want. take vegetarians. i am not endorsing anyone of these but if you can be a vegetarian and you look at animal fat and you say i don't want that, this is what i want and it is much easier to cool the stimulus on everything else and then what you want is vegetarian food. people say this is highly process i don't see any food. . .

think about it. helm much fluid do you need to sustain you for the next three hours? you need about -- you're shaking your head. you need about 100 calories an hour to sustain yourself on average. i now each half of what i used to eat because i didn't even know this. she said you ate 12 ounces of protein and at one sitting. i didn't even know what 12 ounces of protein looked like. something about a palm being 3 ounces. [laughter] so what it involves is changing how you please see if what you want. an earlier question talked about loneliness. if you want to eat because it's

going to make you feel better, you're going to eat because you feel better and if you think that's where you want, if you look at that huge plate and say that is my friend that's going to make me feel better. there's nothing i can do. you've got to change it so you look at the plate and say that's not my friend. that's not going to make me feel better. but you have to want something else, and once you want something else it's easier to cool down the stimulus. that's the way our brains work. thank you for being here. [applause] >> david kessler has been the dean of the medical schools of yale and university and the university of california san francisco. he served as commissioner of the u.s. food and drug at ministration under presidents george h. w. bush and bill clinton from 1990 to 1997. dr. kessler is a graduate of amherst college, harvard medical school and university of chicago. really rodale books is the publisher. to find out more, visit

rodale.com. pulitzer prize-winning journalist alex jones discusses what he sees as the demise of hard news and the diminished nature of journalism role as a government watchdog. this interview taped and new york city at the 2009 book expo america last about 15 minutes. >> outlook jones, and "losing the news" you refer to the first amendment as fragile. why? >> the first amendment is great bulwark in this country but it's only been the great bull word since the 1930's. for most of our history that a great bull work as we think the protections we think of as absolute have been very, very on certain and they are uncertain because in times of great national stress, they get in

pinched upon and our supreme court determines what the first amendment really says before world war i for instance in fact during world war i it was against law in this country to express opposition to the board. that's not the way our people now think of the first amendment guarantees. that wasn't a long ago and i think it's fair to say the first amendment while it is secure in one sense is a hostage to what might happen in this country say in the event of a terrorist attack when people get scared they get very scared and the first thing they get rid of is their right to have a kind of open discussion hour free speech theoretically guarantees but that's something that can be very much a matter of what the supreme court says it is and also a matter of how terrified people are. when they're terrified everything can go out the window. >> what changed in the 1930's? >> a case called near versus

minnesota. it was a man who was a bigot, anti-semite, really unpleasant man who had a newspaper in minneapolis, and he was willing to sort of put himself in this position of calling people terrible names at the same time he was exposing corruption he was sued by the state of minnesota case state law that said he couldn't call people names and be disagreeable if people of authority and state government didn't want it. it took the supreme court at that moment to say that our constitution overrode those kind of state laws which were everywhere. for instance before the civil war if you lived in the southern part of the country if you expressed opposition to slavery that was against the wall. that's not the way most people think of the first amendment. they think it happened 1791 part of the bill of rights, the guarantees were there from the

beginning. not so. >> is in that representative of what is happening today in the blogosphere? people can have opinions and whatever they consider to be fact posted online for the world to see? >> absolutely they can for the situation people matter their political persuasion recognize critical importance of the first amendment guarantees. what are doing in my book is those guarantees and especially the nuances of those guarantees depend on what the supreme court says it is. what they say they were and for many decades of history, two-thirds of the history as a nation the supreme court didn't say they were what we now assume them to. >> why, alex jones, do you include chapters on gay rights and civil rights in your book,

"losing the news"? >> y shaheen to do in "losing the news" is make clear to what is happening to glycol the iron core of news that is based on the important fact, not opinion but reported fact is in jeopardy. in jeopardy because the digital revolution, in jeopardy because of the economy. it's in jeopardy because of what is happening in the newspaper industry because newspapers that provided i would say 80, 85% of that hard core news, and if that goes away which increasingly seems to be what is going to be lost with that is a lot of other things like the traditions in this country of objective journalism and journalism ethics that are the essential basis of the kind of journalism that kind of journalism is based upon and it holds accountable. so it's not just a matter of a newspaper losing a few reporters. what we are facing i believe something we need to address

