>> we are going to talk about feature writing, but as a genre that perhaps offers more than just what you read in section b. of the daily paper. let me take a second, if you would, and introduced my fellow panelists here. some of who may be more familiar to you than others. proceedings simply in alphabetical order, kevin allman is our local boy. kevin is the editor of gambit weekly which is our extraordinary alternative weekly newspaper here in new orleans. [applause]

>> kevins work has appeared in the "washington post," the los angeles times, the globe and canada and our own times as well as details, vote and other publications around the country. interestingly, particularly for the interest of the spam he is also a member of the national book critic circle, a novelist, the title of his recent novel was tight shot. and he was also the winner of the 2008 walker percy southern playwrights festival so he is a man who lives in many genres. also with us today, coming in from new york, is katherine bouton whose acts on the program i believe yesterday for a panel of the master class. she is the deputy editor of "the new york times" magazine, or was the deputy editor from 1998 until just this past october. she is now the books and theater editor on the daily new york

times itself. her previous jobs at the times included being deputy editor of the book review, deputy science editor of the times times, and senior editor of the magazine, which again makes are especially appropriate for talking with us today on this topic. chris hedges was apparently a lucid at "the new york times," with them for many years but mostly serving in an overseas capacity. he was a foreign correspondent for nearly two decades for the times, also for the dallas morning news, the christian science monitor and national public radio. he was a member of the team that won the 2002 pulitzer prize for explanatory reporting, as opposed to the other kind of reporting i suppose, which is simply confusing. [laughter] >> in addition, he is the author of the bestseller american fascists and the national book critics circle award finalist for the wars of force that gives us meaning, and most recently

for a book published by simon & schuster, when atheism becomes religion. so thank you all for joining us here in new orleans at the trend in. tennessee williams/new orleans literary festival. [applause] >> we have been passed today talking about feature writing as a genre. in the previous panel, you might've heard the characterization that northerners will give you information, but southerners will give you a story. feature writing perhaps is the very genre that falls in between those two areas, a genre that is published in newspapers and magazines ostensibly to convey information. but on the other hand, offers a great deal more potential. let me cast it this way. is feature writing particularly with the contraction and the

decline of daily newspapers around the country, what is the role today, what is the nature of feature writing as a genre, and what promise does it offer us the more conventional journalism might not? any of you want to start that off? >> as the editor of here surrounded by writers i would say that the role of feature writing is going to remain strong. the reason newspapers exist is to disseminate news, but i think a lot of the reason that people read newspapers, especially magazine, even newsmagazines, is for an understanding of not only the news, but the news and a broader sense, cultural news, social logical news, and what you said before about a story i think is always relevant in feature writing.

and so i think people also just enjoy the narrative element of feature writing. and as long as newspapers exist in some form, maybe not on paper as we now read them, but in some form that feature writing that i would hope has a good future. i think it is an appreciated form. >> an appreciated form? kevin, you're also an editor as well as a writer. what is your sense of it? >> my sense of it is nobody knows where it is going on a. it will always be around, but in what form, there is no telling. them a part of the 20 century is probably the golden age for that when people would sit down and read 5000, 6000 word story that had a strong narrative and all that. there were hundreds of magazines that were published of those things. their advertisers that would support him. and now we're looking at the christian monitor folded on

friday, when online only. time and newsweek, i doubt they will both be in existence by the end of next year. and that really scared me was that the new yorker in one of its january issues was down to 10 pages of advertising. they are dumping subscriptions and giving subscriptions for $24 for 52 issues. so i'm not sure what form it will take. people will always want to do it, but right now the crystal ball is really cloudy. i think part of the decline of newspapers, and you can see it in sort of how their local papers have become has taken a tremendous toll on two aspects. of reporting. one, investigative reporting, and the second is feature writing. and i think the cause is the same here these are both very labor-intensive and time-consuming activities. i began as a reporter, almost

three decades ago, and have watched the arc of that decline throughout my career. and i think that without doubt it is harder and harder to find good writing in american newspapers. a good writer has been shunted aside. the quality of the writing has deteriorated markedly. and i fear, as you do, where that is going to go. i mean, those of us who can publish books i think have tried to keep alive our love of literary journalism, but there are, as you point out very, very few outlets not. we're all sort of compete for a handful of publications, places like harpers, for instance. whereas two decades ago there were dozens. >> i want to revert to my optimist statement which i think

both of your right. traditional media as we know them and read them and hold them in our hands are declining. and certainly the two areas you talked about are labor-intensive and expensive to foot the bill for your. >> basically what i said was the tradition of me i agree is in decline. but i think online media is really, really a thriving area. and i think some of the traditional media have very strong online components. but there are also a lot of independent online magazines that are publishing really good things. it kind of depends on how we define feature writing. if you include personal essays and political essays, i think certainly they are thriving. i also think that online media

