaked it.
I think it's a very
interesting moment for them.
They've been gaining a lot of notoriety
because of the Baghdad video.
As Ian pointed out, they've put up
the raw footage, which is 38 minutes.
They've also put up an edited version,
which is what many people are seeing,
and there are already people
in the army and elsewhere saying
that this actually distorts
what actually happened there.
And when they went to get the bodies,
they found a guy with the RPG,
so as Bruce was saying,
it's become advocacy. Now-
Somebody's, yeah.
I just talked with-
They probably belong in the same place.
- I'm sorry?
- They probably belong
in one kind of
coherent whole, right?
- Sure.
- Yeah, right right.
In the Page-One meeting,
the most senior editors
look at the summary
of the story itself
and say,
"Have you framed it correctly?
Does this seem loaded? Do you have
enough facts to back this up?"
And then ultimately people
present their arguments
pro and con and build the sides.
Oh, the West Bank story.
Hmmm.
I don't think the whole country is
interested in Sharpe James.
- No.
- Swing Sharpe and West Bank?
West Bank's going to have
a big readership here.
- Yeah, I wouldn't swing that.
- Swing it with WikiLeaks?
- Uh-huh.
- Okay, swing it with WikiLeaks.
Let's leave the West Bank story.
It's going to swing, which means
in New York it will go inside,
but for the rest of the country
it will go on the front page.
You know, you look
for that moment where
you can really tell people,
"Here's how the world's changing."
When I gave
"The Pentagon Papers" to "The Times,"
there was a 22-month period
from the start of my copying
to it finally coming out.
Had the internet existed then,
I would have bought a scanner,
sent it out to all the blogs.
It's not certain that
that would have had as good an effect,
but at least it would have been out.
The bottom line is WikiLeaks
doesn't need us.
Daniel Ellsberg did.
The old newspaper model is dying.
Period. Done. News is not dying.
News is much cheaper
to produce now
because we can gather
and share in new ways,
operate on cheap platforms,
operate in networks.
There's incredible
new ways to do news.
There's no question that there is
still an enormous amount
of information out there,
but these papers have
the great capacity of a newsroom.
And if you think of the history
of these institutions-
Watergate, Abu Ghraib,
the Walter Reed scandal-
it is these institutions
bringing to bear newsrooms
of experienced journalists.
And I think we're at a dangerous moment
in American journalism.
The question really is whether
it's too late for some institutions
to take advantage of that change
and change as much as they have to.
So along comes David Carr,
the most human of humans,
talking about how media operates
within "The New York Times."
Please welcome David Carr!
You were a...
you are a former crack addict
and you are a reporter
for "The New York Times."
Which of these two do you think
is more damaging to society?
If you write about
the media long enough,
eventually you'll type
your way to your own doorstep.
I arrived at "The New York Times" late
in my professional life,
and I have an immigrant's
love of the place.
The chip that was implanted
in me when I arrived...
let's just call it "New York
Times" exceptionalism-
leads me to conclude that
of course we will survive.
You're so nice!
Then again, having suffered through
drug addiction in my 20s and 30s,
landing in jail
for cocaine possession,
raising two children
as a single parent,
and eventually ending up
at "The New York Times,"
I know what it's like
to come out the other side
when the odds are
stacked against you.
Hi, I'm looking for Alex.
Sure, you can
go have a seat on the couch.
- Huh? Okay.
- He'll be right back.
- Hi.
- This is David Carr
- from "The New York Times."
- Nice to meet you.
Don't keep saying
I'm from "The New York Times."
That sucks.
I'm just- it's me.
- It's nice to meet you finally.
- I'm David.
- Very nice to meet you.
- Hi, pleased to meet you. How are you?
We wanted to get everyone together
to do a companywide update.
The media landscape is changing
in really dramatic ways
in just six months.
So print as an industry
and a medium continues
to nosedive.
Publications like "Newsweek"
and "Times" are going down fast.
We like to say that
we're perfectly positioned.
Not only are
the sort of biggest media companies
willing to come talk to us,
but the biggest brands
are wanting to come talk to us
and give us money.
And what we have to do
is we have to figure out
how we can be meaner and faster
and more dynamic than
everybody out there.
We don't want to get hot and die.
We want to get hot and get hotter.
You asked the question is there
a business model that, like...
Just a sec though.
I want you to feel me on this:
I don't do corporate portraiture.
What the fuck is going on that
you're doing business with CNN?
We know how to speak
to young people.
They're listening to us.
We're a trusted brand for them.
I mean, the first thing
that CNN said when they walked
into the meeting
last summer was,
49-year-olds are watching
CNN right now,
and we're fucked.
Can you please help us develop
a new, young audience
for the future?
They like the way you tell stories.
They like your hosts.
They like where you go." That's really
what they came looking for.
So what kind of war is this, guerrilla?
I don't know Liberia.
I don't know what's going on.
I don't pretend to.
I'm not going there for a news thing,
reporting on a particular news story.
I'm not there to solve
the problems of the world.
I'm just a regular guy.
I didn't get flown in on a thing.
I don't have security.
I don't have anything.
And I've been to some places
just fuckin' insane.
If you're a CNN viewer
and you go, "Hmm,
I'm looking at human shit
on the beach."
I'm a regular guy
and I go to these places and I go,
"Okay, everyone talked to me
about cannibalism, right?"
Everyone talked to me about cannibalism.
Now I'm getting
a lot of shit for saying the word
"cannibalism" and stuff- whatever.
Everyone talked to me
about cannibalism!
- So you'd kill the child?
- Yes.
- And then drink the blood?
- Yeah.
That's fucking crazy.
So the actual- our audience goes,
"That's fucking insane.
Like, that's nuts."
And "The New York Times"
meanwhile is writing about surfing.
I'm sitting there going, "You know what?
I'm not going to talk about surfing.
I'm going to talk about cannibalism
because that fucks me up."
Just a sec. Time out.
Before you ever went there,
we've had reporters there
reporting on genocide
after genocide.
And just because you put
on a fuckin' safari helmet
and went and looked
at some poop doesn't give you
the right to insult what we do.
- So continue, continue.
- Sorry.
I'm just saying that
I'm not a journalist.
- I'm not there to report.
- Obviously. Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
I'm just talking about, you know,
look what I saw there.
What's up?
Dressed like a big Page-One guy.
- How are you?
- Boy, what a day.
"The Times" was
really where I wanted to work
from when I was very young.
I always had this idea of the place
as this sort of magisterial place
where great things happened
and were done.
And there was this idea
in the past where
getting to "The Times"
was almost like getting tenure.
And you could have
this great long 30-year, 40-year career
where you go cover politics,
you cover some foreign,
you maybe write a book.
And that's not the track now.
Ladies and gentlemen,
we are now on West 43rd Street
in Midtown Manhattan in the
central office of "The New York Times."
They are this minute busy getting ready.
This is the beehive, the central office,
the city room.
Here an avalanche of news
is shaped
into Monday morning's newspaper.
Well, here we are, boys.
That is Tumer Catledge.
He is the managing editor.