which is why i wrote the book is something that can affect the whole profession of journalism has become to understand. the web is a wonderful thing. it's the digital future. it's something on avoidable and welcome and i welcome it. but it's something we need to be absolutely certain isn't going to come to cost values most americans i think really believe and certainly most journalists like i believe in. >> you talk about citizen journalists. are you a supporter of citizen journalists? >> i'm a supporter of citizen journalism but i don't think citizen journalism is an anecdote to why see as the erosion of serious professional journalism. i think some citizen journalism when i started for a reporter and is true to most i used to go to school board meetings and council meetings and there were always people there that were very interested. they were very interested but also had a strong point of view

in many cases. they are typical citizen german dee dee, journalism is. i don't think you want to be dependent on their vision and their version of events. that is why i think professional journalism is important to keep no matter your politics that the basis of a verifiable pact and it can be held accountable. that is what i believe is essential to our sort of state of democracy in this country. >> the editor of "the wall street journal," robert thompson recently referred to the google and yahoo! of the world as tapeworms. >> i couldn't understand what you said. >> robert thompson of "the wall street journal" recently referred to google and yahoo! of the news world as tapeworms. >> absolutely. >> do you agree? why? >> google especially global news is a wonderful way to get any information my subject. you go to, type been a subject

and upcoming articles. they are for the most part articles published in newspapers the person who goes to those articles is a customer of google effectively. they are not a customer of the newspaper that paid reporter salary that put that up and i think on till reporters and journalists and news organizations find a way to make a google pay for taking their work and labour and selling ads on googled google is making lots of money in fact ducal makes most of the money that's made for advertising on the web made by google and next to them yahoo! but they don't hire reporters and they have no hand in creating that news. they feed off of it like a tapeworm feeding off somebody's guts acting as they are along for the ride. that is a very bad model for the

future because it kills the goose that is going to lay the golden eggs. if the news organizations stop reading the news googled news isn't going to have much to aggregate. >> so what is the solution to a generation growing up what they consider to be free news? >> i think that is the great rebel. are we going to find a way for existing news organizations to survive with the commercial model that is based on the web and print or just the web alone. i don't think we figured that out and get but i can tell you this if we don't find some commercial mechanism as far as i'm concerned to sustain this kind of donner and cord news, syria's reported news by serious journalists i'm not talking about gossip and features, i'm talking about stuff that is essential information we have our national conversation around. if that news doesn't continue to be reported at local level and

regional level i think we are going to have a serious problem with our democracy. that is an economic riddle that is yet to be solved. i certainly hope it will be solved and there is a reasonable chance that it will. >> in your book, "losing the news," you give three examples of solving the problem in a certain way. and if you would explain them a little bit more. the poynter institute, the anniston alabama newspaper and the news hour proposed late you put forward the news hour with jim -- >> these are the nonprofit the world. i welcome them on profit solutions. i don't think they're necessarily ones that are going to be the most sustaining one's but i welcome them. what i suggested about the news hour is if you happen to be a billionaire out there and have money than you want to use to change the world, the way you can change the world the most quickly and most powerfully in my opinion is to endow the news hour and make the news hour

instead of talking heads program give the money it needs to become a genuinely high-quality television news gathering operation with the standards the news hour has under jim lehrer. the news hour has one hour of prime news time on every television set in america. pbs basically has that program on every tv set with your they are on cable or broadcast. if you take the quality that the news hour represents and what it does and add to that the muscle of a news gathering enterprise in real genuine terms you would transform television news and by doing that you would transform the whole news and fire at the as you create a genuine rival to cnn and fox news and msnbc that bonn is focused on high-quality television news. high-quality television news is the most compelling news that there is but it's expensive, it

takes a lot of talent and a lot of people would love to do it if they could be able to feed their families and get it on the air. if somebody wants to endow the news hour to that end it would get on the air and would have a profound affect in my opinion. as far as these other models you're talking about there are models in which individual either give their organization to a foundation or create a foundation around their organization. i think those are things in the work that are going to be happening in some places. i think they are going to be, you know, i don't know. i hope they are going to work but that isn't the long term solution in my opinion. the solution that is the long term one is going to have to be a commercial one that allows news organizations to make a profit and therefore be able to pay the journalists that do the work and let them send their kids to school to pay the

mortgage, too. >> you are a former "new york times" pulitzer prize winner but are you doing now. >> i am the director on the policy at harvard university and i am also from a family newspaper background. i'm in the fourth generation of the family that owned small newspapers in tennessee. we are still at it. my father is 95-years-old, the publisher. i have two brothers and a brother-in-law that work there every day. we want the newspaper business to survive and i really believe that a lot of people when they think about it carefully realize that this is important to our country, to our sort of national discourse. i think that we are in a dangerous place right now. a very dangerous place and i am hoping "losing the news," the book i've written, will not only make people aware of what is in play in terms of the obvious, but also examine the issues that are going to be in danger if this goes away like objective

