the print form. there's a group of people working on blogs. they turn around 300-word analysis throughout the day as things are coming out as a transcript of the court hearings. do the same thing with politics. there's that form that's new. and there's also a new form of content that is the conversations that readers themselves have. and the comments stream on different news organizations are a different quality. i can't say the ones on "the washington post" always make me proud, but you see really interesting, thoughtful conversations taking place in the comment stream on websites. and i think that's a different form of content. >> please, please, please. >> the comment sections that have grown up are so much worse than what we had 25 years ago in discussion groups. >> like i said, i'm not necessarily proud of "the

washington post" comment stream. there's a limit to how much you can gate keep your readers. nourve however, if you look on other websites, there's some terrific conversations taking place among extremely accomplished people on matters of economics. >> but we have relegated readers to sort of a comments section. >> so i expect that to change. >> readers are helping to actually shape a story, but perhaps under the cure rated supervision of, you know, your editors, that would seem to be a new form of content rather than just telling them to write a story and having lots of comments on the bottom. >> but if you filed a story for "the washington post" and you get back tons of responses from readers, including criticism of your reporting, that reporter is reading that. you can't tell me -- and reporters are the most sensitive

folks on earth, it's having an impact. >> it's not that much different than ben franklin's "pennsylvania gazette." it's faster. but it's not a whole new thing. a whole new thing would be wikifying news. >> i think there will be more of that too. your earlier question about trust is an interesting one. what happens is, first of all, i guess, what all the digital transformations exposed in the last ten years is we have massive overcapacity of media. there were too many journalists, too many organizations doing the same thing. when the internet came along, the next thing that happened is the conversation that took place among readers became much more part of the general news flow --

the general information flow that readers engage with. and the combination and transformation that's taking place today -- i lost my train of thought. >> i'll pick up from the transformation that's taking place today. which is imagine ten years ago that the supreme court was hearing arguments on a health care law, the way it was. how is that different from what you did yesterday when you wandered around and how is that different from what ewe think you'll be doing five years from now? >> the first thing is much of what happens on a day like yesterday or the last three days takes place the night before because there's massive planning. basically we program the way now the way tv does. we think about what people what at different points of date. you're trying to extract as much multimedia content as you can.

supreme court is not providing video, but they do provide audio and transcripts. and you have, you know, armies of people who are turning around journalism based on what's available as quickly as it becomes available. so immediately looking at the transcript trying to find the critical moments trying to highlight the critical moments of the hearing today. that's a different kind of thing that would have happened ten years ago. >> is it all in one newsroom? >> yeah. >> which is new for "the washington post." >> right. "the washington post" used to be in two years. we consolidated into one. >> the digital and print. >> correct. >> is it the same people? >> many cases more and more it is. and it has to be. the fact is there are some people still writing long-form projects that will appear over two-full print pages over months, but they are working closely with teams of producers and multimedia people think

about what kind of other content we can pull into it so when it does launch, it's a vital and exciting experience. an example, a couple summers ago we did a big project called "top secret america." they looked at the creation of this secret national security apparatus since 9/11. we spent nearly two years on that. when we launched it, we had ten million page views. that was people coming in and having a different experience to the new form issue than people would have had had before. you could go into our data base and if you were in montana, you could go into our data base and find out there had been a contract given by the cia to somebody in anna con da, montana. so they have a different experience than somebody who came into the newspaper and read our article. so the experience is going to change as we can get access to

deeper data bases. the experience each reader has is different. >> ken, how does a change in the new platform change the basic fundamental nature of content or does it? >> well, i mean, i remember a couple years ago, i was at the white house doing a piece on obama and the press. and i was stunned -- if you think about how the business of journalism, how journalists behave differently today, i mentioned covering and filing at 11:00 in the morning. but peter baker, for instance, who was a great white house reporter, used to be. how you guys let him get away, he went to "the new york times." >> before i got there. >> and peter baker was filing three or four times a day. a guy who likes to write longer form. and i watched the tv guys on the cable news guys. they were popping up every 25 minutes and going outside. and they were on their

