launch pad. let's see if it works. the correct answer to our gps challenge question was, d, indonesia. gaga won't be playing jakarta. the police there reportedly refuse her a permit after a threat from an extremist group who said lady gaga would bring the faith of satan to the country and would destroy the nation's morales. she's pretty powerful. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. stay tuned for "reliable sources sources." the media have mitt on the offensive. first they trump a web ad which is barely on television, slamming his record at bane capital. next, they mount a $10 million campaign trying to resurrect jeremiah wright as an issue. prompting a reput yags for romney and this all purpose comment. >> i'm not familiar precisely with what exactly what i said, but i stand by what i said, whatever it was.

. >> and this morning the times is out with a very lengthy examination of romney's mormonism. president obama, meanwhile, has been getting a very different reception. >> which one of us here at "the view" was on "dancing with the stars?" >> that would be sherri. >> are the media giving romney far more scrutiny in this campaign? facebook goes public with a bang. >> tonight the facebook frenzy. >> tonight on world news, facebook fever. one of the biggest stock sales ever creating a thousand new millionaires. >> he was little more than a tongue-tied teenager. usa today hires an on-line pioneer to kick start the paper into the digital future. a conversation with larry cramer. plus -- >> is there anything more terrifying than a room full of people without guns? >> i guess what would be more terrifying would be a room full of people not allowed to have

guns. >> i just got chills. >> a former "daily show" producer admits he felt guilty making fun of people he thought he couldn't stand. i'm howard kurtz, and this is "reliable sources." the leak of a plan that was being weighed by a conservative super pact to launch an advertising blitz built around jeremiah wright drew plenty of media condemnation. tinged with suggestions of racism for invoking president obama's former -- but a different approach than a lengthy "new york times" piece today about the role of mormonism in romney's life. author jody cantor writing "mr. romney's pension for rules mirrors that of his church where he once ex-communicated adulturers and sometimes discouraged mothers from working outside the home." are there a different standard for covering these two presidential candidates? joining us now in new york, john, a cnn contributor and

columnist for "newsweek" and the daily beast, and here in washington erin mcpike, national political reporter for real clear politics. rahm, senior editor at national review. this "new york times" piece, which fills a whole page, it's mostly positive, it's pretty respectful, but i wonder whether it's the latest indication of which some might call a media obsession with romney's religion. >> i'm not sure it is. i think actually one of the interesting questions confronting the media and journalists right now is how we talk about mormonism in the context of this presidential campaign. bhaets the right way to be respectful and decent, but also honest in terms of the impact this home grown american faith has on this republican nominee. it's a delicate subject because traditionally whatever faith has entered conversations in politics, it's been at the hands of bigots who want to tear people down. so it's a delicate subject, but it's an important subject, and the key is to make sure we're talking about it in a way that is thoroughly fair and not sliding into the hands of folks

who demagogue it. >> the subtext of this long detailed piece, thousands of words, is, you know, the church of ladder day saints, very essential to romney's life. he doesn't particularly want to talk about it. the church does some strange things and was not sympathetic to working women, and i just wonder whether opponents might seize on this and say, well, romney is just different. in other words, it seems positive, but maybe -- it's just such a heavy focus on the guy who would, of course, be america's first mormon president. >> we've already seen some of governor romney's opponents like the governor of montana seize on the mormon issue to attack romney, so there will be that here and there. i think this article was -- i think this article was actually respectful, thorough, thoughtful. i thought it was a pretty impressive piece of work. i do think it's important to be even-handed. the "new york times" has said, bill keller has said the time was late to the jeremiah wright story in twaut, and i'm not sure we're going to see the same

degree of candor and surging commentary. >> i can't think of any other candidate who has gotten this kind of media examination. some candidates like talking about their religion, and some candidates are red sent about it, but in this case the media has unilaterally decide thad mormonism is going to be a front burner question for journalists to explore. >> it is a defining part of mitt romney's life and how he governs himself. the article talks about how he is optimistic and how he is a hard worker and abides by rules, and so in a sense that romney's mormonism has shaped who he is, it's important. it talks about his character. now, that story also doesn't go into great depth about the sense of entitlement and secret si that it also brings up. that's also why journalists want to explore it. romney has been secretive about it in the past, and we feel we need to get to the bottom of it. >> if you look at the other "times" story also on the front page a couple of days ago about