has opened up a lot of area for good writing, the decline of newspapers may be shutting off your. >> let me respond to that. i think the problem with online media is that they have not attracted advertising base that supports that kind of work that allows a great writer to go out to hollywood and spent six weeks, day in and day out, riding a classic story, frank sinatra had a cold. it is extremely time-consuming and costly to do it, and we see with newspaper websites. "the new york times" website of course a wonderful website, but it only tracks i believe nine or 11 percent of advertising revenue. and that is true for all newspapers, large and small. the advertisers have not migrated from newsprint to the site. and i think we also have to be

clear in understanding that new media configurations impose their own demands on content. the average reader of "the new york times" spins with a paper edition about 45 minutes with the paper. the average viewer of "the new york times" website spends about seven minutes. they use the website as same way they use cnn or google news or anything else to get headlines. they are not actually reading. and i think for those of us who are readers, anything that runs over 1500 words, and i'm sure i'm not alone, i have to print it out. your eyes become exhausted trying to read through a complex and textured narrative online. so i'm not as optimistic. i think that the internet and poses its own demands in the same way that we saw television

imposed its demands on how content is shaped. >> i am not as optimistic either and i will give an example right now. as an editor i've been wanting to send a rider down to united home nation, which is out in the gulf of mexico, and it is an american indian can bearding those impacted very hard by hurricanes gustav and ike, and tremendously undercovered by the media. in better times i might be able to send out a writer for two, three weeks to get to know the people and to spend a narrative that becomes a feature story that tells a larger story through the eyes of the people that went through it. i don't have that money or that time or that space now. so if i send someone down is going to be for two or three days, and not a research on internet beforehand, going out with a lot of preconceptions, and bringing back what's going to be more of a less of a feature and more of a hard news story, when it might be better told as a story of human beings

and not as the story of wetlands being washed away and all of that. so what you are saying about investigative reporting, i think is very true. we don't have time or the money or the space for that anymore. and many newspapers and magazines, and that is that. >> this conversation is taking a very interesting direction, and 22 among other things the technological changes, especially the internet. and/or financial ramifications, chris mentions the contraction of advertising dollars in the webpage of "the new york times" for example. let me roll us back a couple of decades just to find us a little bit. because in the '60s and in the '70s the so-called new journalists was probably the greatest flourishing of the genre feature writing that journalism has seen in this country. if you think back, for example,

to jack newfield and the village voice, tom wolfe, electric kool-aid acid test as was the series of others works of new journalism before he turned interestingly to fiction. esquire magazine along with the village voice. this was an extraordinary moment. it then started to bend and metamorphosis at selkirk units are of a redheaded stepchild of the new journalism gonzo journalism which became even more participatory, particularly as practice in las vegas, for instance, which the journalist not only embedded himself in the story such as kevin was just talking about the signing a rider to do, but in the hands of hunter s. thompson, the report, became the story. became the actor on his own plea stage. so let's just bring back a few decades because its not that long ago. what was it that left the new

journalism or enable the new journalism is to become bleak the premier genre in this country. i would argue that it virtually superseded even fiction in the national consciousness and in the literary community for about a decade or decade and a half. rollingstone was another venue, for tremendous general is him. journalism. >> so what was it that made that kind of feature writing as dominant as compelling and powerful and what has changed? >> there is also a cultural dimension to all of this. we live in an image-based society, and the decline that you mentioned is part of our transformation from a literate culture to an illiterate

culture. 42 million americans are functionally illiterate. another roughly 50 million are semiliterate, meaning they read at a fourth of fifth grade level. that is almost a third of the country. and those people are technically literate, even people have college degrees off into an illiterate culture. they stop reading. and use it in terms of the decline of print-based material across the cultural spectrum. you see in the publishing industry. you see with magazines. use a 2-wood newspapers. 80 percent of american households last year did not buy a book. and so much of what we are going is a very frightening cultural transformation, where we believe, i think of course this

is an illusion, that we can receive information through images. the two political campaigns that we just went through for president were based on personal narrative and how we were made to feel. and were not fundamentally based on ideas. and that confusion of propaganda with etiology, that belief that, how we, you know, how we're made to feel is a form of knowledge. i think has been as destructive as perhaps anything else that has gripped our culture sense, as you correctly point out, this heyday of literary nonfiction in the '60s and 70s. catherine or kevin? >> to attempt answer your question about what gave rise to new journalism, i was too young to actually be aware of the ship when it came.

except that i was a reader. and i don't know where it came from, but i would argue that we are going to a concurrent kind of shift right now with moving out from these traditional magazines that we're talking about. i agree. esquire, rolling stone, "the new york times" magazine where i worked for 10 years. they're all publishing pretty good stuff to, but if you really, really want to read interesting material, if not other kinds of subjects. and my master's class yesterday urged the people to read the best american writing the thing at the national magazine awards, but that every. it is full of amazingly really great writing but it is being published in places that you probably haven't heard of and magazines like seed. that is the only one i can think of off the top of my head, but there is a great piece in a

magazine that was published in seed. i mean in the book form of it. so i do think that now by necessity we, feature writing is kind of thing also a change. maybe not as dramatic and maybe not as lasting as the rise of new journalism, and maybe that was just because there happened to be a number of really, really spectacular writers coming to maturity at that point and some really brilliant editors. certainly the editors at esquire or rollingstone made an enormous difference in the rise of that kind of journalism. now i think it's more of the shift is more a response to the necessity for the shia. but to me it is producing some pretty good stuff. >> kevin, what is your take on his? >> we are all cheerful here today aren't we?