And I just heard from the circulation
department a few minutes ago
that we had the largest
distribution of papers today
in the history
of "The New York Times."
Hard news was a phrase
"The Times" almost owned.
NBC, CBS, ABC- the first thing
they'd do in the morning,
the directors of their shows would
look at "The New York Times."
If "The New York Times" had a story
about such and such in a faraway place,
the networks would think, "Ah, now we'll
send Walter Cronkite over there."
When I was growing up
I read "The Times" every morning.
And then I read this book by
Gay Talese, "The Kingdom and the Power,"
and it went inside
this imperial institution.
And he just,
you know, thrilled me.
I mean there was
nothing else I wanted to do.
"'The Times' was a very human institution,
run by flawed figures, men who saw
things as they could see them.
But it was equally true that 'The Times'
nearly always tried to be fair.
And each day, barring labor
strikes or hydrogen bombs,
it would appear
in 11,464 cities around the nation
and in all the capitals of the world,
50 copies going
to the White House,
39 copies to Moscow,
a few smuggled into Beijing,
and a thick Sunday edition
to the foreign minister in Taiwan,
because he required 'The Times'
as necessary proof
of the Earth's existence,
a barometer of its pressure,
an assessor of its sanity.
If the world did indeed
still exist, he knew
it would be duly recorded
each day in "The Times."
There's actually something called
"The New York Times" effect.
In the world of analogue newspapers,
there was an observable effect;
If on day one,
"The New York Times" ran a piece
on a particular story,
a political or business issue,
on day two
the tier-two newspapers
would all essentially
imitate the story.
Just like everything else
in the newspaper business,
we didn't realize that
"The New York Times" effect
actually depended on
the structure of analogue
newspaper distribution.
"The Times" still, I think to a
remarkable degree, does set the agenda.
I mean, you really can trace
almost any major story these days
back to something that
originally appeared in "The Times."
The problem is
is that once it reaches
the public,
they may not even know
it came from "The Times."
Okay, so at 6:00 AM
the release goes out. Is that right?
So for two, three months now-
I think the end of September
the story leaked
that Comcast was going to buy NBC.
It seems like finally
it will be announced.
So the challenge is this piece
I'm working on with Sorkin,
which is what we call
a tick-tock, which is
the fun details behind the scenes
of how the deal came together.
So I'm just waiting for Andrew
to come up so we can sort that out,
and we'll get that
in the paper tomorrow.
By the way,
how's the tick-tock coming?
Sorkin, I'm just waiting
for him. He's like...
- Has he filed anything?
- No.
So that means
he hasn't written a word.
I don't know.
Like at 11:00, he said,
"I'll have something
for you in an hour."
So now I'm going to look
like a chump if I don't hit that.
Because our deal was
he was going to write what he had
and I was going to write into it.
Do you want me to go to him
and say Bruce needs to talk?
- Just say Bruce needs it in 15 minutes.
- Okay.
It's another reshaping
of the media industry.
Comcast, which is
the biggest cable company,
they look at the future
and they see what's going on in media,
and they worry about if young
people are watching TV online,
are they going to need to keep paying
their cable bills forever down the road?
So they feel like, if they can own
as much of the television shows
and the movies,
they can play a bigger part
in that future,
whatever that future is.
I want to talk to you.
Can I wait?
You'll come up?
He's going to come up.
All right, here's the lede.
"The secret meeting"...
secret...
"The secret meeting was set for
1:00 PM the second week of July
in an out-of-the-way condominium
along the ninth hole
of the golf course
in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Jeffrey Immelt got
to the condo first,
trying desperately to avoid
being spotted by Jeff Zucker,
the chief executive NBC Universal
who was mingling with other executives
in front of the duck pond
only a couple hundred yards away
and had no idea what was happening."
Okay, anyway, here's the story.
I'm calling GE now.
- Okay.
- So I'm hoping you can like...
- Sort of maybe tie it together.
- ...tie it together.
Because it's basically
just all these little weird stories.
And I tried to tie it
and leave little places to...
- Then how would...
- It works out for Comcast
if the thing becomes worth
a lot of money in the future.
- Okay.
- That's basically the concept.
All right. How many words do you
think we have for this? It's very long.
- You think you can do it in 1500?
- Yeah.
- Is it looking good? Are you happy?
- Yeah.
I mean some of this may just
be too much detail, by the way.
- I went a little overboard.
- Yeah no, I'm tightening it up.
- He said we have 1500 words.
- This thing's like 1500 words now.
No no, he said
we could have 1500.
I'll check and tell you
if it's different.
I've gotta make sure
we got the space.
- Sorkin have a look?
- Sorkin just emailed me
and said file away,
but said don't put it on the web yet,
because he still needs
to confirm something.
Once we could
pare it down and tighten it up,
I think it read well.
It tried to tell a tale
rather than get bogged down
in the financials
and the numbers.
Here was this kid, 21-year-old
Brian Stelter, who started a blog,
who did it anonymously
so no one would out him,
until "The New York Times"
outed him as a mere kid.
He made his brand
and his reputation
by just getting out there
and blogging.
You know,
he became this sort of must-read
for the Brian Williamses
of the world.
And I think "The Times" had the idea,
"Why don't we hire this guy?"
Stelterz A week
after that story was published,
"The Times" contacted me
and asked me to come up
and do these series of interviews
back to back to back with editors,
seeing if you're
"Times" material, I guess.
You see him
at his desk and he's got
two laptops and TVs open
and he's Twittering,
and he just embodies
everything about new media.
I don't know why anybody
who's a reporter isn't on Twitter.
I constantly berate
my colleagues who aren't on it.
It drives me nuts when I'll hear
my colleagues talking about a story
at noon, and I read it
on Twitter at midnight.
I'm thinking to myself,
"Why is that allowed?"
You know, "Why are we not
on top of the news?" It's 2010.
I still can't get over the feeling
that Brian Stelter was a robot
assembled in the basement
of "The New York Times"
to come and destroy me.
Here's an entertaining tip:
I'm putting
the expensive beer on the top.
Welcome to Austin,
the city where for the time being
everybody is famous,
the economy is rocking
and the grid is groaning
under an influx
of the digitally interested.
- I might have to put you on ban.
- No, I agree, I agree.
I might have to put you on ban.
You're both going to end up
with your devices over the fence.
Twitter entered
the lexicon two years ago here,
when it was the darling
of the conference.
Why talk when you can tweet?
You're reading an article.
If you want to tweet about it
or if you want to follow the columnist,
you can do it right there.
Headlines can be sent
out via Twitter.
It's about finding out what's happening
in the world that you care about.
Really, what could
anyone possibly find useful
in this cacophony
of short-burst communication?
But at 52, I succumbed,
partly out oi professional necessity.
Now nearly a year later, has Twitter
turned my brain to mush? No.
It's hard to convince someone
that they should use Twitter
until you get them on it
and they use if for 10 days
and they're like,
"Oh, this is why it's interesting."
I'm a narrative
on more things at a given moment
than I ever thought possible.
See how many people just now...
I get a sense of today's news
and how people are reacting to it
in the time it takes to wait
for a coffee at Starbucks.
