>> hi, i'm lisa fletcher, and you're in "the stream." as americans, especially younger generation, lose interest in news, what does the future hold for the industry and for knock. for democracy. our digital producer, joanna lee is here looking out for you. news consumption is on the decline, and is that a driver for innovation or an omen? >> they are offended that

they're not engaged with the news but the real news. valerie says: eric says. , and hurricane says: loyal streamers and viewers at home, we hope that you trust us. engage in discussion as always, twitter and hashtag, and we'll try our guest to get it on the air. >> the explosion of journalism has many experts talking about the need for traditional media to change. but what about the generational shift, away from news altogether? research suggests that millennials spend considerably less time following the news than older generations, and mill enials are half as likely it say

that they enjoy the news. in the government, a recent report by the committee to protect journalists, suggests that the obama administration has had a chilling effect on journalism. congress is considering a media shield block to protect confidentiality. and what does all of this mean to the future of the media and our democracy? to discuss this, we're joined by jordan valinski, from tech blog, and on skype, phil bron stein, reporting, and welcome to "the stream" everyone. and phil, no question, the media landscape is changing, primarily due to digital. but the interesting, and i think certainly lesser probed issue here is why news consumption is on the decline.

what are your thoughts? >> well, i'm not sure that consumption of information that we would considering to news, first i want to say that i'm not the executive director, that's robert rosenthal, but i'm on the board. >> our apologies. >> no problem. so i think that whether it's mill enials or other age groups in the demographics, i don't think there's less interest. we have a relationship with a group called you speak, a spoken word organization. now in 50 cities, thousands and thousands of kids between 14 and 19. and we have a relationship with them. as they discover that what they used to call the news in a very hostile way. we don't talk to the news, news doesn't relate to us. in oakland, the only thing that you see on the news are shootings, and that doesn't tell us about our lives. we have a relationship with them so we provide them verified

factual information on a variety of things that affect their lives. immigration, ethnicity. and they interpret that into their poetry and spoken word performances and those they believe are more powerful. so suddenly they have a relationship with us journalists instead of the news, and we're finding that it's a very powerful relationship. so i don't think it's about -- i think if you use the word, "news" that's the problem, and you're generically categorizing a lot of things going on. >> i think if you talk about the news here, traditional news and traditionally what other people consume, phil raises an interesting point here, and it has me thinking about, if we're talking about the decline of traditional media, have traditional media been the cause of its own demise? if we think about the definition of news, is it something that people can apply to their own

lives, or has it morphed into the idea of entertainment? >> i thinks this no question that traditional media has something to do with it, and a lot of it has to do with the obedience crisis. there's an enormous problem in the wednesday of news media, and there has been for six or seven years now, the crisis levels. and unfortunately, the prominent response has been less and less quality. and people notice that. you can't fool alt people all the time. and i think that's part of the issue. i think what raja said at the out said is true. what people perceive as social media, i think in another time, would have been a critical part of core news gathering, and we certainly see it that way. we have a twitter stream of 240,000 people that we have assembled entirely organically without spending a peppy on it

over five years because we provide a stream of value. that's amazing for a start-up news organization, and to put it in perspective for you, it's larger than all by five newspapers in the united states. and so traditional news bear a considerable responsibility for this. >> and to think that republicca isn't doing journalism, two pullitsers back-to-back. tv says: and we have a great video comment from elizabeth plank. mike, give her a listen. >> we mill enials are not disinterested in the news, but they consume it in a different way. so instead of reaching for the newspaper, they reach for their

phones and go through the various social platforms, so the millennials are hungry for the news, but since it's narrated by older generations, it can feel alienating, so make sure that you package it well for facebook, twitter, and social media platform. because if or a not reaching social media, you're not reaching millennials. >> you are the representative of the mill enials on today's show, and what's your response to sha? >> i agree, we're not sitting down to watch. we're digesting news all day long. so we're using it more than ever. and it might not be the large packages, but we're seeing it and seeing more of it.