it's the most depressing alia for. >> is george bush to president? did i miss something? >> i think there's a couple of things. one is we don't have kind of a national media bond that we used to. i mean a cover story in time magazine 50 years ago would be the talk of various social classes, various races. i think this would bind the country. the same thing with the nightly news and walter cronkite. will shed to was a vast blast a variety of americans. we don't have that anymore. everything is on cafeteria plan. so you pick the news that you want to watch and is usually the news that reinforces your own preconceptions about the world, whether it is keith olbermann or sean hannity. you pick the radio you want her to pick want her to pick all of these things. none of that is conducive to feature writing, to feature journalism, which by necessity tells a story somewhat akin to

fiction. i mean, i can't even think of -- i'm trying to think of something in the last 10 years, a feature story that had somebody in the country talking. can you think of something? >> i think you are touching on the very thing. let me jump back one step even further. try to the '60s and '70s, the period that i would argue in which american journalism florist was much earlier and they were called the muckrakers. people like ivan tarbell. and you may recall any to give the reform also. and what they were doing was writing about industrial conditions or writing about social conditions. what these two periods of flourishing of feature writing had in common, i'm going to toss this out as a hypothesis, is these are moments of great political to mold. when the status quo was being

challenged. by progressive labor unions in the early part of the century and the rise of socialism before it was bright and underground by the red scare. and as resurgence during the vietnam war. and the civil rights movement, and ultimately the feminist movement as well. feature writing seems to get its polls racing when it has something to engage with, that means something that changes lives. when it is not just entertainment. and it is more than just acquits events and that is one feature writing seem to have so much heart. so what i'm going to ask your is that part of what happened in the '90s under the era of george bush, not to be overwhelmingly partisan and lay all at his door, a lot of these problems, the economics

undermining the major newspapers and magazines survey preexisted george bush. >> can i say, and this is no defense of george bush, but the media was really [bleep] covering what george bush did. really, really bad. i mean we look back and no offense to "the new york times," but i'm sure you had nothing to do with that. i guess i don't entirely agree with you because one of the best features of that i remember in the last 10 years was in the "washington post" and the post gave her the time and resources and the support to do the walter reed medical center exposé. i think it took nine months and tens of thousands of dollars, and that made a difference there that was something i think everybody in this room remembers and talks about and all that. that was the last piece of really good feature writing. she used the stories of the shoulders and she used the stories of the nurses and the source of the bureaucracy.

just pulled out a hell of a piece of journalism. >> i think the landscape has changed. i mean, you are certainly right about the muckrakers. and the new journalists in the '60s, that there was a kind of passion which i think is extremely healthy, and something that established news organizations like "the new york times" deal with very uncomfortably. but the fact is, the broad mass of the literate culture turned to print organizations, print mediums in order to get their information. and that has changed. profoundly. you know, we rely now on primarily electronic conveyors

of information. and most all of these are corporatized. there are about six or eight companies, viacom, wilbert murdoch's news corporation, disney, general electric, that control just about everything except for some of these very marginal publications and a few community radio stations, that we see or read. and the bottom line of the corporate, of corporate entities is profit here and it is about the lowest common denominator and it is about appealing to everybody, and it is about not angering their advertising base. >> i think we're all talking but different things here. first of all, i don't think what she wrote was feature writing. it was investigative journalism.

written large. and i don't think newspaper writing for the most part his feature writing. to me, i mean, maybe we should all define what we think feature writing is. to me, feature writing is a way to address a subject that may have something to do with the news, but in which he century what you are doing is telling some kind of story that is behind the story. and telling it in a narrative way. it can appear in a newspaper. there are certainly kind of feature writing that appear in newspapers, but to me primarily feature writing is magazine writing, it can become bookwriting, a lot of magazine pieces become bookwriting. but i don't know. why did you mention danica's feature writing? >> because it's the closest thing i could think to it, to an organization that would actually

devote the time and money that would go into something i can to feature writing because i think that is the big problem now. you know, and let to do these kind of nouveau, pieces. unless you have that kind of backing, financially, you are not going to get good feature writing. i do think a lot of magazines are still, you know, asking reporters to go out and spend some time. i know "the new york times" magazine, you know, we're not going to send summative travel around the country for two or three months. but we will send somebody or at least we would've up to this year, i don't think we're sending anybody anywhere anymore. [laughter] >> you know, to central america to report a story, or to give them the time to report a sword over a period of time. not a whole lot more money to do it, but surely the time to do it and the expense money to travel to two or three different