this veteran republican strategist who brought the pact finance or potentially financed by a conservative billionaire and owner of the chicago cubs to make a jeremiah wright front and center advertising blitz and all of that. the media reaction to that, particularly the on-line reaction, was such that the whole thing got blown out of the water within hours. so i see quite a contrast between that and the mormonism. >> well, i'm not sure. there is a contrast, but i'm not sure they're parallel. look, the "new york times" story about the fred davis pitch to joe rick ets, and it's importants to indicate that when this became public the super pact dough denounced and said it wasn't under serious consideration. to see a republican strategist put on paper that kind of an ugly thorough attack, the kind of stuff that normally you would say would only be pushed by people on the real fringes of the republican party, conspiracy they'rists trying to divide using race. to see this put forward in a detailed pitch, a detailed plan

at the highest levels to the tune of $10 million to put that message out, that's fascinating. that's news. it really does speak to the sleazy side of the super pact economy that we're going to be seeing throughout this cycle. >> i do want to clarify that "the times" reporters went to the spokesman for joe rickets, and they said we haven't made a final decision. this is under consideration. then the next day when it blew up, we never even considered. it was a terrible idea, and, of course, it had phrases like metro sexual black abe lincoln, referring to the president. but why jeremiah wright in my view a close friend of obama's for 20 years as pastor, his inspiration at certain things. why should it be considered so out of bounds? it was a legitimate issue in 2008, but what about bringing it back now? the media reaction was -- john even said it, was borderline racist. >> there's a big difference, if i can just jump in on jeremiah wright versus mormonism. this particular story today in the "new york times" about mitt romney's religion explains how it impacted him. a lot of the focus on jeremiah

wright has been about jeremiah wright and not necessarily the impact on barack obama's life, and therein lies the difference. >> i think it's completely legitimate to suggest that president obama's voluntarily association, deep association with wright four years does not speak well of him. i don't think this was a particularly smart campaign tactic. i don't think that americans are really going to vote for president in 2012 based on things that happened before obama's presidency, but i think it's totally legitimate. >> let me jump in and say that while many in the media were condemning and holding their nose about this proposal, one commentator was not. sean hannity on fox news. >> governor romney, i have to respectfully disagree with you. i believe that the president's relationship with the reverend jeremiah wright, a man that influenced him for over 20 years, inspired him, is a very important campaign issue. after all, it is a matter of character. >> so in a way even though not a

dime will be spent on this aborted advertising plan, it has injected jeremiah wright into the media dialogue here. >> yeah. a little bit. you know, there are -- there's a faction of conservatives that think that if mccain had made more of an issue of this in 2008 he could have won the election, which i think is a fantasy, and even if it were true, it doesn't mean that you can, therefore, raise it in 2012 and it's going to change the outcome of the election this time. >> the fact that john mccain was an honorable man who refused to go there because he understood the demons of divisiveness in racism that it could play into speaks well of mccain, and this pitch explicitly said we're going to go where mccain wouldn't let us go and pump up the ideas of black theology that perculate on the real fringes, and the fact that sean hannity was mouthing the pitch that they were going to put their website, which character matters, speak to the persistence of these talking points, a sign that should be discredited because it was so ugly and exposed to the world. >> i want to move on to obama web ad this week which completely dominated several days of the campaign because it

was about a subject certainly not a new subject, mitt romney's ten-year at bane capital. i'll play the videotape. >> it was like watching an old friend bleed to death. >> as i look around at the millions of americans without work, it breaks my heart. >> now, just for those who haven't been following it, this particular ad is about a kansas city steel plant, the bane had taken over and later went bankrupt while people lost their jobs and their health care or pension plan, and we saw a couple of the former workers there, but my question is there was a brief airing of this in five states. basically it was something on the web. it either got millions of dollars in free publicity because people on television replayed it over and over again. why did the press latch on to it like this? >> well, i think that shows it was a smart investment by the obama campaign. i think this is another storyline that we saw appear during the primaries when newt gingrich in particular was attacking romney's record at bane and people have been