news, like ethics in journalism as we know them, like the kind of protections the first amendment is bolstered by which are really i think greatly furthered by a robust serious news industry in our country will. >> new quote your father in here as saying you cannot run a newspaper and have friends at the same time. >> well, my father is a very wise man to get as i say he's 94. one of the things i said -- he said one lives a young man, he was the publisher in our town, i think it was a very community minded newspaper but it was also a newspaper under my father's leadership believed and have the responsibility to tell people often what they didn't want to hear and my dad said to me if you're doing your job as a newspaperman and it's very hard to have friends. >> and you say he's comfortable

with that? >> he's very comfortable with it and i think he has friends it's just certain times people are your friend but for the most part if you believe could do the job consistent and don't play favorites they come around and understand what you're doing is for a utter pettis benefit including your own. my father was a realist about this. he didn't put fresh of of what he considered to be the responsibility our newspaper had. that's the way to run a newspaper. >> alex jones comedy think the advocacy of the sea and in's and msnbc's and fox news cable shows in the evening is a good trend, the trend towards advocacy and opinion rather than street journalism? >> i believe there's a place for advocacy. the editorial pages of newspapers, columnists, i think advocacy is a fine. i don't believe we should only

have advocacy or that we should have news that as advocacy disguised. i think what we need is a core of serious reported news reported by journalists who are held accountable by their editors and public to a standard of objectivity and provided that core factual knowledge that allows the people on the blogosphere and cnn and fox news and the editorial pages and around the water cooler to have a conversation. if you don't have that core of reported news all you've got is the hot air. we need the hot air with the hot air without the core is a very dangerous thing. >> we seem to be having this national conversation about traditional media versus the new media, the blogosphere for going on ten years now. when is it going to shake out, or is it? >> we are at the beginning of this digital world and all of us who are in this media environment recognize the world

that's coming is going to be a digital world. all i am one that believes you can have a digital world and also have print magazines and print newspapers and radio and other things that are not simply on the web. i think the wind is going to be its own place. it's been to be profoundly powerful place. and all of these other entities are going to have representation on the web. i think we are going to be able to choose. we are going to have the web and other things as well. but as for where it's going -- i mean, we are just beginning. where it's going is anyone's guess. i will tell you this though, i think where it's going is something we ought to try to guide instead of simply let it happen because it's too important. it's too big. and if we become a world and a nation and which all we are doing is amusing ourselves on the web, then that's not going to be a sustainable democracy in the way we've had it. that would be a dangerous thing. i hope that's not going to happen, and i think that news,

the hard core news we are in danger of losing is critical to keeping that from happening. >> here's the cover of the book, it's alex jones's latest, "losing the news" the future of the news that feeds democracy, published by oxford. mr. jones is a pulitzer prize-winning journalist who wrote for "the new york times" from 1983 to 1992. he's the author two previous books, the patriarch and the trust. he's currently the director of the center on politics and public policy at harvard university. to find out more, visit hks.harvard.edu. alex jones america, new york city 2009. we are here with publisher ret basic books. john, what is the publisher do? >> the publisher is a title i have. i ron in print at basic books so we have editorial marketing,

publicity, design and i end up making the final decisions. i say a lot of yes or no all day long. >> wendi say yes or no to? >> whether we are going to acquire a book, how much we're going to pay, what resources we will put into promoting it. the final call on which jacket, a lot of a over become i like his jacket better than not want to get a bunch of small decisions all adds up to the decisions but a bunch of small ones along the way. >> how long have you been in books and where did you come from before basic? did you always want to be a publisher? >> no, i serendipitously found the business. i ran a bookstore in washington for ten years and finally decided i enjoyed the book business so much wanted to try something different. publishing was the obvious choice. you're going to date me, i think this might be almost 20 years of bookexpo, aba as they used to be called.

>> let's talk that some of the books you have said yes or no to the decisions i guess i should say. rick steves, the travel memoirs from pbs, correct? >> a lot of people know rick steves because europe through the back doors, his travels. and he has some of the best on the market but he's also politically active and the travel guide is it appropriate to have a lot of political activism because people want to make their own decision how they are going to travel but this is a long essay on the fact when you travel you actually are committing a political act and that when you travel that you should consider where you're going and how we behave when you're in a place and that americans need to basically travel better and you can learn as much from the culture that you're going to visit and you will see the cover has this suitcase and the idea is when you come back from a place you should bring back as much of the place as possible, make america an interesting place and you a more interesting and vigil.