places. i think other of these dying also need to do that. >> they are very few. you know, we can see here and just are taking off. the landscape is so diminished that you can't argue that it is actually true. yes, you're right. "the new york times" magazine will still do stuff, and the new yorker, but the smaller magazines like seed, i don't know the magazine but i'm pretty certain they don't have a budget that they can hand somebody thousands of dollars to go off for weeks and do this kind of work. and it takes that kind of time it takes those kind of resources in order to produce something of that quality. >> i don't know the budget either. >> but again, if you think, and if we are suggesting that the economics, and this battle

between the business office in the editorial office in american journalism goes back to the inception of journalism itself. these debates were going on in the early 19th century in newspapers. and at some point, and i would suggest it was often through alternative presses, kevin york, the editor of the alternative weekly here. and one of the reasons that newspapers like the village voice, chicago reader, the phoenix -- who are all hosed right now financially. the village voice it is half of what was. you know, it's great to see alternative but they're just not making the pills. cheerful again. [laughter] >> sometimes it is from the slough of despair that ultimately, you know, we emerge

and we arrives. i didn't plan on taking this direction in this conversation. [laughter] >> i was feeling pretty cheerful myself before this whole conversation began. [inaudible] >> you may, please. [inaudible] >> taking my work which i do very good work and they know the big guys don't want me anymore because they can't afford it. so they aren't welcoming me with open arms. and i'm sorry, but i am tired of hearing all the negativity. >> it is not a matter -- it's not a matter of being negative or, you know, being a pessimist or optimist. i was a war correspondent for

most of my life, and people who didn't very quickly grasp the reality of the landscape around them often didn't live very long. it's a matter of looking at the factual data that, as kevin has pointed out, is deeply disturbing about media, alternative media that we all care deeply about and that have been such an important element in american democracy, and providing alternative voices. it's just true. i mean, kevin just talked about the phoenix and the voice, go to new york and pick up the voice, and pick up the voice as to what it was, which is a local paper by the way. it is an alternative local paper. [inaudible] >> right. well, for those of us who write for magazines, it's just

indisputable that the outlet that we have our diminished, and those that remain are really hanging on by the fingertips. i mean, that is just a fact. for those of us who care about writing, and not just as a kind of artform or a passion, but believe i think as i'm sure all of us do at this table, but it is an absolutely essential element. it is one of the pillars of our democratic society that this isn't just about the decline of newsprint or the decline of magazines. or the decline of feature writing. you know, remaining in a print-based society and a print-based culture allows the populace to deal with ambiguity, with nuance, with complexity, with other points of view, instead of being fed these thought terminating clichés that are pumped out over the airwaves.

this has an existential element to it that is deeply important for the maintenance of our open society. of. [inaudible.[applause] >> give us a few minutes. ironically, southern culture was a topic in the previous panel, and rick bragg for example one of the great practitioners of the seven stories talks about that oral tradition, because his people from northern alabama in fact don't read. and thus the oral tradition became dominant. and was a very important device for cultural continuity for shared values and for commentary. but here's the irony that seems to be in our contemporary culture, and this may illuminate

my feature writing is threatened. we have a new form of oral culture. what is supplanting print journalism is television talk shows, redundance, sean hannity, and people of that. but it is instantaneous. is often thought that it is not reflected. it is not investigative. i am not even going to, i don't think we'd want to go in the direction of the extreme of this new form, rush limbaugh, which is the very worst example of it. but what has happened culturally, we think of the implications of this is we are bombarded with information daily. there is a dozen of these men and women on tv every single day, chatting away at his. but what does it say about a culture that is now moved from being a literate culture in which long deliberative

investigative pieces have been surprised by just instantaneous and daily chatter. i think, chris, it's a little bit of what you're talking about in terms of the political implication. >> there was a great book written in early '50s by the british social critic richard hogarth called the uses of literacy. in which he saw a lot of this coming. he understood that the creation of mass culture minted instruction of another culture, which was oral culture here it replace oral culture. and he wrote it at the perfect time in which he was able to document that destruction among the working class in england. and so you are very right, that we have a new national narrative, common vernacular, built primarily around trash talk and celebrity gossip and

trivia, which has corroded and infected news. has passed off as news. so that we are not only entering an image-based world, and imagebase coulter, one that is essentially postliterate, but we are destroying the viewpoint, the expressions, the distinct individuality. and i think one could argue either the complexity of human life by eradicating the power of both our literate and our oral culture. is asserted a hogarth's argument and i think he was onto something. >> i can't argue with any of that. the rise of trash tv is devastating for public

discourse, but i think it really has much to do with feature writing. to go back to where i started, i do think there is a very, very strong new forum for teacher writing, and that is basically online journalism. you may print it out, but it is still there, and it still is -- journalism that is produced and disseminated without all the traditional hindrances that are now, you know, affecting newspapers which is the cost of paper, the cost of ink, the cost of trucking, the cost of distribution. and i think that actually, there is a very, very thriving community of writers and readers online. you need to know where to look for them. i don't think there is a mass readership for anything, but actually don't think there's ever been a mass readership or

anything. i would love to know how many people asked to read the jumbo. maybe it seemed like everybody was talking about it but my guess is i'm sure we've all read it, but i think we think back to things that everybody was talking about the really everybody was sort of smaller group as everybody is today. and i think we're art evolving. we are certainly not there and the advertising model isn't there. entity can't be paid for in the end it's not going to try. i think you'll figure it out and they do think that my kids generation, i have a 25 year-old son, is very literate and he does almost all of his reading online. i do think that is so unusual these days. and i think he is really, really interested in reading and i think a lot of kids are. >> katherine, let me ask this.