Nearly a year in,
I've come to understand
that the real value of the service is
listening to a wired collective voice.
The medium's not the message.
The messages are the media.
- Bruce?
- We're always looking for ways
to show how cutbacks across the media
business has affected coverage.
And Brian Stelter has
come up with an unlikely one,
which is coverage
of the President of the United States.
When Obama travels
to Buffalo today,
there won't be
a charter plane traveling with him
because many of the networks
have simply opted out
of taking that very expensive ride,
and the reason is simply cost.
Uh, we'll call it "press,"
Oh good, my sources are
starting to come out.
They're starting to wake up.
It's job number one, of course,
for every DC bureau to follow
the president and to travel with him
on trips both foreign and domestic.
But lately there's been fewer and fewer
of these White House planes
that go with President Obama to events.
These guys are trying every day
to save every dollar they can.
It's a demonstration of networks
trying to do more with less.
Or just accepting
you can only do less.
Sometimes that's the answer-
is just doing less.
Is it 1,500 people
on staff right now? 1400.
Are you confirming that 300
and 400 number that's out there?
ABC's laying off 400 people.
CBS laid off 90 a few weeks ago.
God, that is stunning.
20 to 25% of the staff
they're trying to cut.
They're not just there to make sure
the president doesn't
choke on a chicken bone.
They're also there to corner
people for interviews
in a way they couldn't otherwise.
I think the other thing
you have to do is nod
to what this is going
to mean for coverage
in the next few campaigns.
In the last election,
because they couldn't afford
to send out regular reporters,
they were sending out
24-year-olds with video cameras.
They were capturing
all kinds of things.
Somebody fell asleep and it never would
have been caught if they didn't have
some kid with a video camera
who was bored and filming everything.
Stelterz He's not going
to make news today, no.
No, the last president
who made news in Buffalo got shot.
Wasn't it McKinley?
Let's not put that one in the paper.
This is what it is at this point:
How do you cover
the president on the cheap?
We've looked at
every, I think, conceivable model
all the way from,
you know, philanthropic,
you know, could you find
a generous foundation
that wants to underwrite
"The New York Times"
to memberships.
That's an extraordinary thing.
I mean, it used to be
that newspapers almost
gave themselves away.
I mean, they charged far less than
the cost of printing the newspaper,
and they made up
the difference in advertising.
The newspaper industry
didn't see Monster.com
taking the jobs portion away.
They didn't see
Craigslist taking
the classifieds portion away.
They didn't see Ford and GM
making their own websites
to take automotive advertising
basically away forever.
We are now in
the middle of a really unsettling time.
The real question is whether
newspaper advertising
will ever return at the same level.
Like a lot of companies in the industry,
this one found itself scrambling
for its cash position.
The company borrowed
$250 million from Carlos Slim
and executed
a sale-leaseback of the building,
which is essentially like
mortgaging the building.
Nobody wanted to make
any predictions,
because all the predictions they had
been making had been so badly wrong.
Nobody was pessimistic enough.
There was just this sort of
decades of organizational hubris
about, you know,
our own excellence
and our own dominance.
And then in a matter
of, like, 18 months,
all of a sudden there was-
the air ionized the situat-
and everybody started
like asking a question:
Could "The New York Times,"
like, go out of business?
"The New York Times,"
which is trading for three bucks-
a Sunday newspaper costs more than
a share of "New York Times" stock.
There has been, since the famous
"Atlantic," you know, "Monthly" story,
there has been open talk of
"What if 'The Times' were to go away?"
You know, I don't pretend
to be a seasoned business reporter,
but certainly looking
at the numbers, it did seem
as if they were in some peril and that
there certainly was a scenario
in which if they didn't act fast,
that "The Times" could
go into bankruptcy.
And so that's what I wrote.
I thought, "You horse's ass."
I thought, you know,
"You don't know what you're
talking about. You really don't."
I mean, I thought that
that kind of article,
for that to appear in "The Atlantic,"
I thought that was just
so stupid of "The Atlantic."
I was actually pretty stunned
at the reaction that piece had.
I just- I didn't...
I genuinely didn't expect
that people would be
so shocked by it,
because it felt sort
of obvious to me.
Please. I mean this is "The New York
Times" we're talking about,
and I think that that kind of an article
was both- I found it just dumb.
There's a collective denial about
what is going on and that
newspapers are somehow special
and somehow they're public trusts
and that they shouldn't fail,
and so therefore they won't fail.
And I think the disconnect between
"shouldn't fail" and "can't fail"
is the thing that I'm trying
to, like, really blow up.
"End Times" is good. It's great.
People have been arguing
that "The New York Times"
should be put out of business
ever since there was one.
So it's an old question,
but one that has a great deal
of salience for people.
They like it.
I don't think it's an argument
that will be very easily made,
and if it is, I'll vaporize
whoever's making it.
I'd like to note
that none of us are economists.
We're here not to talk
about whether
"The Times" is
a viable institution or not,
talk about CPMs
or prices on advertising.
We're here to talk about
what would happen
if "The New York Times"
disappeared.
How many of you would be happy
if "The Times" disappeared?
Okay, so we have
a sprinkling of hands.
We have probably
10 people voted for that.
And then how many of you
would be disappointed or upset?
Okay, wow. So-
Markos,
I'm going to go to you first.
If "The Times" ceased to exist,
how would you feel about it?
I think there's a perception
that a lot of people like me
who are writing online
cheer the demise of traditional media
outlets like "The New York Times."
But people like me just want
traditional media outlets
like "The New York Times"
to do theirjobs,
to do what they're supposed to do.
"The New York Times"
helped cheerlead
our way into the war in Iraq
with Judith Miller.
I think a lot of the decline
in these traditional media outlets
is because people have
lost faith that those publications
don't have ulterior
motives or agendas.
People like me, I have an agenda,
and I'm very clear about it.
But "The New York Times," they try
to be something better than that...
That's great, Markos,
but here's the thing:
When you're making
an argument about how
we're always falling down on the job,
you're reaching back through five years
of really important,
good hard reporting.
We're on the ground in Afghanistan.
We're on the ground in Iraq.
I'm not implying that it's bad work.
I'm saying that to claim that because
you're with "The New York Times"
you have to be taken seriously,
I think that's dangerous.
It's that sort of implied credibility
that "The New York Times" brings,
and that's how Judith Miller
got away with her war...
pre-war coverage that helped
get us into this war.
It's because she works for "The New York
Times," so she has to be credible.
Judy Miller reported, quote...
"The New York Times"
carried the unsubstantiated
claims of those, including...
On the front page
of the nation's paper of record,
"The Times" reported that
Saddam Hussein had launched a...
Weapons of mass destruction.
Weapons of mass destruction.
"The Times" had reporters
who were very much vulnerable.
There's a story in
"The New York Times" this morning...
We read in "The New York Times"
today a story that says
that Saddam Hussein
is closer...
They were trying to acquire
certain high quality...
The Bush administration was helped
by the nation's leading newspaper,
"The New York Times."
If "The New York Times"
thinks Saddam
is on the precipice
of mushroom clouds,
then there is really no debate.