waiting for this to become a big story and as soon as this happened, i think the reporters pounced. >> well, my question is that romney makes -- obama makes a web ad, and because it's on bane, which is kind of a hot button subject as it goes to the heart of romney's appeal as a businessman, it immediately gets just embraced by the media as a legitimate storyline, but when romney makes a web ad about the 23 million people who are out of work, looking for work, stop looking for work, it's a blip, and it just seemed like there was a certain imbalance there. what is it about bane? >> we are talking about the unemployment rate every single day. it's a key issue in this campaign, so romney talking about it and producing web ads about it doesn't do much to change the dialogue, but mitt romney, who is running on his record as a businessman, as you said, is not talking about how bane capital truly guided his views on the economy, even though he says it did, so the obama campaign is filling the void and producing these web ads and so we latch on to them because romney won't talk about it himself.

the obama campaign is defining bane for mitt romney before he can do it himself. it's a tactical thing that he is winning on. >> just briefly, john, detractors would say the media are helping obama define mitt romney about his tenure at bane, and the ad didn't mention, for example, that he already left bane capital by the time this particular plan went bankrupt in 2010. >> that particular point shows the importance of fact checking but to your first point, the media does veins to try to pick up on things that playoff of preexisting narratives, and all of a sudden you get a lot of earned media, free media, in effect, off a relatively small ad buy. we're obsessed with process stories and things that dovetails off existing narratives rather than the kind of fact check and trying to pierce the veil of these campaign strategies that we really probably should be doing. rather, we cover the ad. >> let me get a break in here. when we come back, barack obama stops by "the view". what a love fest. get the wheels. use our strength & stability to open new opportunities.

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sleep number silver edition bed-for a limited time. once you experience it, there's no going back. wow. hurry in to the sleep number memorial day sale between now and june 3rd. only at the sleep number store, where queen mattresses start at just $699. president obama stopped by "the view" this week and while there is -- for example, there was also this. >> let's see what you've been reading. number one, which kardashian was married for only 72 days? >> um, that would be kim. >> very good. okay. >> because it was a ballplayer. >> that's right. >> that's how i know from watching basketball. >> so erin, does hanging out with the ladies, smart campaign strategy perhaps, but does it feel at all like pandering?

>> it certainly -- there's a little bit of pandering to it, sure, but it makes them more relatable to women across america whose votes he needs to win in large numbers if he is to be re-elected, so, yes, it helps, and it's a thing that mitt romney can't do as well. he cannot speak to women as well, and the obama campaign knows it, so they continue to put him in these situations, like putting him on the jimmy fallon show so he can connect with young americans as well. >> is that just one of the advantages of being president, particularly if you are a president who is comfortable joking around with fallon and hanging out with barbara and whoopi and the gang? >> it's not just the bully pulpit here. there is an odd tradition here, whether it's nixon on "laugh in" in the 1960s, bill clinton on ars yoin hall and george w. bush on oprah. going on talk shows sshgs unfortunately, sort of the political equivalent of willy sutton robbing banks. that's where the money is. this is where the viewers are, and if women in particular are going to be such an important swing this election, it makes sense. does it necessarily dignify the

office? no, not particularly. >> i may be one of the few americans who would rather have a president who didn't know anything about the kardashians, but i guess i've just not a representative median voter here. >> so you think the idea of a president -- this is also true when he goes on espn, and he talks about the ncaa brackets that the president being plugged into pop culture is a way of relating to voters. it's not. it's not something that is a plus in your view and you think these shows shouldn't have the president on? >> i would like to think that voters are going to decide these things based on more serious considerations than whether he reads ""people magazine"" like the rest of us do. >> a lot of pundits don't leave us "us weekly" and tmz and the others. a lot of pundits were hoping that the group of americans-elect would mount a serious third party candidate for president and i want to play a piece of tape of john avalon. this is you back in december. >> this is going to happen. this is going to be a major