it's possibly a relationship between feature writing as you yourself into a did a few minutes ago in response to kevin, much of the feature writing we've been discussing has actually, not all that, rolling stone unnecessary, but most of it has been as close to investigative journalism. one of the great strengths of the alternative weeklies, the ones that we mentioned that are now very much in jeopardy, was the investigative journalism that they were doing were the culture commentary that they were during which the mainstream press would not. >> they are the mainstream press these days. they have been around for 15 plus years and they are mainstream. >> okay. they obtained a degree. the worst thing that can happen to an artist is social acceptance. that art -- art thrives on its originality. this may be why the southern tradition is so rich.

we certainly thrive on our marginality in that regard. but i don't think this is an incidental to what events in all seriousness. the new journalism and the muckrakers, both those two periods had in common is they were investigative. they were also very politically conscious. and they were alternative. they tended to be driven by ideologies that were countered to the prevailing. here's an interesting thing about "the new york times." if you ever study the structure of journalism. this goes back to where teacher writing to verges towards traditional journalism. "the new york times" is very interesting institution. ever notice that how many articles on the front page of "the new york times" say special to "the new york times," as if it has an elevated status, a privileged status in obtaining information that nobody else can. one of the other interesting devices, is if you study

patterns of journalism, "the new york times" more than any publication relies on unnamed highly placed sources. if you were to go through "the new york times" and look at the number of articles that don't quote a source and that rely on that privileged access, this leads to certain abuses. you may recall during the vietnam war, this led to a highly placed source in the administration, referring to the absolute brilliance of the policies of henry kissinger and navigating the vietnam war. a highly placed source commenting on doctor kissinger was doctor kissinger. [laughter] >> but it had to do with the structure of the journalism itself. now, feature writing, one of the things that made it different, is it had a very clear individual voice. and the reporter, the writer of it, whether it was in the old period lincoln steffen or jack london before he turned to fiction, or drink a new

journalism of tom wolfe or hunter s. thompson, they had a voice. as a journalist himself was an active agent. jack newfield in the village voice always in his articles revealed the newsgathering process is to. he demystified appear to talk to picking up a phone and talking to the deputy mayor. it wasn't a highly placed source of privileged only to the village voice. it was jack newfield picking up the phone talking to the deputy mayor. embedded in the very structure of the journalism and the genre was the newsgathering process. and it didn't mystify. it very much revealed itself. let's see if we can come back around. the charter had been coming on this panel was to talk about how feature writing was distinct from other forms of journalism. maybe this will help clarify because, katherine, i heard who are we all talking about.

>> first of all, i have read "the new york times" before. spirit go for it. >> it is true that sources are allowed to remain anonymous, perhaps more than they should be. the times reporters are rules of conduct are that with an anonymous source, the editor has to know who they are, in the editor asks and is always told they are. the kinds of stories that anonymous sources appear in what they don't need to appear actually happened to be feature stories, for the most part. where somebody just doesn't want to be named for some reason because i wanted a public figure. i think with new stories were anonymous sources appear, and by the way when that happens in feature stories we have our eagle eye public editor who will haul anybody up on that, and has repeatedly. chris can talk to this more than i can, because he was a news

reporter for a long time. but there are a lot of new stories that you just simply won't get unless you guarantee somebody and anybody. and that is why those things continue to exist. >> there is a kind of tension, because as katherine points out, correctly, there are moments when you must turn to an anonymous source. i can tell you having covered conflicts that, literally, by naming certain people in a story they could be killed. and i've even interviewed, i covered the war in el salvador for five years. i would many times interview ill literate people who would give me their name. but the kind of things that they were telling me i understood would put their life in jeopardy, either by the military or by the fmln, which was not a rebel movement which would occasionally carry out executions of people that they consider to be pro-government in territory they control. so i wouldn't put their names.

the tragedy is that you have reporters, judy miller would be a perfect example, who abused that i think important aspect of newsgathering. and she, of course, anonymously quoted libby who publish falsehoods in "the new york times" and then stage a little soap opera where she went to jail to in essence then somebody who had leaked the name of valerie, and any kind of retribution against her husband who had been a whistleblower. so it really boils down to the ethical composition of the reporter. and i think that is why, you know, ethics are so important within journalism. but there has to be a place for

the anonymous source. because many people within institutions, when i covered el salvador the death squads were killing between 801,000 people a month. and there were members of the state department in the embassy in san salvador who leaked to the press information about government complicity with the death squads. and that information was important for the american public to understand this was at a time when congress had to certify every six months continuing aid, and to create a kind of pressure until finally there was an active part in the u.s. government to shut the death squads down. and so the tragedy is that this is an extremely important ethical responsibility on the part of the reporter, and it has