Judy Miller was
someone who was let loose on this story,
and there were not people there
who were given the power
to rein her in,
and she clearly
needed to be reined in.
Do you accept
that your reporting was wrong?
Absolutely.
The handful of stories-
about six or seven of them-
that I did before the war
Wefe Wl'ollg,
and the intelligence information
that I was accurately
reporting was wrong.
I guess if your sources are wrong,
you're going to be wrong.
But to say you got it wrong
when your sources were wrong,
that, as your colleagues
at "The New York Times" have said,
reduces your role as a journalist
to no more than a stenographer.
No, on the contrary,
I really reject that criticism.
We made errors in our coverage
of the weapons of mass destruction.
We made them at the reporting
level and at the editing level.
Does she tell the truth?
"The New York Times"
can't have a reporter-
And we don't.
Anytime "The Times" fails
on a serious scale
on a particular story, a big story,
there's a cost.
There's a price to pay.
And certainly in recent years,
you've heard people say,
"Well, I no longer need 'The Times.'
I can no longer trust 'The Times."'
One more Jayson Blair
or one more Judy Miller
and you're chipping away
at this institution
that everyone is sort
of desperate to protect.
I think kind of until Jayson Blair,
they were kind of impervious.
They were Teflon.
The Jayson Blair incident was
a real scandalous occasion.
The reporter was found
to be reporting stories
at places where he was
not actually there,
though the dateline would give
indication that he was there,
taking stories and not even
rewriting them-
written by other people
at other newspapers.
He eventually got caught
because he plagiarized
a story from someone
who had previously been
a colleague of his at "The Times."
Not only does he take
and wind a rope around his neck
and, like, go jumping off
a cliff, you know,
right in plain sight,
but he ties it to our feet and tries
to pull us off the cliff with him.
The minute they put it
on the front page in that little box-
I still remember the day it came out-
Raines's reign was over.
This system is not set up
to catch someone
who sets out to lie
and to use every means
at his or her disposal
to put false information
into the paper.
You went from having Howell
being the most successful editor,
not just in the history
of "The Times,"
in the history of newspapering,
to his being fired.
I'm delighted to announce Bill Keller
as our next executive editor.
I'm aiming to raise our ambitions
higher than they've ever been.
When Bill came in,
he was all about
restoring trust
after Howell Raines.
He was supposed to sort of get
the ship back on course.
It just wasn't
in the conversation that,
you know, there was going
to be an economic crisis in journalism.
And that's been
the dominant event,
I think if you
asked him, on his watch.
Darker times
are ahead for the "Grey Lady."
"The Times" will resort to layoffs.
The paper is looking to cut
100 jobs from its news staff
by the end of the week.
We're hearing that the layoffs
are beginning today.
We now know how many people
have opted to go voluntarily,
which means we know how many
people we have to layoff.
In the immediate moment,
we're in the middle of cutting
100 people out of a staff
of roughly 1250.
We've spent a lot of time
in the last couple of weeks
going over lists,
trying to prioritize
based on skills
we can afford to lose.
We are not a specialized newspaper,
we're a general-interest newspaper.
And we try to be excellent
at everything from foreign coverage
to education coverage
to arts to sports.
You know, we're large, but there's
not a lot of slack in the system.
I feel some days that,
you know,
we should be
symbolically wearing, you know,
bloody butchers' smocks
or something around the newsroom.
It's such a kind of
grim undertaking.
I was hired in 1977.
When I was trying
to get this job,
a job-getting focus group
asked me to write my own obituary.
And since then, I've been
the deputy editor of obituaries.
Hey, it's Claiborne Ray,
the departing retiring person.
Should I come down through
the freight elevator
or through the regular
passenger elevator?
I came with the high hopes
of staying for one year.
I've overstayed that by 20 years.
We have to
dump bodies overboard.
They don't really have any choice.
We all got the packets in the mail.
There's something obviously dispiriting
about getting a packet in the mail
that invites you to leave your job.
I almost feel like I don't know
of everything that's going on
and I almost feel like
I don't have a clear grasp
on the enormity of the situation.
I decided not to press my luck.
Nobody knows if there'll be a paper
on paper in another five years.
Everybody is
unbelievably pressured to do
more than people
are really humanly able to do.
I'm sorry to leave "The Times."
There are a lot of unemployed
people out there,
a lot of underemployed people
and a lot of scared people.
And I have to remind myself every day
that I'm one of the lucky ones.
The main effect is just this insecurity
that pervades
the newspaper business.
The mood is so funereal.
For those of us who work in media,
life is a drumbeat
of goodbye speeches
with sheet cakes
and cheap sparkling wine.
That carnage has left behind
an island of misfit toys,
like model trains whose
cabooses have square wheels.
Sure, I've been fired
in my day, but always after
I'd failed to show up at work
like a normal person.
"Go to treatment," my editor at the
magazine in Minneapolis would tell me.
"There's a bed waiting for you."
But at the tender age oi 31,
I still had a year left
before hitting rock bottom,
a year left of being that guy,
the violent drug-snorting thug,
before I found
my way to this guy,
the one with a family and a job
at "The New York Times."
One day I came over from
"The Twin Cities Reader" where I worked,
came over here to the Skyway Lounge
and met my friend Phil.
Phil gave me
a film canister full of coke,
and I was going to get a gram.
I went into the bathroom,
the cop hit
the stall door that I was in
and said,
"You roll a noisy joint, pal."
And he immediately
put me up against the wall
and then walked me down
the street this way
and up the block toward Nicollet Mall
where his car was parked.
The interesting thing about that is that
my father worked right in City Center,
so I was being crabwalked
in handcuffs past the shopping-
the downtown shopping center
where my father worked.
It was another life.
It was another guy.
It's that guy.
Not very.
Look, I'm afraid of guns
and I'm afraid of bats.
I'm really not afraid of anything else.
It's an advantage of having
lived a textured life.
I've been a single parent on welfare.
This is nothing.
I was talking to John Hume
and he said, "Look,
you didn't go to Afghanistan.
You didn't tum
into the great city-hall columnist.
You didn't set out to be
a media reporter, but you are.
And your story has arrived
and it behooves you
to man up, show some sack
and cover it until it's done."
And I thought, "You know what?
That's what I'm going to do."
Welcome, everyone, to another debate
from "Intelligence Squared."
We'll be debating this motion:
Good riddance
to the mainstream media.
There will be winners
and losers tonight,
and you the audience
will be our judges.
I work at
"The New York Times."
We have 17 million people
that come to our website.
We put out 100 videos every month.
We have 80 blogs.
We are fully engaged
in the revolution.
"The New York Times" has dozens
oi bureaus all over the world,
and we're going to toss that out-
which is the proposition...
toss that out and kick back
and see what Facebook tums up.
I don't think so.
What you're going to hear
tonight is that the media
is necessary
for the commonweal.
An informed citizenry
is what this nation is about.
That is self-serving crap.
"The New York Times"
is a good newspaper...
sometimes. "The Washington Post"
is a good newspaper.