player in the 2012 election. you know, you're going to have a centrist bipartisan ticket. on the ballot in all 50 states. fwloo so that didn't happen. americans-elect, no major candidate. wanted to do it. were you overly optimistic? >> well, certainly. this effort did fail. they succeeded on getting on the ballot in 26 states. meant getting over two million people to sign up and i think there remains a desire. you have a record number of americans, self-identifying as i wanted pent, 48% say they want a third party ticket. the fact that they couldn't recruit a credible candidate. romney and obama represent, i think, the center right and center left respectively of their parties. the other factor that was significant, technologically they were so focused on ballot security that it was enormously difficult for people functionally to support a candidate, but this is a real disappointment and a real failure on their part. >> very briefly, the incident this week with romney and the rope line were reportedly shooed

away, is that just a blip, or is that just for difficulties between romney and the press? >> difficulties. there is been little access to mitt romney this campaign, which is very different from how he was the last campaign. it's clear they don't want to take questions on things like bane and his record. >> to be continued. thanks for joining us. coming up in the second part of ""reliable sources" "we'll go behind the hyperbole with sarah lacy, who has had colorful interviews with mark zuckerberg. a former "daily show" producer comes clean on how he tried to embarrass smfrt guests, and the new publisher of "usa today" on pushing the paper into the digital future.

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the company began and grew into a global bohemath, one wall street was eegtory bring to the market. on friday facebook went public. >> mark zuckerburg, he is wearing a hoody. he is about to rin the opening bell for the nasdaq by remote. >> look. >> facebook opening for trade. >> 42. >> 43. >> we begin with facebook and this history-making day. as expected, the buying and selling of facebook stock today was feverish.

>> despite soaring expectations and some early likes among eager investors, facebook shares this afternoon closed barely above their opening price. >> but for all the coverage is facebook really worth $100 billion? joining us now from las vegas is sarah lacy, founder and editor in chief of the pando daily. she and her team published an e book buy this book before you buy facebook. the stock didn't pop on the first day. so what? isn't facebook a risky investment because the content of the site is provided by users who might one day move to an even cooler site? >> yeah. look, it's always a risk. i mean, i think most people in the valley feel like facebook has one social. now, the issue is what is social doing? it tickle this is part of your brain that gives you validation, it connects you with people, so someone else may come along who does that thing better, but i don't think anyone is going to replicate the social graph. i think the fear with facebook is can it keep growing? i mean, it already -- it's

running out of people. you know, there's a billion people on the site, and, you know, this is what mark has done, which is really risky. you know when google went public, search was still growing very rapidly. there was still a lot of headway. the bulk of the money was maid. they can push the ipo out so much so that you can argue and i would argue that the money has been made. it doesn't mean it won't grow at all, but this isn't the next google or the next net scape. >> this is such hugely favorable subject. well, you know, i doubt mark zuckerburg would say that. this is a company that has been beset with scandals around privacy, and mark himself has had -- has been very scrutinized, and, you know, some of the early tv interviews that he did where he looked like a robot or a tomoton, he didn't get a ton of great press. the thing that physicianbook did is they, again, put off going public so long they got all the skeletons out of the closet, all of the lawsuits done. they scrubbed the business

model. they've changed mark's image. they've media-trained mark and let mark grow up in the public eye. this is the opposite of what groupon did. groupon rushed out to an ipo, and there were all these skeletons yet to come outs. >> i want to get to your -- let me play -- you mentioned his early interviews. back in 2004 he appeared on cnbc. here's a brief clip of that encounter. >> when we first launched, we were hoping for, you know, maybe 400, 500 people. har vrd didn't have a facebook, so that's the gap that we were trying to fill, and now we're at 100,000 people, so who knows where we're going next? >> who knows where we're going next? now, in this book you tell the story of -- >> mark is being modest. he knew exactly where the company was going next. he used to have handwritten journals of different features he wanted to roll out. the amazing thing about facebook is actually how much it has played out to the vision he had in the early days of the company. >> tell me about the first time you sat down with him face-to-face as a reporter. you found him, let's say, a bit

