Original subtitles

( instrumental music playing )

( whirring )

( beeping )

It's hardly breaking news that the newspaper business is in deep trouble.

Reporter: 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.

Reporter #2: 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...

( reporters speaking ) "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...

Woman: "New York Times" stock is off more than 75% ...

Man: "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?

Carr: 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.

Headlam: As much as we want to flatter ourselves,

it's 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.

Carr: 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.

Richard Pérez-Peña: Well, trust me, if your numbers are better

than anybody else's I will write that.

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 of 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. - ( phone ringing )

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.

( man speaks )

( man #2 speaks )

- Man #3: Roger. - ( man speaks )

- ( man #2 speaks ) - ( man speaks )

( man #2 speaks )

( man speaks )

- ( gunfire ) - Man #3: Roger.

( man #2 speaking )

( gunfire )

- ( man speaks ) - ( gunfire )

Stelter: I didn't see that-- the van flips over.

I didn't notice that last time.

God, what a fuckin' terrible story.

Here's "the nut graph": "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.

Headlam: 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.

- Nixon: Hello. - Haig: Yes sir.

Nixon: Hi, Al, anything new on your front today?

Haig: Very significant-- this goddamn "New York Times" exposé

of the most highly-classified documents of the war.

Nixon: Well, God damn it, I am not going to have it.

Haig: I mean, could "The Times" be prosecuted?

Nixon: 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.

Alex Jones: 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."

Woman: 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.

Reporter: Julian Assange, editor for WikiLeaks,

denies that the site has put troops in danger.

Reporter #2: 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.

Julian Assange: 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.

Assange: 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?

( Assange speaking )

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? - Stelter: 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.

Headlam: 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 fight to get on A1. But it's very constructive fighting.

Man: 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 lan 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.

( man speaks )

( Fisher speaking )

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--

( Keller speaking )

Fisher: Somebody's, yeah. I just talked with--

They probably belong in the same place.

- Fisher: I'm sorry? - They probably belong

in one kind of coherent whole, right?

- Fisher: Sure. - Headlam: Yeah, right right.

Chira: 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."

Daniel Ellsberg: 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!

( audience cheering )

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?

Carr: 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.

Carr: Hi, I'm looking for Alex.

Receptionist: Sure, you can go have a seat on the couch.

- Huh? Okay. - He'II be right back.

- Hi. - Man: 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.

Shane Smith: 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.

( man yelling command )

( chants )

Reporter: 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.

( man speaking )

If you're a CNN viewer and you go, "Hmm,

I'm looking at human shit on the beach."

I've got to tell you one thing: 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.

Arango: "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.

Cooke: That is Turner 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."

David Remnick: 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.

( Talese reading ) "'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?

Arango: 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.

Arango: 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.

( whispers ) 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 lmmelt 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.

- Arango: Okay. - Sorkin: 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? - Arango: Yeah.

- Is it looking good? Are you happy? - Arango: 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.

- Headlam: Sorkin have a look? - Arango: 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.

Arango: 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.

( professor speaking )

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.

Arango: 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?"

Stelter: 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.

Arango: 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.

( laughs )

Carr: 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.

( applause )

Carr: 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.

Carr: Really, what could anyone possibly find useful

in this cacophony of short-burst communication?

But at 52, I succumbed, partly out of 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."

Carr: I'm a narrative on more things at a given moment

than I ever thought possible.

See how many people just now...

Carr: 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.

- Man: Bruce? - Headlam: 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.

- ( man speaks ) - 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.

Stelter: He's not going to make news today, no.

Headlam: 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.

McQuivey: 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.

Keller: 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.

Pérez-Peña: 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?"

Hirschorn: 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.

( people chattering )

"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.

Copeland: 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 their jobs,

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.

Reporter: Judy Miller reported, quote...

Reporter #2: "The New York Times" carried the unsubstantiated

claims of those, including...

Reporter #3: 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...

Reporter #4: The Bush administration was helped

by the nation's leading newspaper, "The New York Times."

Reporter #5: If "The New York Times" thinks Saddam

is on the precipice of mushroom clouds,

then there is really no debate.

Seth Mnookin: 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

were wrong,

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.

Mnookin: 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.

Raines: 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.

Mnookin: 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.