The "LA Times," before it became
a had newspaper, was a good newspaper.
But after that, it's off the cliff.
It's oblivion.
The news business in this country
is nothing to be proud of.
The media is
a technology business.
That's what is.
That's what it has always been.
Technology changes,
the media changes.
Over time, the audience
has switched to the web.
The audience that's
worth a buck in print
is worth a dime and sometimes
a penny on the web,
because we end up
competing oftentimes
against our own work aggregated.
"Newser" is a great-looking site
and you might want to check it out.
Aggregates all manner of content.
But I wonder if Michael's
really thought through
get rid of mainstream
media content.
Okay.
Go ahead.
There are a lot of websites,
the core of their being very often-
not all of them, but some...
is repurposed pieces
by "The Times"
with a sexier headline
or a bigger picture
or bouncing off
of "Times" reporting,
commenting on "Times" reporting.
Places like "Gawker,"
they're going for what
will feed that
Google-beast algorithm.
They'll go to feed the hits.
And how we build a really
rich media environment
where you don't lose
coverage of statehouses,
of Congress is a question.
The big board is anathema
to anyone at "The Times"
or any other traditional
daily newspaper.
It's a list of 10 stories
from our sites
on a big television screen,
which are at that very moment
getting the most buzz,
being distributed
and passed around on the web.
It's our equivalent of the front page.
It's the most visible manifestation
of a writer's success.
We've always been
very much focused on stories
that our readers want.
We're not trying
to force-feed them.
We're trying to give
them what they want.
I have a friend
who's at the Albany bureau
of "The Times." I told him
about the big board,
sent him a picture of it
and "How do you like
our new innovation?"
He was terrified.
Albany corruption stories-
they may be important to cover,
but no one really wants to read them.
The future is to be found elsewhere.
It's a linked economy.
It's search engines.
It's online advertising.
It's citizen journalism,
and if you can't find
your way to that,
then you just can't find your way.
There's nobody covering the cop shop,
nobody covering the zoning hoard.
The day I run into
a "Huffington Post" reporter
at a Baltimore zoning board
hearing is the day that I will-
Senator Kerry, I was not around
when the printing press was invented,
but if I were around,
I would imagine
that the people dealing
with stone tablets
would be making
a similar argument.
There's no way that I can think of
that you can have
a "business model"-
you know, one that
makes a prom...
for investigative reporting.
ProPublica- a very interesting model.
Part of its formula is pairing
with legacy media to get
its information out
in the most effective way.
Everything we do
goes on our website.
But for our biggest stories,
we get a CNN,
a "60 Minutes,"
a "New York Times"
to work with us.
You know, I was 25, 26 years
at "The Journal."
We were absolutely
rolling in money.
Why should you open yourself
to some story
that you didn't know
where it had been?
Who knows what kind of gems
that had gotten on it?
People are open
to new ways of working,
because the world has changed.
Vanden Heuvelz
There's a hybrid model here,
and I do think journalism
is a public good.
And if it's a public good,
then that requires
a whole new mindset about
how you support journalism.
1,000 bloggers
all talking to each other
doesn't get you a report
from a war zone.
Somebody's gotta take a real risk.
There's gotta be some
infrastructure and some pay,
and they've gotta go
and gather that news originally.
A lot of the people
in the Baghdad bureau
were moving to Kabul.
And they asked if there was
anybody who wanted
to volunteer for Baghdad,
and so I'm going to Iraq.
Headlamz He's done
all these stories on media companies
and, you know,
capital cases and death row.
And Tim is just one
of the guys who wants answers
to really basic questions.
And I think once you've got that
you're curious about
all kinds oi things.
Iraq is kind of
off people's radar screens here,
but we still have
120,000 soldiers there
and it's a real crucial point
in terms of seeing
what the last chapter is
for our country there.
The locals who have worked for us,
some have been killed
and kidnapped and- and-
yeah, I worry about that.
But that's something
he wants to do and...
you know,
kind oi just hope he'll be okay.
Cheers, to your good health.
Did they tell you
what they want you to do?
I mean, there's no beats.
It's just...
do the day's stories and...
settle in with the Iraqi staff
and write stories, you know.
For the beginning,
it's going to be the election.
You had covered a bunch
of other conflicts, right?
Civil wars and conflicts in Africa.
Somalia-
a lot of time in Somalia.
I did a tour in Yugoslavia
when all that was going on.
Oh really? The only advice they give is
fall into this well-run machine
that's been going on for seven years
and you'll figure it out.
As you may well know,
I expect you to be on TV in a week-
"Those of us who have been
covering this for a while."
"Those of us who have been here
for two days think...
it's been a privilege to work with you.
Come back real soon.
- Thanks for the kind words.
- Cheers!
Stay safe.
It is a history. It is an enormous
compendium of material
that will affect many different people
in different ways.
There has been a massive leak.
There are so many pages
of military secrets now public.
Some of the documents rip the cover off
the US-led war effort in Afghanistan:
Unexplained American deaths,
questionable battlefield tactics
and a mission just
not going that well.
WikiLeaks released
91,000 raw military documents online,
but this time also to three
traditional news organizations
including "The New York Times,"
which vetted the material,
it said, eliminating information
that could put lives at risk.
Well, I think it was
an important moment
that WikiLeaks chose
to go through the "Guardian,"
"Der Spiegel"
and "The New York Times."
In a sense they were detoxifying
the information that they had,
and they were giving it
a little more veracity.
What Julian Assange
realized is that
going through "The Times"
and "Spiegel"
and the "Guardian"
would actually have
a greater impact. He was right.
We as a journalistic group-
the four media groups
who worked on this-
have really only just
scratched the surface.
We've treated them
as an advocacy organization,
but we're partnered with them.
Are we partnered?
I think they're a source.
- But they're a publisher.
- I think they're more like
a source than-
well, you're right.
He's not our media partner.
He's not our collaborator.
He's a source like any other source
giving us access to documents.
They can be a source when they're
a publisher. I think that's very clear.
- We're all in this together.
- But you wonder about the negotiations,
when they come and say,
"You can have this,
but we're going to give it
to other papers,
and you guys are all going
to hold hands." Where we say,
"But we are 'The New York Times,"'
and they say,
"But we have all this
and we are dictating terms."
You can say that. And then can you
turn around and say, "By the way,
'The New York Times' never should
have done this in the first place"?
I really am appalled
by the leak, condemn the leak.
There is potential there
to put American lives at risk.
Do you believe there
should be an investigation
into whether
"The New York Times" broke any laws?
I'm not calling
for prosecution of "The Times,"
but I think they're guilty
of had citizenship.
The basic calculus
that you try to do in your head
is the trade-off between
the obligation, really,
to give people information
about how they're being governed
and on the other hand,
the government's
legitimate need for secrecy.
I've had a dozen of these instances
where we had
classified information
and had to decide
whether or not to publish it
or publish it with some
parts of it withheld.
Officials at the White House
asked us to communicate
to WikiLeaks
their strong exhortation
that WikiLeaks redact
the documents and take out
the names of people
who might be identified
and put in danger.
And we passed that along.