challenging to interview. can you explain that? >> probably one of the hardest interviews i have ever done, and i have spent ten years in silicone valley, so i have interviewed my fair share of socially awkward people. you know, i sat down with him. it was in the company's second headquarters when they were all on one floor. very -- looked like a dorm room. there were sacks of laundry. the kids would just go all night, throw their laundry down in the middle of the room and get to coding, and mark, you know, he sweat through his t-shirt in the interview. he just would -- he would -- he looks at everything because he is a programmer as efficiency. i mean, you see how the site is organized. it's all around efficiency. making people like more -- that's how he approaches everything. >> one word answers, which doesn'ts exactly make for scintillating copy. what did you do? >> the biggest -- he thought he was doing it well. he thought that's what i wanted was efficient one-word answers, so i asked him broader and broader questions, and he finally just kind of broke down and was, like, i don't know what you want me to do. i was, like, iment you to say something that's more than one word, and he was, like, oh.

then he started doing that. every time i talked to him since, he got better and better, and, you know, that's one of the reasons i had great access to mark in the early days because he is someone that tries to learn from everyone around him at what he is bad at, and as i was trying to learn if him about the company, he was trying to learn from me of how to be a good interviewer and how to work the press and how to be more social. >> he was studying. >> it was a very sort of parasitic relationship. >> you had a phone interview where zucker burg told you he thought he could make this into a $1 billion company. you were, to say the least, very skeptical. >> i was. you know, this is in an era where we had seen -- it was the first time people wanted to belief in the internet again and cliner perkins, a big venture capital firm gave it a huge valuation, and it crashed and burned, and everyone in the valley thought facebook of the next friendster, and there was no way social network says was a business, and, yeah, i was definitely one of those people. i talked to this 19-year-old

kid, called -- cold called the office. someone kind of handed the phone to him. you know, he went on to brag to me about the valuation they had got sxen how he had trushgted this deal so he could never lose control, and i came away stunned at, you know, first of all, sort of the knife evety of this 19-year-old kid and the fact that he was telling this reporter all of this information, but at the same time this sophistication at how he structured this deal so that he would retain control of this company forever, which is just what he has done. i've never seen anything like it in silicone valley. >> you also toll him that he probably wouldn't last as the chief executive because the investors would insist on grown-up managers. i guess he managed to outlast that prediction as well. and so finally -- >> that was -- that went to the sophistication of the deal. >> as zuckerburg pulls mother surprise, ipo on friday. gets married on saturday to his long-time girlfriend priscilla chang, and you wrote about the rules that she had in her relationship when she was dating him. just tell us briefly some of

that. >> well, this is an early days of facebook when mark was working all of the time, and so they had to negotiate, you know, how much of the time, you know, she would get of his. they couldn't talk about the company. i don't remember how many hours per week, but it was a strict negotiation, but, you know, one thing a lot of people don't know is the facebook's first feature came because when he was coding the site, priscilla used to come and poke him on the subject, and that was a sweet nod to her. >> a fascinating footnote. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. up next, it must be fun making fun of guests at the daily show, but one producer started feeling pretty guilty. he will make a full confession in a moment. ♪ - ♪ ai, ai, ai - ♪ bum-bum - ♪ bum-bum, bum-bum - ♪ [ ice rattles rhythmically ] ♪ bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum ♪ ♪ [ imitates guitar noise ] ♪ [ vocalizing up-tempo heavy metal song ] ♪ [ vocalizing continues ] ♪ [ all singing ] the redesigned, 8-passenger pilot.

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it was a behind the scenes player at the daily show he, a producer who set up interviews with the correspondents on john stewarts's program, and mike rubens freely admits he enjoyed the mockery of conservative guests, but he acknowledged in a piece for salon that he began to have second thoughts about his hit job role. i sat down with him earlier in new york. >> welcome. >> thank you, sir. >> you make a stining admission in this salon piece. you say i like to loathe people, and the people that you loathe are right-wingers, rush limbaugh fans. they offend you. >> yes, it's true.