blackberries sending e-mails. i said what are you doing? they said, we're doing interviews. they are afraid to do it in a crowded room on the phone because everyone can hear you. and they don't have time to do that anymore. so they are doing these quick feeds. and increasingly, the content of what we report is affected by the technology. not just at the white house. think about campaign coverage. it used to be 25 years ago that you had file time. and the campaign -- first of all, you flew on a campaign plane, which now reporters have to tend if for themselves. but there were typewriters set up and they would file their stories, usually on the phone, and 15 years ago you saw them filing on their laptops. now they are filing on their cell phones. they are calling the editor at 1:00, i think the story with

santorum, there's something i just saw on facebook or cnn or whatever online and that's not the story you need. you need another story. so a reporter is filing for tomorrow. and i think what you wind up getting, the content is inevitably changed and becomes less reflective, more fast, and more gotcha. >> let me end my part with a shoutout to your publication. which is "the new yorker" does a phenomenal job of beautiful, narrative, long-form that's deeply reported. your piece on sheryl sandberg, a facebook being a recent example of that. yet it's also very well positioned in the digital edge. it has a great app. i also find that ipads and tablets tend to be a nice place

to read longer form journalism, unlike the past 25 years where if you're reading online you kind of want short and tweet and that sort of thing. how do you think "the new yorker" has figured out navigating the new platforms and new media? >> i think one of the things "the new yorker", one of the virtues it has and forgive me for singing for my supper here, but "the new yorker" knows who it is. and one of the problems with journalism is too many journalists don't know who they are. they are grounded. and they know they are never going to have a mass audience, but they have 1.2 million subscribers. when i started writing for "the new yorker" in the late '70s, it had 600,000 subscribers. and the average age is older, but it's not as old as the networks, which is 60. and so it's dropped. and they have a very good app.

that's good. but essentially, they say we believe as the economists believe, for instance, as npr believes, for instance, there's a quality audience to what we do and we're going to reach them. we don't have to dumb down to do it. and i think there are publications that do that and they do okay. >> i would pause that the ipad is a good development compared to the websites for presenting really carefully-cure rated longer form. >> i often before i get on a plane will download it so i can read it on the plane. >> yes, please. open up. questions? we're on c-span and other o outlets so we need microphones. >> thank you. this is very interesting,

walter. two questions that are related. one is from hearing you speak, i'm even more nervous about the future of the democracy than i was before. because a lot of the problem right now, especially in an election year, is that people are only listening to people who agree with them and not hearing an alternate point of view, and that's a problem for when it goes back to the ultimate responsibility of journalism. and an example of that particularly is radio. what is the future of radio content and how does that play into it because they are even more fragmented and more extreme? >> i have -- i have kind of a split personality on questions about the future. on the one hand, splekt yulely in my brain, i believe we're going to see fewer newspapers, fewer radio stations, and on the

other hand, i can't live my life as a pessimist. so i look for those nice stories that give me some hope. but if you ask me just to speak from my brain, i think it's inevitable that you're going to have fewer newspapers. and i think it's very hard -- at one point, and i know this was true of "the washington post," the argument was made that local is the new king and we all have to be local. then you start getting patch and huffington post and other things. and everyone can blog. suddenly, it doesn't necessarily mean that local is going to be the new king on the block. so i think a lot of medium-sized newspapers are going to be gone in five years. and probably a lot of radio stations as well. they don't do newspaper anymore

any way. >> i agree that i think the train that i lost earlier, i was talking about consolidation. ken is right. there will be consolidation in the business. there are more players than there needs to be. but i don't agree that this is terrible for the democracy. i don't think it's great if people are only listening to ideas they already believe in. i'm not sure that it wasn't always that way before about half a century ago. in the history of american journalism, it was from 1950 to 2000 when everything centralized and newspapers became more centrist and the prized objectivity went for long-form journalism and it was possible because they had immense profit margins because they controlled their towns. but before that period, to how people get their news today, it was the language of the 1930s because newspapers published the presses moved at a slow pace.