the capacity to be misused, and it has been misused. it was misused by michael gordon and judy miller in the buildup to the war in iraq. and it is a terrible stain on "the new york times," which is flawed as all institutions are flawed. but then there are also many examples where i think it has been used correctly to the betterment of our common good and to the society at large. >> i would say there is also -- i would defend a lot of feature writing as well. i think if you are writing about children, in a lot of cases i mean if it is a child who has some kind of mental disability we did a story in the magazine about a high school, junior high school kid who was a cross-dresser and nobody in the school knew he was a

cross-dresser. it was an interesting feature stories that said about what was then kind of an evolving phenomenon. if we had named that kid, he would have been lynched in his middle school. i mean, it was that or no story. what the times does, however, even though they will disguise and name in feature writing and news reporting, you are never allowed to use anything that is not in some way accurate. if we don't use the name at all, if we use a descriptive term, it has to be something like, you know, that is an accurate description. we don't allow installation of two different characters into one. judy miller, basically, i think is responsible for the enormous distrust that people have of newspapers.

and that is a tragedy i think. that is something we can't recover from. >> in the interest of full disclosure i'm a lifetime describer to "the new york times." >> but it is hard to come back from that just like it was from our previous scandal. >> i was really trying, and raising that issue of different styles and structures, uptight of journalism. i was trying to get us back to the question of what characterizes feature writing. and the reason i brought up anonymity in the story was to contrast it with a very personal voice of some of the stronger pieces of new journalism. we've got a few minutes left for the panel to talk before we can toss it open to questions from the audience. kevin, you wanted to say something first? >> let's talk about feature writing. probably the best feature writer over the last two years was a piece by woman named nancy roman

who is written for new york publication. she doesn't work much because she needs to feel that pull to get into these things. but in portland there was a case of a terminally ill child that had tremendous support from the community. mother completely devoted to her. every year, peter or paul from peter paul and mary would come to town and they would do a concert and raise money. after peter or paul left that night, the child was about 14, the mother put a lot steeping pills and the daughters nightly medication, took sleeping pills or self and they went to bed together and he died. this was on the front page of the oregonian. this was on the top of the news and lay tragedy this was. and nancy thought there was something fishy about the story and she went and she dug. and what she came up was was about a 3500 word story about a child who wasn't sick.

and it was a case of child by proxy. and she went and the child had supposedly had all of these injuries and surgeries and all that stuff. and she saw the court and there wasn't a cut on it. and it was just an amazing piece of feature journalism that not only blew away what had been done before, but also brought her, nancy, into the story as a mother as to who could do something like this and why. i still remember it ended, she obviously, i wouldn't say fictionalize it, but imagined was that last two minutes would be like of a child to read was used to taking medicine every night, giving her the last medicine she would ever take. and then send the police found in bed which was the two curled up in bed together. that was an extraordinary piece but i think it took about six months to do. she didn't make a damn dime off of it by the time it was done. it was hundreds of hours of work and she probably got a couple thousands of dollars for a. that's the kind of things i

would like to see more of, but i just don't. >> even when you write as i do for a magazine like harpers, which will pay roughly $1 a word, and expenses, by the time you are done you are working for minimum wage. especially if you go overseas. the logistics, the writing, the editing, the reporting. so when we talk about the glory days of feature writing, when you put that kind of work into it, nobody is getting rich. you know, these are labors of love. and i think that what i hear, especially kevin saying, in which i concur with, is that now even that minimal financial backing to carry out this kind of work is disappearing. and we all have to pay the rent.

we all have to go to the grocery store. there are just hardbacks. writers don't make a lot of money. day or are just hardbacks about existence. that while we certainly will try and continue to do it, is making it harder and harder and harder. >> speaking of try to help a writer make a little more money, tell us a little bit about your most recent book, when atheism becomes religion. >> that is what i was going to say. >> i live off of my books. and i am fortunate, you know, a lot of writers can't. several of my books have sold extremely well, so i can, between giving college lectures and advances, i can survive. it is a precarious existence, but it does allow me to do what i want to do. the book on the atheism, it's not feature writing.

i graduated from seminary. i wasn't ordained but i finished all the academic work, and when i came back from my time overseas, had watched how the christian had moved to the margins of society under the bush administration at the very epicenter of power and spent two years writing another book and after that book came out when i debated the new atheists, sam harris at ucla, and in today's letter i went to san francisco and debated christopher hitchens who wrote god is not great at berkeley. not an expense i would wish on anybody in this room. and it was an appalling reaction. when i read through the work and debated them, to see how they in the language of scientific rationalism, had replicated the very ideological structures that i had just spent two years writing about in the christian right. look, i graduated from seminary

at harvard, which i think has done more than any other seminary in america to reduce atheists. [laughter] >> i have a healthy respect for atheism as a valid, philosophical, thought all the great thinkers including martin luther, who would announce as not only atheist but heretics. not only will we see here is a new kind of fundamentalism, and so it's not a feature piece. it is an idea book. and that's another panel, but that is what prodded me to write about. >> that came back just for your. the audience have been very patient who is up to this point. i thought i saw a few people twitching. except for you, character that's all right, deborah. are there any questions that are burning within you that you would like us to address? there is a microphone that will be brought around to you for the purposes of book tv.