well, their views offend me, and then i later found out that maybe that the people behind these views are not always so bad, which was, you know, sort of shocking and disappointing. >> before we get to that, you are basically running a scam for the daily show. your mission was to make fun of these people, get them to say dumb things on camera or at least make them look silly. why would some of them say yes? >> that always fascinated me. honestly i don't know. >> it's fascinating to me that your lawyer and a christian. most lawyers that i know are -- jewish. >> they like john stewart, or they didn't know what the show was. i was always very honest. i said we're a news and entertainment program. you should check it out. this is what it's going to be. never lied about what we were going to do. i was always surprise whenned people would say yes. people would do it. less and less as the longer i

was there as the show got more popular and better known people were not so reseptive to it. >> they were on to you. >> yeah. >> so you talk about some of the interviews in the segments that you produced, and there was one by a guy named rapture man, and you xwpd an angry, siting, evangelical crack polt. what did you find? >> a really wonderful trusting, vulnerable guy that i wanted to hug. you know, i felt -- his beliefs were genuine. this man truly believed that the rapture was coming and it was going to cause horrible pain, and when i met that guy, i thought some of these people have beliefs i don't understand it, i don't know where they're coming from, but i saw the humanity behind them. >> he assured me that the rapture is based on solid biblical prophecies. >> all of those prophecies to this date have been fulfilled. >> such as?

>> such as -- there's -- my mind went blank. >> did you start to feel bad? did you hate yourself for sandbagging these folks? >> did i hate myself? >> you did. admit it. ewe pausing. forget about the cameras. >> once in a while, yes. i would feel bad about what we did. sometimes you were, like, i'm so glad we got that guy because he deserved it. >> an arizona state rep that was pushing -- that sounds like a prescription for a piece. >> what could go wrong. >> he had really, really awful republican hair. >> terrible republican hair. >> and, yet, he was not the oger you expected. >> again, he is sort of -- he seemed harmless, and he was friendly. a lot of these people are so warm and friendly in person, and i understand that maybe they're concealing something with that, but, again, i want to hate these people. i want to just loathe them. i want to show up and i want

them to confirm the stereotype that i have got ready, and i show up, and instead they're nice. i want to have a nice conversation with you. >> you were ticked off that these were not evil human beings of your imagination. >> yes. i was disappointed in them and myself. all of us. >> you talked to the conservative strategist frank luntz, who i'm sure knew what the daily show was, and you describe him as an manipulator to help the republican party, and was he a terrible guy? >> he was great fun. he knew that we were having fun with him, and he knew this was not going to end well. of all people who know that they're not going to come off looking very good on the daily show, frank luntz knows that. he was cooperative. >> i am going to read you some words. warm these up a bit. >> okay. >> drilling for oil. >> i would say responsible exploration for energy. >> logging. >> i would say healthy forests. >> manipulation.

>> explanation and education. >> orwelian. >> i still think that what he has done is insidious and hornl -- >> it's not that you have changed your political views, which sound like they are far, far left. >> i don't even think they are. >> you think you are right in the middle of american politics? >> i will say this, and i think some of the reaction to the article people were -- i think that they felt that i was giving people a free pass, and i don't. i do believe that at this point in time the republican party has gone off its rocker. it's way out there on any number of issues. >> so you got criticism probably from some of your liberal friends. >> absolutely. >> that you were humanizing people who they see who should be -- >> exactly. i want to say that -- maybe i didn't see this well enough in the piece. these ideas a lot of these ideas i hate them, but what i found out that there were real people behind them, and i don't want to hate people anymore because -- and i don't want them to hate me either because the end result of

that is divorce or worse. you know, i think that weave probably had enough of hating. >> i don't hate you. >> thank you. i appreciate it. >> did you ever talk to john stewart about the way these segments were done and maybe a little over the top, a little unfair? was there a debate within the offices? >> no. >> because you didn't dare bring it up or because you feared you would be laughed out of the corner office? >> i should also say that there's a lot of -- there were times where we could really sandbag people. you really could, and we didn't do that. >> so you had -- >> there are limits at "the daily show." >> if you don't like what this guy is saying, you're welcome to come on. we would love to have you back on "reliable sources." then you interviewed liberal types who you would see as being on your side, idealogical same, and what happened in this cases? >> in the same way that i would expect them to be sort of i'm going to like you and that i would meet these people and i would find them to be insufferable jerks. >> insufferable jerks? >> yeah. >> you wanted to root for them. >> yes. i mean, that is a disappointment as well.