The oddest thing in the story,
you saw, was that "The Times" said
that the White House asked them
to lobby \MkiLeaks not to print things.
- Yes.
- Which is really odd.
Like, "You're the White House.
Can't you call WikiLeaks?"
- But also we're "The New York Times"-
- "It's 1-800-WikiLeaks."
The supposedly
private cables detail everything
from security threats
to diplomatic dirty laundry.
There are unflattering
views of key allies.
It's the largest release
of diplomatic correspondence ever.
...from highly encrypted
telegrams to email messages
to raw, unfiltered analysis
from embassies and consulates.
I'm still getting messages
from people who think that
I'm a treasonous son of a bitch.
And I'm getting some from people
who think that Julian Assange
is the messiah
and why did I not
treat him as such?
Many of the media outlets
who had been partnered
with WikiLeaks
now find themselves
trying to figure out
whether this guy
is a villain or a hero.
It would be great if people got
past the debate over WikiLeaks
and the disclosures, and looked
closely at what these are,
which is a real-time history
of the US relationship
with some very important countries.
It is one of the biggest journalistic
scoops in the past 30 years.
And the fact that "The Times"
made it their front page
for weeks shows that,
even as all these papers
are becoming a shadow
of their former selves,
"The Times" is still in the game
and very much leading
the game at this point.
Maybe newspapers are
going to have to supplement
using WikiLeaks
to get their news.
It's unclear what the model is,
but I think it's a sign though
of openness at the paper that
there are many more sources.
In a lot of ways
it's a very positive step,
even though it definitely
is coming at the cost
of a contracting
traditional newsroom.
Like the Chinese say,
it's a very interesting time.
It's kind of a curse,
but it's also a blessing that we live
in interesting times-
especially if you're a journalist.
You should want there to be
interesting things going on,
even if it is also a curse.
"New York Times."
Get your "New York Times"!
Come on, check it out.
Check it out.
Good morning,
"New York Times"?
"New York Times," $2.
"The New York Times"
announced today that it's going
to start charging
for access to its website.
The system
they're going to adopt says
anybody who comes to the site
who's not a paying subscriber
can look at X number
of articles free,
and then when you reach X+1
you'll get a message saying
if you want to keep going,
you've got to pay.
The design of "The Times" paywall
comes this close
to the NPR model,
which is to go to the people
who care most about "The Times"
and say, "You and us, we're partners.
We're keeping this thing afloat."
"As of today
you've lost a daily reader.
If they start charging, I'll change
this away from my homepage."
This was a college friend of mine:
"I want to pay,
but I'm not willing to pay
for information I can
easily find elsewhere.
Sorry, 'New York Times.'
Freedom of information."
I worry about people like
that who have grown up
in that era where
everything was free,
or everything seemed free.
Ifs never free, but...
The economics of this business
have always been that
it required both advertising
and payment from the reader.
And for the last 15 years
on the internet,
we've sort of pretended
that that wasn't true.
This is the end of pretending.
They find it through you.
They click through through you.
They come up with the story,
which is currently free.
So they're still
not getting paid for it.
There's usually advertisements
on the page when they land there.
In many cases, I don't think they're
getting that advertising revenue,
and it certainly isn't covering
the cost of doing business.
My view is that it's still
very early and that-
When you say it's early,
it's not early for "The Denver Post"
or "The Seattle Intelligencer"
or a bunch of folks
who are facing bankruptcy today.
Information historically
was not free.
You had to pay for it
in one way or another.
I think what "The Times" says-
"This is what it's worth
to read our newspaper
every month"...
will go a long way to establishing
what people feel they can charge
or maybe what they can't charge.
It's actually kind of a big day
in the newspaper business.
And some people may
date this, you know,
this is the day the whole thing died.
We'll find out.
People who make prescriptions-
"They should go do a paywall;
not do a paywall;
put it all on iPad;
kill the paper product"-
they're being naive.
They have no idea about the economics
of running a legacy
print-newspaper business
and trying to build
an online news business.
You better hope they figure it out,
because you got like 40 years to go.
Whereas if we got
our heads chopped off,
we only have to figure out,
what, 15 more years?
Oh, fuck that.
I think I got a lot
longer to go than that.
- Really?
- My working life or my life life?
- How old are you?
- 46.
Somebody's going to tap you
on the shoulder here at 62, 63,
and say, "That was great.
Thanks a lot.
Your sheet cake's over there."
- Stelterz "Turn in your tablet."
- Turn in your tablet.
We call it...
...the iPad.
I got a glimpse of the future
this last weekend with the iPad.
It may well be, you know,
the saving of the newspaper industry.
And even if the cost is
the end of newspapers as we know it-
Well, it's better than them
going out of business altogether.
Headlamz Why are media companies
so excited about a tablet?
Well, they see it as a do-over, they see
it as this, they see it as that.
And then the question becomes,
well yeah, there's lots of people
who think Apple saved
the music business.
They didn't save it
on the music business's terms.
There's lots of people
in the music business saying
it's incredibly punishing
dealing with those guys.
Like, "Oh yeah,
they're my best friend.
See this? It's a leash."
What makes anybody think
that's going to be different
for publishers?
That's why I'm wondering if we're going
to end up screwing ourselves.
Six, five, four,
three, two, one.
164 and 232.
One per buyer.
It's just amazing
to be able to cover this,
'cause I think in five years
this could be, like,
how computers are.
But it's a little bit
scary down there, actually.
I'm walking out and people
are like "Congratulations!"
And it's like I just had a kid
or I just had twins or something.
You know, I just bought a-
I just bought a computer.
Is that a bridge to the future?
Or- oh wait, it's a gallows!
Ow!
Right there is the dream come true.
Let's see you navigate.
Mm, sweet.
That is a great reading
experience right there.
You know what it reminds me of?
- Stelterz What?
- A newspaper.
People including me are probably
silly to think, you know,
Steve Jobs is riding
over the hill like cavalry
to save the media industry.
He's driving Apple's stock price.
And we may have
business in common.
And what that Venn diagram
of interests is...
their interests versus our interests-
that's sort of where the story is.
I have a lot of great
background conversations,
but I've got to move people
onto the record.
Think of what you might
be able to say to me.
All right, man.
Thanks. Bye-bye.
You know, you could say being at
"The New York Times" is a big advantage.
You know, it kinda scares
people when you call them.
And I also think I sound
sort of weird on the phone.
And it's like-
well, do you have time to talk to me?
Great.
Um, how long did you
work at the "Trib"?
It's a big story that hasn't
really been told
in this kind
of comprehensive way-
the biggest media bankruptcy
in history,
billions and billions
of dollars just evaporated,
a lot of people lost their jobs.
The people there are still doing,
you know, excellent work,
but it's under
very difficult circumstances
from people who manifestly
do not respect what they do.
Headlamz Sam Zell,
when he came in, was somebody
with no experience
running a company like this.
No news experience.
In fact, a fair bit oi contempt
for sort of traditional
ideas of journalism.
My attitude on journalism
is very simple:
I want to make enough money
so I can afford you.
It's really that simple, okay?