>> when you look at the polls, we don't see a lot of millennials getting news offline. it's about 8%. and even a smaller percentage of those that see headlines actually go and seek out the real story and read the real story. so from a millennial perspective, how do you account for the other 92%? >> i guess i could disagree with that stat. i think we're just absorbing more and more of it. i don't think that it might be directing more newspaper or broadcasts, but we're getting more social media that might not be accounted for the. >> lisa, if there's one key statistic that we know is right, and it goes the other way, and that's the participation of young people in voting. which people had sort of written off ten years ago.

and five years ago we saw in the election a dramatic upsurge of that in the campaign last year, but still, quite considerable participation rates among young people. and that is, first of all, our most important civic activity. and i think that people need to understand that it needs to be base odd some consumption of the news, and engaging it in pretty significant. so what the percentage is, i don't know, but i do know for sure that we don't have 92% unengagement. because you simply couldn't reconcile that with voter timeout. >> you could, if they were going to the polls based on likeable rather than actual information. jump in, phil. >> i think again, we're getting caught in definitions, we're talking about news in a kind of generic way. 15 years ago, what journalism

did was to take its text copy and dump it on to the web, and figure that was an adaption of technology. and it wasn't, people consume things differently. and so when you talk about the you speak relationship, where we have a relationship with the theater in san francisco, where they do one act plays with our investigations, and we have on public radio, called reveal. and so we're reaching audiences in very different ways, very different platforms, and we're giving people a much bigger choice of what they want to receive and how to receive it. >> what you and vick are doing is innovative, but can the platforms survive? >> well, what's the future of newspapers? it seems to be sitting around and talking about the future of

newspapers. and i'm not predicting anything of it on this show or anyone else to see what's going to happen, or what the right path was, they would be talking on the show and having a long line of people waiting to see them. so what's really important is that we have to not be insular. investigative reporting is very inclusive in its distribution. one of the things that robert rosen thathal d. the more people that see it, hear it, the more. we followed a little bit journalism away from the public that we serve, in the sense that we have a higher calling. i'm a journalist, don't bother me with reader comments, i'm too busy doing journalism. and i think that part of the fault is ours. in that we didn't take audience

seriously enough. we didn't take the people we are supposed to be serving as a public service, which is the argument that we'll hear later on in this program. we didn't take it seriously enough, so suddenly the audience went zooming by us technologically and otherwise, and that's why the cr is here in the bay area, the center of technology and the center of innovation, and we have something called tech right with google, where we get the journalists and engineers and game designers and others together and create products. it might be interesting to say, gamers that might interest them in the news. so we're really trying to reach as many people as we can with the investigating reporting that we do. >> when we come back, the foundation of journalism is enterprise news. and what does it mean for transparency? tweet us during the break.

>> welcome back, we're discussing the future of news. two days ago, the committee of journalists issued a report t. saying that the obama administration has not come through a more transparent government. an obscure 1917 law to enable

felony progressions for six government employees for leak being classified information to the press, compared to all previous administrations combined. let's talk about the general move away from reporting from newspapers and tv and networks. throughout my career, investigations seem to ebb and flow. the investigative teams, and a lot of it seems 20 depend on the economy, but right now, it feels different, it feels like a more permanent shift. >> i think that's right. it was created five years ago because what has gone on, as the business price of the press has accelerated, almost in every case, and there are a couple of exceptions and the new york times is a notable exception, but with a few exceptions, people have systematically cut back. investigative reporting is risky and doesn't always yield

stories, it makes enemies, it's not commercial, and it's impossible to turn a profit into such, and that's why phil's operation is a non-profit and that's why ours is as well and depends on donors, and there is a systematic cutback across the board. i would add one note that goes the other way. i would have to say that the reporting this summer in the last six months that we have been able to play a small part in with the guardian and the new york times, based on the snowden documents, has in many ways been some of the most important, and i think will very clearly prove the most productive investigative reporting perhaps in 40 years in this country. i think there's a serious crisis in this area, but it's a little premature. >> talking about the hostile climate in investigative journalism. chris says:

mike says: and manuel says: jordan, talk toking you about the impact that this has had in the aggressive prosecution, and what happened with the department of justice, seizing the ap's phone records and talk about the future of investigative journalism? >> it makes journalists afraid to dig deeper, and you're going to see that there are organization that's are going to fill that gap. and i think that journalists are nervous, and that's not good for democracy, because you're not going to get the stories that you want to see, and the nsa is going to scare them off. >> talk about the nuance