6. >> so has this experience working for "the daily show" and meeting these people and participating in this sand baggery -- again, some people were playing along, i'm sure, does it cause you to rethink your basic existence? >> has it caused me to rethink my basic existence? i have learned to loathe myself more than ever before. sdoo that's frightening. now you have a grown-up job as a producer for aol, and you're not sand bagging people anymore. you have reformed. >> i have reformed. >> we need a happy end here. >> look, my experience at the daily show was wonderful. it's a fantastic thing. i think "the daily show" is still one of my favorite programs on tv, and i feel like i learned a lot from the daily show. i don't feel bad about what i did there. i'm proud of the work that i did there. i'm proud that i got to work with what i think are the smartest people in the business. >> he still loves you, john. mike rubeens, thank you very much. >> thank you. after the break, larry cramer left the newspaper business for the on-line world decades ago, so why did he just take a job at usa today? we'll ask him.

usa today of the first newspaper back in the day to combine full color with advanced graphics, but that innovative approach has fadeed in recent years as the gwinnett papers were hit by layoffs and declining circulation. this week usa today tried to

take a step into the digital future by hiring larry cramer as its president and publisher. he is the founder of market watch.com, later served as president of cbs digital media, and he joins me now from new york. welcome. >> thanks, howie. how are you? >> good. you left newspapers about 30 years ago for the on-line fronti frontier. why do you want to come back and run one? >> i never left news, and this is about news, and, you know, usa today was ahead of its time when it started. i loved it. i was a reporter at "the post" with you then and covered a lot of it when it launched, so i thought they were very innovative, and i thought it was a great part of their culture, and i believe today they want to do that again. they want to be innovative and news is changing, changing dramatically as we both know. >> as you know, almost all newspapers are struggling. "the l.a. times" just closed its sunday making sdmreen. there were few of those left. the washington post, where we both worked, has been through its fifth round of buy-outs, and usa today has had layoffs. how do you save the print?

>> i don't know that it's totally about saving the print product the way it is. i think we'll have a print product, and i think it's going to be for some time, and maybe forever. but it's about recasting it and the news organization into one that provides news and information to our audience over multiple platforms. some things may be right in print. some things we need on our phones or our tablets or on our computers, and the reputation usa today has for gathering news and for terrific journalism stands. it's just a matter of understanding how people are changing and that's a moving target right now. we've got to get in front of it and hop on and give them what they want where they want it and however they want it. >> speaking of multiple platforms. you did a critique before taking this job at usa today's ipad application, and you wrote the good news and the bad news about the usa today app is it is a close cousin to the look of the paper while it captures some of the design features, some have become tired.

the site loses its sense of urgency and news by stacking stories when essentially the same look and feel of each other. it sounds like you have your work cut out for you. >> they're already working to be fair. they're already working on revisions of that, and, you know, we have a 30th anniversary coming up in september, and we're planning a lot of interesting new ways of getting the news out starting then. plus, gwinnett, you know, has 5,000 journalists in the u.s. in print and on television, and we intend to make much more use of them as part of the usa today news business. >> right. that's quite a work force. now, "usa today" does a number of things well, but it's never won a pulitzer, and it hasn't produced many strong columnists or star writers. it seems to me almost to be shying away from flare. is that a problem in your view? >> well, i think we're going to have to move toward more pronounced voetsdz voices. one of the definite changes in media in the last few years -- media -- great media brands have become much more a compendium of multiple voices, not just one voice.