yes, ma'am. there in the back. microphone is right next to you. >> don't think i need it. >> they think you probably do. [laughter] >> it's one of those electronic media. >> exactly. that's sort of the drift of my question. i confess to being a little bit surprised to hear in a couple of nostalgic references to the good old days when advertising supported good journalism. a little bit of an oxymoron in my mind. that is not exactly been a marriage made in heaven over the years. is there no other way? as you begin to put any thought how we can in fact live off of or sell good writing without in fact making it dependent to advertisers who are so easily offended? >> that is a very good question. there was an article recently in newsweek magazine, because i think they are starting to examine themselves about some of the new forms of journalism. wealthy individuals are starting

to support certain presses. for example, the nation magazine has long been subsidized by wealthy supporters. mother jones magazine, speaking of another major alternative publication. has only been able to survive, not by advertising, but by patronage. >> the new yorker, traditionally never made money. it may be now. nobody is really sure, but i would say from january, february, when the double issue was, they are not. harpers had always had, you know, money behind it, privately behind. i think the atlantic did. i think you're right. i don't think that most mainstream magazines at least were moneymakers. some of them make money, some of them don't. that is the reason that the new yorker is to publishers because newhouse bought the new yorker some years ago.

but even their moneymakers like vogue, which had a couple of spinoff. down to close closer to spin closer to spin off down. i don't know how portfolio is doing, i don't think it is doing very well. >> that it was an excellent question because the change that is occurring is moving more towards a nonprofit model subsidization in order for these voices could not be lost. [inaudible] >> only if you use the microphone. >> one of the things that is happening, because of the digital revolution, if i may, and in other forms is the buying of individual songs instead of an album. and i think were going to have to escape the notion that it has to be published in the magazine or in the gambit, which i love, that it has become in a big package like that work may be individual pieces is the way to go. >> i think publishers have

looked into debt in terms of making a micro- payment, and there've even been talk about taking the itunes music store which now sells videos and sells a whole bunch of other things and trying to sell books, journalism on it. i don't know. especially document feature writing. part of it is serendipity. and i think it is really missing today is the idea of getting a big fix sunday paper and you want to paper and you want to read the sport and you want to read this and that. then you come across something you never would've, and in the internet age cunego would have stumbled on. and that would be missing from that. so if you are buying something you already know you want, that would be fine. but trying to be led to something you might not know of you would be interested in, i'm not quite sure how that works. >> i think you do stumble on things on the internet. one thing leads to another. stack i do too, but i'm talking about paying for this. those are free. >> the bottom line is writers have to make a living.

and, you know, we are watching the death of metropolitan dailies. and kevin is very right, that there is a democratic quality to these public rations, and that you pay for something you didn't think about asking for and find. when a newspaper or magazine is well edited and well-run. that is part of the opening up of new experiences, new ideas, new stories, new information. and as these large publications, let's say a newspaper like the l.a. times, goes down, it's not going to be replaced. on the internet. even with all of the downsizing at the l.a. times, 700 people still work in the newsroom. no internet site in l.a. is going to bring in the advertising revenue for those numbers. so i think you are right, and

katherine is right, that there will be these almost monastic type sites that will seek hopefully to preserve something of the traditional all of us here care deeply about. so that it will not disappear. but the idea that it can be sustained or mainstreamed i think is in doubt. >> i do think even places like "the new york times," i mean, god willing, will survive as a newsgathering organization long after it survives as a sunday paper that drops on your doorstep. and that you pay a lot of money for. i mean, i don't think the internet can ever exist without the major news organizations to provide the material, but i don't think that we actually need to get those newspapers anymore. even now. >> another question in the front row i think your.

here. . .

read, movies they small, as a type pieces. i astonished, that was common in travel writing. the writers guidelines of all my magazines and my papers explicitly said you do not want those pieces that proliferate not only guide books but online where stuff is just a long list of restaurants, hotels, they want me to tease out a real story that would not be found in a guidebook, interesting person that typifies the place, that would be a good thing. people writing about places they had never traveled to. >> one hopes that there are no boring subjects, only boring writers. by employing these devices that you enumerated better than any

of us did, that was well done, the elements of future writing that you can engage an audience. there is another hand in the back if you want to run the microphone. is it just a second, we are all slaves to the electronic media here. hold on. it is coming. >> this is electronic media delivered on foot. >> it wasn't worth the wait. >> we will let you know. rather than seeing digital media as such a drawback, and i am thinking of the disappearance of the major television networks, proliferation of cable networks, digital areas where i can listen to something as well as read it. is there any training going on

in the industry to have feature writers take advantage of alternative media rather than just the printed word on a computer that could also sing to me your play music along with the peace were shown pictures in rapid succession or slow them down. deal understand? is there any movement in your industry, historical fiction writer changed when google came around. they had to adjust to that to be a good historical fiction writers. >> we live in a culture of moving images and that is the problem. i came back, rick van winkle confrontation with my own society. one of the things i couldn't