Reporter: 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.

Ray: 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.

Headlam: 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.

Katherine Boulton: 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.

Carr: 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 of 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.

( man speaks )

( Carr speaks )

- ( man speaking ) - 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 turn 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'II 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 of 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 turns up.

( laughter )

Carr: 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 bad 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.

- ( audience chuckles ) - Okay.

Go ahead.

( applause )

Remnick: 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 board.

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 profit--

for investigative reporting.

Vanden Heuvel: ProPublica-- a very interesting model.

Part of its formula is pairing

with legacy media to get its information out

in the most effective way.

Steiger: 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 germs that had gotten on it?

People are open to new ways of working,

because the world has changed.

Vanden Heuvel: 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.

Arango: 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.

Headlam: 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 of things.

Arango: 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.

Headlam: 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 of 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'II 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..."

( laughs )

It's been a privilege to work with you. Come back real soon.

- Thanks for the kind words. - People: Cheers!

Man: 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.

Reporter: 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.

Carr: 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.

Carr: 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 bad citizenship.

Keller: 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 WikiLeaks not to print things.

- Headlam: 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."

Reporter: The supposedly private cables detail everything

from security threats to diplomatic dirty laundry.

There are unflattering views of key allies.

Reporter #2: It's the largest release of diplomatic correspondence ever.

Reporter #3: ...from highly encrypted telegrams to email messages

to raw, unfiltered analysis from embassies and consulates.

Keller: 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?

Carr: 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.

Cohen: 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."

Pérez-Peña: "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. It's 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--

Kerry: 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. ( laughs )

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."

- Stelter: "Turn in your tablet." - Turn in your tablet.

We call it...

- ( thuds ) - ...the iPad.

( applause, cheers )

Rupert Murdoch: 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.

Marvin Kalb: 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.

Headlam: 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.

Crowd: Six, five, four,

three, two, one.

( cheering )

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.

Carr: Let's see you navigate. Mm, sweet.

That is a great reading experience right there.

You know what it reminds me of?

- Stelter: What? - Carr: 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.

Headlam: Sam Zell, when he came in, was somebody

with no experience running a company like this.

No news experience. In fact, a fair bit of 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.

( woman speaking )

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?

( applause )

Headlam: 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.

Carr: 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.

- ( shocked laughter ) - Don't you think that would sell?

Carr: So I cold called a person from Trib Co.,

and he lays them out flat:

Who they were, what they did, et cetera.

- 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.

Carr: All right.

Stelter: 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?

( Jaramillo speaking )

That's perfect.

Man: So let's get started, please, with media.

Headlam: 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.

Keller: 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.

Man: Okay, guys, thank you very much.

Okay, bye-bye.

( news theme playing )

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?

Richard: 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... - Headlam: You would think,

- is the war over and I missed it? - Strum: Yeah.

Fisher: 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?

Joseph Kahn: 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.

Strum: I was flabbergasted by it because I didn't understand.

- That's news to the Pentagon. - Hi, it's lan.

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 turn 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. - ( all talking )

- Right? - Strum: Right.

Fisher: 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?

- Fisher: 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.

Headlam: 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.

Headlam: I'm going to wear my combat helmet just in case.

Carl Bernstein: 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.

Richard Nixon: 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.

Remnick: 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."

Reporter: 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.

Keller: 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! - ( laughter )

I'm not a newspaper guy.

I'm a businessman.

Carr: 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.

Man on phone: This sounds like it's going to be

a top-to-bottom hatchet job.

Where-- where is the hatchet?

I don't-- l-- I don't--

if there's a counternarrative, 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.

( beep ) had received oral sex on the 22nd-floor balcony.

She also added that in a meeting

( beep ) 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.

Headlam: 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?

Man: 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.

Headlam: 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--

- ( phone ringing ) - 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'II 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.

( whirring )

Bernstein: We need institutions that have

the ability both financially

and culturally

to bring news

that other institutions and individuals cannot.

Carr: 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."

( people chattering )

- 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.

Carr: 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. - ( laughter )

You have proven you cannot be killed!

Carr: 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.

( applause )

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... ♪

( man speaking )

We'II see you in a little while.

♪ Fix yourself while you still can ♪

♪ 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. ♪