You need to in effect help me
by being a journalist that focuses
on what our readers want.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I can't, you know,
you're giving me the classic
what I would call
journalistic arrogance.
You know, people inside just
sort of get dispirited
because the company's
being run by these people
who just don't share
their values.
Hopefully we get
to the point where our revenue
is so significant that we can do
puppies and Iraq, okay?
Headlamz Sam Zell wanted to put
Randy Michaels, whom he knew
from the radio business,
in charge of Tribune Company.
Michaels then came in and one
of the first things he worked on
was rewriting
the company's ethics policy
to basically say, "We're going to be
in a much more permissive atmosphere"
and you know,
"it's going to be creative
and there's going
to be things that offend you."
You know what's important to
the people who buy advertising?
I don't mean the agencies.
I mean the people who write the checks.
They want to sell widgets.
They want to move product.
They want the cash register to ring.
They want butts in seats.
Some people are like,
"We need something,
so this could be as good as any."
I mean, it's a kind of...
you know, it's a sort
of crazy Hail Mary pass.
So these guys come in,
bought the company.
This is how they behaved.
This is the result.
This company,
they drove it into bankruptcy.
Randy Michaels
and a hand-picked crew of 20 people
who he's known a long
long time have extracted
something like
$100 million in bonuses.
You could call that incentives
or you could call that looting,
depending on your perspective.
Yeah, let's just quit typing altogether
and just talk us girls for a minute.
I have certain memos about
behavior of the executives there,
and I just want to make sure
that they're true.
In this memo that was
sent to the board,
there's an incident described
where Randy Michaels
"talked openly and loudly about
other women's breasts, sex toys...
not just in closed room
with other executives but openly...
He wrote the employee handbook
so that kind of talk
wasn't against the rules."
Does that all sound right?
I was mostly doing
the bankruptcy stuff,
and then I saw those poker pictures
and I thought it seems more like
a radio station in the 1970s
than a great big media company.
Don't you think that would sell?
So I cold called
a person from Trib Co.,
and he lays them out Hat:
who they were,
what they did, etcetera.
- All on the record. My first of that.
- Yeah.
I'm doing two more
weeks of reporting,
then I'm going to take a week
to write it and show it to you.
All right.
Stelterz
Tonight at 6:30, NBC will be driving
in the convoy
with the last combat troops
as they cross back
into Kuwait.
I don't think we know much about it.
We're not on the embed,
partly because
we think it's a PR stunt.
What do you make of the notion that
they're trying
to choreograph an exit here?
In my mind it would be easy
just to fly these trucks out.
They've been
flying trucks out for months.
But the fact that they want
to drive across the desert
and bring reporters along with them,
what does that indicate to you?
That's perfect.
So let's get started,
please, with media.
The final fighting brigade
in the war is going
to be crossing the border
into Kuwait, as I understand it,
and there's embeds with-
"The Washington Post" is there,
the "LA Times," NBC.
And we're watching to see if this is
some sort of end
of the war as we know it.
But it's complicated.
If this is just some sort of photo op-
I get no sense that this is coming
from the administration
or that it's coming from,
you know, the military.
It just seems to be...
so far I get the sense
it's only coming from NBC
and the other embeds.
They need their "mission
accomplished" moment.
Okay, now what we won't
be able to predict, obviously,
is what "The Post" and the "LA Times"
will be doing with it.
Right, but you know.
Is anybody, is the White House,
is the military-
who is saying this is the end
of combat troops in Iraq?
NBC is saying
that the military will say that.
They are saying-
NBC is saying they will declare it.
In other words, NBC will declare it
tonight. NBC's implication is-
As far as I know, NBC isn't
actually at war in the Middle East.
I know, I know. I understand.
But how come,
if people know this is coming-
And that's why
the White House sent their email.
- Have I seen this anywhere?
- No, it's under embargo.
It's totally secret. We're not allowed
to talk about it, that's why.
- When does the embargo break?
- Hopefully 6:30.
Okay, guys, thank you very much.
Okay, bye-bye.
Good evening.
It's gone on longer than the Civil War,
longer than World War II.
Tonight, US combat troops
are pulling out of Iraq.
And, Richard, I understand
your reporting of this
at this hour tonight constitutes
the official Pentagon
announcement, correct?
Yes it is.
Right now we are with
the last American combat troops.
We are with the-
- Did you watch NBC?
- Yeah.
I thought it was hallucinatory.
Brian Williams says
to Richard Engel
that your report here from the field
amounts to the official
Pentagon announcement
of the end of
combat troops in Iraq.
And there is no
Pentagon announcement.
I mean I'm going over
territory you already know.
But let me back up.
We're trying to figure out if...
I don't know that there was-
I mean, I'm not trying to be difficult.
- No no no.
- Was there some sort of official-?
Thom Shanker in Washington
is right now calling the Pentagon again.
If I weren't thinking about this every
day, I would look at this and think,
"What just happened?"
- I mean...
- You would think,
- is the war over and I missed it?
- Yeah.
So we just heard from Shanker,
who talked to the Pentagon
five minutes ago,
and he said there was
no official anything today.
What the fuck's going on?
If you were
watching "NBC Nightly News,"
you would have thought
there was a big ceremony
of some kind to commemorate
the final end of combat operations.
I was flabbergasted by it
because I didn't understand.
- That's news to the Pentagon.
- Hi, it's Ian.
Did Thom specifically ask
the Pentagon guy, "Did you see NBC?"
This is making everyone here
completely insane.
Look, I mean we could do
the there-was-a-made-for-TV moment.
I don't know whether
we even need to...
I'll leave that to you.
But I'm not sure it even wants
to tum the knife a little bit.
The Pentagon or somebody's
calling this mission...
that is the mission to drive across
the border... "The Last Patrol."
So there's something going on.
- Right?
- Right.
The White House has been fucking
saying it's at the end of the month.
"The White House spokesman
immediately sent out a second email
saying it's at the end of the month."
How do you cover the end
of a war that's not ending?
- Right, exactly.
- I mean, even wars that end badly
end up with, like,
helicopters leaving the Saigon roof.
This isn't even going to be that.
I think that story should be written.
I do. I think you're right.
I don't think tonight
is the night to write it.
Let me start
to get something ready
and let's talk again
in half an hour.
So I think we're all standing
around trying to figure out
whether this is
a real story or a media story,
which doesn't really... isn't very
flattering to media reporters, is it?
"Stand down, we think
it's actually something happening."
No, we're not going
to write anything.
There's still 56,000 in Iraq,
and the AP notes correctly
that all of them are combat troops
until they're redesignated otherwise,
which hasn't actually happened.
I'm only wondering if...
are our betters going
to come in tomorrow and say,
"Gee, everybody
covered this but us?"
Uh, there appears to be
no indication that way.
All right. Good.
So I think we're all right.
Headlamz I'm going to wear
my combat helmet just in case.
The function
of reporting and the press
is the best obtainable
version of the truth.
We're not out there
to bring down governments.
We're not out there
to be prosecutors.
We're out there to be judicious,
not judicial.
And that's really what
happened in Watergate.