they had to get a million copies on the streets of new york. they are constantly delivering copies. newspapers were -- two suns and a tornado. i don't know what the political line would have been. there was a national whig. "the washington post" was founded as the first democratic party paper in washington after the civil war because republicans ran the town after that. and newspapers were id logical. so we are reverting to what was the norm in america, which is there's different viewpoints. they thrive or depend on their loyalists to survive. but i don't necessarily think it's bad.

and i think this worry about the democracy, i think it grossly under estimates people making wise decision. people have motivations to make good decisions. and they may listen to rush limbaugh. they may watch msnbc and only care about what they see on whatever channel they like. and they may be misguided, but somehow society finds its way. >> i think there are two things that compete with each other. on the one hand, there's no question there's many more source information. and that's wonderful for democracy. that you could at your fingertips retrieve information that you want. and it's two-way information. which is more democratic. that's good. the worry is, and the contradictory thing is, though you have more information, it

may not be better information. i worry more about that. >> let me speak on the optimistic side, which is i agree totally with marcus. if you look at the flow of history, benjamin franklin, e he starts a 16th newspaper and they are partisan. and you have this short period in american history where you have mass media. partly because broadcast comes along and ben franklin could start a newspaper, but you can't start a network in the '50s unless you can really do it. so everything centralizes. newspapers tend to become monopolies. there's a natural monopolizing tendency or consolidation. this has been blown away by digital media where everybody can blog and start some new publication. you get back to the way we had been for 450 years before this 50-year slice of mass media. is it good or bad?

i think radio was a real example of polarization. but it didn't just happen in the past ten years. i can remember reading about albert einstein, you know, in the '50s. he's worrying about the poirlization of america. he says i have seen this happen before. i grew up in nazi germany. then things right themselves. they get rid of mccarthy. and says america has a gyroscope. just when you think it's going to flip over, it's able to right itself because of its democracy. so i think in allowing more and more sources of information is the wisdom of the crowd of american democracy. and it does always tend to right itself. and people say, well on the internet, isn't it like talk radio? they go to their spectrum and get an echo chamber.

i don't think that's the case. i actually think on the internet, you find instead of people wallowing in their corner of the blog sphere with their people, there's more interchange, more fighting, more shooting of arrows back and forth, and more people linking back and forth and going to different things. so there's much more of a dialogue than there was in the '50s. i think it's a good thing. >> thanks. garrett mitchell. walter's comments answered the questions i was going to pose, which is at the introduction of every new media, there are all these predictions not just about what will happen to the media, but how will that change us as a country. >> you should have seen it when goouten berg did the printing press.

they were buying out the bibles. >> i have heard about it. so the question that i'm struck by now is listening to the three of you talk about the demac ra tieization, and i think walter's notion about the positive influences of these things. given all of that and the power of these new platforms, et cetera, what relationship do you see between those positive developments and the fact that our politics are as polarized as they have ever been? >> marcus? >> i mean, i guess i would challenge the assertion that they are as polarized as they have ever been. the history of the country is full of political visit ree y'all and intense partisan rivalries. >> there are metrics that will demonstrate. the farthest left republican and the farthest right democrat that

there's lots of space between them. >> not the nation. okay, so con partisan to the point of sometimes dysfunction, but i'm not sure, i don't know that i would start by blaming media. i would, i think, you know, there's leadership question there in terms of this. clearly, everything happens faster in today's world. technology accelerates every process, so maybe you could argue technology has enabled people to communicate with their base more effectively. to rally people around a cause and maybe that exacerbated the natural partisan tendencies of politics, but i'm not sure there's a lot you can do. even if it were true, what's the action point? what do we do? >> when you look at the positives, politicalization, i'm