>> getting back to the idea of you being the publisher. the cover, did you make the decision or have anything to do with that? >> that cover was originated by one of the marketing people at perseus. we struggled because we knew it couldn't look like a travel guide or have a single destination but we also didn't want to seem too overtly political. we wanted to see accessible, a little bit of fun, a little bit old-fashioned said that's actually a suitcase rick steves owned and we put stickers on it. it's not a stock photo. we put it together and designed around it and i like the way it's clean but it's fun and the message gets across clearly. >> saw when the viewers are the book store the inouye lot of thought has actually been put into these covers. >> covers are one of the toughest things we do because everybody has a legitimate opinion what works for a cover and sometimes what i'm doing is filtered through the deferral legitimate ways is and trying to pick the one i think it's going to help in the long run.

>> i should add the books we are talking about are out right now, these are spring titles. >> that's right. this is usually to talk about full brooks but we also bring springboks. >> let's talk about two books on the economy. i guess you would say to diverging takes on the economy. >> certainly to different perspectives. robert franks is just to simplify things i would say is a liberal economist, has a column for "the new york times," teaches at cornell and he's done this this is the second book he's done for us and its collection of pieces about how to think about the current crisis through economic terms. he helps people come up with a vocabulary to help understand all the kind of garbage that you hear in the news to sort through. he has a lot of prescriptive solutions. dannel the other side you have tom sowell, a conservative economist at the hoover institution in california, widely respected. both of these men are respected

and we approached professor sowell and said we would like you to write a book on what is happening in the economy and he said without a doubt i want to write about housing crisis because in his opinion it is what precipitated the entire economic boom and bust. >> so we have trouble, the economy and in this book by chris mooney about science in america. >> chris mooney is a science journalist and wrote a book a couple years ago called bore on science and now he's moved to the idea if we have a problem with literacy in this country i think the argument he was make is if you read the front page of a big daily paper and look at the problems the country faces an enormous number our scientific problems or i should say problems that hot scientific solutions and one of the things we are struggling with is we don't have the capacity or infrastructure to build scientists who can help solve these problems so this is an argument saying that we need to increase the scientific literacy

in this country and that includes obvious things like education system but also means scientists have to do a better job of talking about scientific solutions and accessible terms for the public. >> you mentioned this is the convention people talk about their fall books being the biggest season for the book industry when you would release your largest titles. >> that's right. the consumers come out to spend for the holidays is the assumption. when i was in a retail the assumption is you did one-fourth of your business in november and december. i don't know whether that number still takes publishers do tend to push their biggest bucks for that time of year. it's when gift books, illustrated books come out and for us because basic doesn't to illustrate books and gifts books per say we do history and science and things like that so we tend to put the most as we say give the in the jargon of the industry, that come out that time of year so there are 2i wanted -- >> i should add john is holding

a catalog here. something that book buyers, librarians, media, this is what you put together so that they know what's coming out and you can essentially pitch them. >> publishers think in terms of seasonal lists. most have two or three lists per year and i don't know if you can read that but this is the fall list and what we do is descriptive copies for every book it has a biography of the author and jackets and just sometimes it's quotes are examples from the book and i think you summarized it perfectly i think the main tools for booksellers the publicists use it for media, authors and agents so that they can see what individual publishers are doing and we have to plan books into the marketplace six, nine months ahead of time and so you have to have something that's polished like this so the retailers and publicity folks can see with the final book will look like because some of these books are still being written so we don't

have a finished book to show. >> let's talk about two of those. >> all right, eugene rogan is at oxford. we think this will be a major new history of the arabs and he's taken an interesting approach. he chose to start the history in the 1500's and his concept was that is when the ottomans first conquered the arab land and one of the defining characteristics of arab history is the head frequently been an occupied ethnic group and so he decided that plus rather than start with mohammed, which is where other histories and started that this was the defining moment and what he would argue is that arabs value history in a way as those of us in the west don't think about. first of all their history is deep and rich. they were a dominant power and i think one of the things that's going on in the middle east now as arabs are seen that the west looks down on them and that is

inconsistent with their history so it's important to understand air of history if you want to unravel what's happening in the plans today. >> i notice he lives in oxford england. would you bring him to the united states? >> we will bring him -- it's funny because history is taught to get media because the media is obsessed with and even though i tried to make the argument why this is relevant in the news that will be a battle when we tried to picture it, books about the economic situation it's easier to get media but we felt this was such an important book we would bring him over and get some media for that. >> and the second book for the fall. >> this is by seth lipski. he writes regularly for "the wall street journal" and, you know, he decided that americans don't know enough about the american constitution and you