In recent months,
members of my administration
have been charged
with involvement in what has
come to be known
as the Watergate Affair.
We began covering
the Watergate story
the day after there was a break-in
at Democratic headquarters,
and we continued to cover it
for more than two years.
In the first year,
we wrote more than 100 stories.
The story was not
one dam breaking.
It was story after story after story,
and it was really pretty much
owned by "The Washington Post."
In the House of Representatives,
there is not a member left who thinks
the president will not be impeached.
It really pains me to say it.
I grew up with "The Washington Post,"
and you can't say
that the diminishment of that paper,
in terms of its scale of its staff
and its ambitions, haven't affected it.
You'd be kidding yourself
to say it's just trimmed some fat.
No, economic circumstances
have made it a lesser paper.
If that were to happen
in any serious way
to "The New York Times,"
that would be a terrible tragedy.
You know, I get the Twitter feeds
and read the blogs about how media
will or won't fare in the digital age.
But sometimes they seem to have
it all boiled down to an aphorism.
I'm not sure that I can boil it
all down to a sort of "aha."
But I do think
there's a growing sense
of how much it would matter
if "The Times" weren't here.
News organizations
that deploy resources
to really gather
information are essential
to a functioning democracy.
It just doesn't work
if people don't know.
When you read
"The New York Times" today,
in the business section
you will see
the obituary
of the newspaper industry.
Jesus, what a bunch of pussies!
I'm not a newspaper guy.
I'm a businessman.
It's really important to remember
that the consequences
of this bankruptcy
did not just fall on the employees
at the Tribune Company.
In Los Angeles, in Chicago,
in Hartford, in Baltimore,
the diminution of those newspapers
crippled or destroyed
important community civic assets.
Well yeah, it's going to be
a pretty rugged story,
and I want it to be, uh- fair,
which is why I'm calling you.
I mean if you want me
to characterize the overall story,
what I would say is that this
was an overleveraged company
that Mr. Zell operated
into bankruptcy,
handed this kind of
flaming baton off to Mr. Michaels.
Michaels brought in guys
from his career in radio
to help them out.
Overall, a lot of people
lost a lot of money.
Employees are out contributions.
This sounds like it's going to be
a top-to-bottom hatchet job.
Where... where is the hatchet?
I don't... I... I don't...
if there's a countemarrative, um,
I'm happy to talk about it.
If there's a heroic narrative,
I'm happy to talk about it.
We haven't even gotten
into the cultural issues,
which I'm sure are not going
to please you much at all.
Let's cut to something
a little more hard and fast.
On December 11th, 2008,
your board received in a letter-
it was anonymous-
alleging a broad pattern
of sexual harassment.
...had received oral sex
on the 22nd-floor balcony.
She also added that in a meeting
...suggested that
her assistant come in
and perform a sexual act
on him to cheer him up.
This is not 1977.
This is 2010,
and those kinds of things
are material for the people
that work there.
It created a work environment
that people say
is closer to a frat house
than a front-line media company.
So that's in there.
Headlamz 5,459.
Well, that's not going to happen.
He's got probably
6,000 words of good stuff.
Now every editor and writer
thinks they've got good stuff,
but he really does
have good stuff.
It's well written,
very very sharply reported.
It sticks to the facts,
fantastic quotes from people.
Your board looked
into these matters,
had their law firm make calls.
What did they conclude?
I'm trying to figure out
why that is important.
Well, because" because
there's people who are out
billions of dollars in debt,
who are going to decide whether
the current management is
going to stay in place.
There's judges that are
going to decide whether
they're worthy of bonuses
that are on the table.
I will see what I can find out
and we'll get back to you.
Okay, you have both my numbers,
so let me know.
Headlamz What should I know
before I listen to my messages?
He was willing to start friendly.
I brought up widespread
sexual harassment.
So when he calls and says
I can't get this shit together-
I should probably get this.
- Yeah.
- All right.
You shouldn't be here.
Bruce Headlam.
How are you?
You have a couple things
going for you.
He is one of the most
fair-minded people I know.
That's one thing.
He's a very diligent reporter.
We don't do hit jobs.
That's not the business we're in.
The story we were led to,
we were led to by the reporting.
Let me talk to my bosses,
see what they're thinking.
You talk to your bosses,
see what they're thinking.
And maybe we can look at it
a little more dispassionately
in the morning.
Fair enough?
You guys have negotiated
this issue to the exclusion
of everything else.
And now all of a sudden
you want to broaden out the discussion
four hours before we close?
We're interested
in getting responses from you.
They're sending a letter
from the law firm.
It'll be staking out a position.
If we say we're going
to go with that,
then another letter will
come from the law firm,
and that will be...
contain threats of legal action.
They're worried
this is a hatchet job.
They're worried where
the reporting started,
all that kind of thing.
The muscles of the institution
are going to kick in here
at some point.
It's not really up to me.
We need institutions that have
the ability both financially
and culturally
to bring news
that other institutions
and individuals cannot.
I think part
of what goes on with conferences now
is it's sort of lonely
and scary out there.
It's a way to sort of
gather around a campfire
and say,
"We're all right. Aren't we?
Are we okay?
We're fine.
We must be.
We have badges on."
- So.
- What are you doing for supper tonight?
I'm going to eat
with the AA guys.
- Oh yeah?
- Are you skinny?
How skinny are you?
- 131.
- You're short now too.
- Yeah.
- You used to be like six feet tall.
- I was at least.
- Is that going to happen to me?
- See, my neck is already bent over.
- Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Please welcome David Carr.
You have lived through
the worst cyclical,
secular recession
the publishing business
has ever seen
in modern times.
Look around you.
You're still here.
Don't think about
the people that are gone.
Think about the people
that made it.
It's a really big deal.
It's demonstrates,
number one,
that you are a bunch
of tenacious motherfuckers,
I'll tell you that.
You have proven you
cannot be killed!
I've always thought
it was a little bit of a caper
that I ended up working
at "The New York Times."
I don't think I was destined
to be the best Timesman
there ever was.
I just didn't want
to screw it up.
I would find it unspeakable
if "The New York Times"
ended up
in a diminished place,
but "The New York Times"
does not need to be
a monolith to survive.
Welcome, everybody.
We're here to take note of the fact
that journalism is alive
and well and feisty,
especially at
"The New York Times."
Just like a paper tiger
Torn apart by idle hands...
We'll see you in a little while.
I Fix yourself while you still can I
The deserts down below us...
I always find French posters
of American films funny.
Orson Welles has a size 28 waist.
Doesn't look like
any newspaperman I know
or anybody I see up
in the cafeteria,
even though we have
a salad bar.
Like a paper tiger
In the sun
Looking through
a broken diamond
To make the past what it should be
Through the ruins
and the weather
Capsized boats in the sea
The deserts down below us
And the storms up above
Like a stray dog gone defective
Like a paper tiger
In the sun
We're just holding on to nothing
To see how long nothing lasts
The deserts down below us
And the storms up above
Like a stray dog gone defective
Like a paper tiger
In the sun
There's one road to the morning
There's one road to the truth
There is one road back
to civilization
But there's no road back to you