"usa today" and cnn for a long time have concentrate odd all the different ways that news is disseminated wrfsh people are lacking for a little more of an interesting take on this story. we really can't survive if all we do is come out of journalism. we have to do things that we say things differently and help people understand things differently, help understand things, we -- investigative reporting is going to be a huge part of what we do on an ongoing base circumstance not less but more but also explanatory journalism, the things that people need and we have to give it to them differently than we used to. it isn't going to be just about a five-page package in the newspaper. it is going to be interactivity. it is going to be you can get into this story as deeply as you'd like. >> and what about political coverage, the political stories in "usa today" are fine but never seem to me to drive the national debate. >> well, i think we are going to be very aggressive in political coverage and i think that we are

going to scede inside the beltwy to you guys but once you get outside the beltway, it will be what america thinks and wants to know from the politicians. >> for those of you who don't know, "usa today" is right outside the washington, d.c. belt way. >> i can see the beltway from my office t is a great question. we have great people and you know them, cover inside washington, susan page and the bureau are fantastic but we also need to go out and, particularly in today's day and age, when there have been so many cutbacks in journalism, we need to go out and talk to people,er what they have to say. "usa today" for alls of the existence has been a reflection of america and what america's thinking and it helps it go to the next step, so our job really is to keep a panel only pulse of america but to also help america understand what it's doing and why it's doing it. so, it's an interesting niche but it's one we've had and research says we still have. people love us and want to hear

from us all around the country. >> we will keep a close eye on "usa today" remains one of the few national newspapers and see how you do larry cramer, thanks for stopping by this morning. >> thanks, harry. good to see you again. >> good to talk to you. an embarrassing retraction from national review. the media go gaga over france's new first lady. and howard stern surprise the press as a judge. [ male announcer ] if you think tylenol is the pain reliever orthopedic doctors recommend most for arthritis pain, think again. and take aleve. it's the one doctors recommend most for arthritis pain. two pills can last all day.

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time now for the media monitor, our weekly look at the hits and errors in the news business. i don't expect national review to like elizabeth warren. i do expect its writers to check the facts before falsely accuse the democratic senate candidate in massachusetts of plagiarism. on friday night, national reviews katrina trink co-posted an item headlined, plagiarism in elizabeth warren's 2006 book. she said the book "all you're worth" contained passages from another book in 2005, but warren's book was published first. trink co-was relying on the publication date for the paper back version. she corrected the item and apologized. here is my problem. what happened to waiting an hour to call for comment? bogus charge could be knocked down in ten second it is

national review had bothered to check. always impossible to miss rebecca brooks as the scandal mounted at rupert murdoch's british media empire. sheafs top lieutenant, former editor of news in the world and there was that wicked out red hair. brooks has been charged in the case with per investigator the course of justice, as the the brittles put it allegedly hiding evidence from the cops with charges brought against her husband, charlie. >> i am baffled by the decision to charge me today, but however, more importantly, i cannot express my anger enough that those closest to me have been dragged into this unfairly. >> rebecca brooks will have her day in court, but a major setback for her and for murdoch in the court of public opinion. france's new first lady is also a journalist and she doesn't intend to give that up. she is the long-time companion to newly elected francois hollande and that has generated plenty of media chatter. >> can you imagine if one of the

men running for president of the united states right now was in a relationship with the woman for whom he left his long-time partner, motor of his children, and the two of them had no plans to marry? >> oh, my god, she is unmarried and going part of the presidential couple what is the world coming to, and in france? >> valerie, who once worked for the magazine paris match, wants to continue her journalistic career. i don't think you can be a working reporter if you are the country's first lady. remember when maria shriver quit nbc after arnold schwarzenegger became governor of california in the french do things differently. valerie began an affair with hollande while he was with a candidate who ran for president last time and former president nicolas sarkozy dumped his first lady and married carla bruni. if none of that bothered french voters they may tolerate the first lady do writing on the side. the president doesn't know what to make of howard stern, since he went off the satellite

radio stuck with the outdated image of a raunchy shock jock. he is raunchy some times rather than a maturing comic, somewhat maturing. when stern was debuting in week as a judge of nbc's america got talent that became the media storyline. >> your critics said, okay, this is a desperate act by nbc, all about ratings and it is going to end badly. are two of the three of those things right? >> that sounds pretty accurate. what a crazy idea to put mony a family show. somebody at nbc should be fired for that, right, don't you think? come over here, you. come on, baby. look at this guys. >> right here on nbc. >> "america's got talent" hit the air waves, the shock was that the shock jock behaved himself. >> brother, i have given up hope. i spent a lot of time watching a lot of nudniks, you walked out here, you looked like a hippie. i said if this guy was my son, aid sit him down and say, listen, you