adjust to was how everything looked. that kind of constant movement and change of image, seeing whether it was on the nightly news or on tv or bombardment of advertising conspires against thought. i moved back to new york and retreated into the metropolitan museum of art, at least two or three days a week because i could stand before something that didn't move, and could think about it and absorber it and find texture to it. part of the problem, part of the demise of the literate culture is be destroyed the capacity for self reflection and fought. when proust wrote in search of lost time, 4,500 pages, it was

during an age when a man or woman could come home and read. we, to our detriment, if we are paying a cultural and political price for it, we have obliterated that within the culture. i don't own a television, partly because i'm doing everything i can to create walls against that kind of intrusion because i think at its core, it is a way to demolish self reflection and self criticism, good narrative writing and good reporting is about and why those of us who write books write books. >> i wanted to mention, the new york times as a great job with full time media on there website, they figured out a lot of ways to incorporate music and image and all these things,

along with the traditional word. to new york times takes a lot of crap. they have done a lot of -- a lot of good india. >> i don't have anything to do with a website that i agree with you. it has expanded the possibilities for what you are reading. you can read about it, an art show, and see a slide show to go along with it. you can read mark bateman studying -- telling you how to do of complicated recipe and then see him in a three minute thing doing a recipe for you. you can see a lot of foreign correspondents carrying little recorders. sometimes you will see, in a place you would never dream of being able to get such a visceral sense of what is going on. i agree with you, it is the one

part of the new york times that is expanding, driving financial. >> we might have time for one more question all the way in the back on this side. if you can get your exercise in with that microphone. >> what is the potential for riders to become their own on-line publishers, quick background of a magazine writer, it's not only folded the theaters put their names on their story. >> what is the magazine? >> i'm confronting them with that. kevin na their -- rather not say it on tv. i also -- no money. i line up an advertiser sales reps and we have a green online

daily which advertisers are coming on board. do you think that is the direction writers are going to need to go? it has become your own publication. >> namely one writer and makes his or her living from marketing online? >> the new model would also be the publisher. you bring on the advertisers. >> you talk about arianna huffington? >> smaller. >> i think she is pure evil. i think she is absolutely exploitive, she takes the words of people who write for free and sells ads around them and positions herself as some kind of. ity progressive, that is the wrong model for any young writers to go into. if you have something to read, don't give it to arianna huffington. get your own web site, do-it-yourself, you will get readers. >> i am going to second that. kevin is dead on on that.

that is why it is largely junk, celebrity driven crack. it is. if you have a famous name, you can mix yourself up a drink and write your random thoughts of the afternoon in the worst pros possible and it will be posted with your picture. for those of us who care about writing, which is all good writing is rewriting, sweat over every word, who believe in reporting, we talk about the internet, the blotters are parasitic in the sense that they don't report usually. they don't even pick up a phone. they feed off of traditional news organizations to spin out their thoughts, most of them in sit. for those of us -- lot of them. for --

>> a lot of what you're reading the papers -- >> when you go out and report a story, you are given -- giving another person a voice and if you are doing it right, you're giving a voice to people who, without your presence, would not have a fully. that is what great journalism is about. that almost never occurs on the internet. reporting on the internet is about as common a phenomenon as blacksmithsing. [applause] >> i think you are painting too brought a swath. reporting on the internet is a contradiction in terms that the internet does provide a forum for some pretty good commentary, and some pretty good reflection, and some pretty good thinking kind of writing and you can even see some of it on huffington's

post. they don't pay anybody except the celebrities. >> they don't pay the celebrities. jamie lee curtis does this for free. >> for an aspiring writer, create their own blog, can also appear, getting a lot more readers and maybe the thing that is going to help to move forward into the kind of publications -- >> even the good writers on the internet, and there are some, they are out there, though the mass is not good. >> the book store isn't good either. >> i agree with that. i am a total light. i agree with that. >> there is a crack in every -- >> look at the publishing list.

again, that gets back to the whole idea that this is something that breaks through cultural boundaries. this is cultural material. but i think that what i fear is that through all of these changes, the many things we're losing, not just the physical newsprint, the very ethic of reporting itself, the ethic that drives good journalism itself is under threat. i don't see that ethic reported on the internet. the inverse. you write for a serious publication or newspaper, you work very hard as a reporter to make sure it is accurate, it passes through the hands of editors, at the new york times, many editors, but when you put it into print is as accurate and true and careful as it can be. the internet, you throw anything out there, often, and if there

is a response, sometimes, maybe there's a correction. the ethic is completely turned upside down on the internet. that is a very important point to remember, that we are losing many things, and one of them is that ethical engine that drives good journalism. >> i am very reluctant -- thank you very much -- [applause] >> i'm reluctant to bring this panel to close just when it is starting to get even more interesting. please feel free to engage the panelists in the lobby in face-to-face conversation. thank you for joining us at the festival. [applause] >> chris edges is a nation institute's senior fellow in new york times foreign