affects, when the organization decides whether it's wort it to embark on a particular investigation, do the actions play into that? >> we had a steroid case, and we had two reporters sentenced to 18 months in jail for not revealing the source, and we fought that for close to 2 years, and it cost $2 million to the hertz company, and unfortunately, the ceo and the council were behind us all the way. and those will be issues where mainstream media have the wherewithal and means to support if they wanted to. and some did and some didn't. but part of the problem with smaller organizations, they may not have

states, and they were talking about it then. that the obama administration would be supportive of that. and there's though shield law, so the fear that you're talking about can be very real. >> fill in the blanks for those not familiar with the shield law. and 40 plus states have them. and what that means for journalists, and what that could mean for citizen journalists and bloggers. >> shield laws can be very important in dealing with nuisance speens. reporters are professional investigators, so the easiest way for a litigant in a civil or criminal case, rather than doing

our own investigation, we'll try to piggyback on the work of some reporter who has looked into that. and that can be enormously burdensome, and speed laws are important for that. but i want to talk about the press throwing itself on the mercy of congress. anybody looking at what's going on in washington this month would have to conclude that no one in their right mind really wants to count on congress for anything. the first amendment says congressional make no law abridging the freedom of the press. and i would say strongly that the shield law we need is in the constitution of the united states, and when we have the congress muck around and decide who is a journalist, are they a blogger or a journalist, the chances of them getting it right and expansive to the full right of the constitution, i think

that he's unfortunately very littled. and even if they get it right the first year, they will expect you to come back around the second. i'm a little bit of a radical on this. i think that the press is best apart from the congress as a check on the congress, rather than a part of the congress or a supplement to the congress. it would be hard to disagree with that. >> our community tuning? passionate about this. >> the real media shield is the constitution of the united states. >> i'm not going to disagree with him, he's an expert and an attorney, and the fact is that i believe that the more protection we can get, we're not talking about trading favors here, we're talking about doing what's right. i would love to be able to rely

on the first amend: it's a very powerful tool for journalists and others for free speech. but we talk about protect being the afflicted, but the most powerful is the u.s. government. and their job is to create a mythology, or spin about themselves and sell it. that's why there are press conferences and press secretaries and releases, and we need every tool we can get in order to counteract them. so we have a campaign that's about redaction. the government redacts document. >> don't get me started on that. the black indelible line. and we'll come whack and talk about what happens to civil society when it loses that robust media.

>> welcome back, an informed citizenry is a crucial part of having a healthy, bell functioning knock, and so what are the broader implications here? phil, talk about what america looks like without robust journalism. >> it's sloganeering, but we talk about democracy's immune system. the reality is that everyone who is in a position of power and authority, government in particular, but not exclusively, wants to maintain a mythology about themself. and that falls to certainly investigative reporting and good reporting in general. it's not for somebody to say here's what's really happen.

so whether they're voting more, because of a candidate's error, or and one of the strongest arguments for strong investigative reporting, is not what the government wants to keep closed. but we're ever more engaging of our audiences. whether we want to engage in multimedia or platforms, it's really going to strengthen the democracy. >> dellina just tweeted in: jorder not what's your response?

>> i agree. we're getting it from different outlets, and the structure is constantly changing, and it's getting us nowhere. >> what's the role of non-profit journalism? and as traditional news consumption habits change, do you see non-profit organizations like yours change, are they taking up a broad ur part of the landscape? >> as you see it, rolling series, it's going to be us. it's clearly well along in the investigative journalism. and that's why you have, looking at ncir, i think unfortunately, it seems to be well underway in international reporting for americans in this country, and in another place where there's a troubling trend is in statehouse reporting in the country.

and there are some marts of journalism that are not going to need the general news, breaking news, entertainment, sports, and i don't think there seems to be any sense of market failure in those areas, and i think that the market can handle those very well. but there are others where i think there is a non-profit. >> phil, we have 15 seconds left. do you want to wrap this up for us? >> i would agree that the media needs to be part of strong profit portfolios for anyone who isivic minded and want believesn public debate. we stripped away. >> phil, we're out of time. thanks for all of you for a terrific discussion tonight. until next time, we'll see you online.

>> good evening, everyone, and welcome to aljazeera america, i'm in new york. >> we're working with our members on a way forward. >> the latest attempt to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling has split house republicans. a warning from wall street about the political crisis and the risk of a u.s. default. senate leaders say that they're ready it make a deal right now to reopen the government. but the spotlight