pushing on the side. look at fund raising. look at how much, how it democktizing the ability of candidate to raise money from large amount of people. >> just four years ago, both, the nation nominated the two candidates who were most known for saying we want a red or blue nation or mccain feingold, lieberman. i think the american people if they want that, will have leaders that will do that. >> yes, sir. >> hey, david. david jackson. >> walter alluded to citizen journalism earlier, but no one really picked up on it. so let me ask you specifically. how would you describe citizen journalism and do you think

there should be a place for it at "the washington post" or at "the new yorker" for example? >> well, if you think about it, think about the arab spring. how did we learn about and witness what was going on? citizen journalists. people on their, with their smart phones, with cell phones, cameras, on twitter and facebook. hurricane katrina. you can go down events where tsunami, were not present. marcus doesn't have reporters there. and his paper. is relying on information from citizens. are they journalists? no. and i would make the argument at the risk of being called an elitist, which i would plead guilty to, that a journalist is, it should think of themselves as professionals. as a professionals.

to decide what's on the front page. and i think citizens necessarily have that, but they have a virtualable -- having to boast it in the last campaign, deputize people they call citizen journalist. remember the person on the line -- i mean, so you learned a l lot. >> are you going to -- more citizen journalism? >> we should probably find more ways to report more of the conversations that take place. closest to regularized citizen

journalism. lit up all the listers. from that, we picked up the idea of doing some stories. we followed it, but you can see sort of gets going on something. there is a quality to journalism that may be different from reporting information and people, you know, when china had the big earthquake, there were all those cell phone videos that surfaced and allowed the world to know what was happening in a remote part of china. it's raw information. and i think in the end, there is a journalism process that makes some sense of it that provides context and historical balance.

the kind of independence and stepped back analysis that you need to feel the information not just one way. the danger of pure citizen journal, there's eight people have eight different perspectives on what just happened. journalists aren't always right and we try hard to get as close to right and as close to the truth as we can. there's sort of our core principle. we want to give people as much truth and we can get them. i'm not sure what's called citizen journalism, what's called information, does that. >> bruce hogan. how you doing, walter? money. have these new tools changed the business model with -- people with money are sort of forced to come to you to buy advertising. now, they have access to these new tools as well. they don't need you as much.

business does not need you either. has that changed your model as an organization? >> obviously. somewhat more difficult. our view is that we have an audience and if we can maintain and build that audience, we've actually done very well over the last couple of years of building our digital audience. if we can build that audience, we can find ways of making something economically. the paths aren't clear. our newspaper is still a big metropolitian newspaper. it's not a great business right now. we do well on digital display. but it's not nearly enough money to cover all the costs of

operations. we face challenges and we'll work through them. >> for instance has 425,000 subscribers to their website. that's in a year. >> and they're not overpriced. i'll pay for it. >> and they're going to raise it for some people, obviously. that's a wonderful thing. but the problem, here's the problem. the average reader of "the new york times" print newspaper, r which is obviously declining in circulation and advertising, spends 35 minutes a day reading "the new york times." the average reader of "the new york times" online spends 34 minutes online. >> whoa. >> so an advertiser pays basically pun p tenth for the same ad online as he or she

would pay in the newspaper and they do because they think people are not spending enough time reading it and not noticing their ads. that's when people talk about exchanging digital times for analog. we have to keep throwing things up against the wall. the real problem in journalism is a business problem. i used to think five, six years ago, the real problem was people who sign out checks to the journalists. the brand is about trust. not about -- the real problem, it's a business problem. a math problem. >> to do journalism, you need to have two revenue streams. from advertisers and readers. otherwise, it's self-defeating because you've got to behold

only the advertisers and you don't have the fu insurance that says i can write a bad story about general motors. one of the big change of the digital age is that we give up money from users and became solely dependent on advertising. is that a danger? >> actually, it is, and there's a big change taking place. when i started my the book i did, and reported, they were all talking about how advertising is the key. they were basically talking like broadcasters. it's free to the consumer. and it was wonderful. one of the reasons google is so popular and well liked is because it's free. we, who would not like them? first, the cable guys. but then what happened? they do, you know, r youtube and others and realize