captioning performed by vitac >> let me ask one more question and then get to ken. which is one of the things i get

from "the washington post" is here's today's front page. i don't mean just in print. i will go to it now and it will lead with the supreme court discussion, let's say. and i know that those are the stories i should know about. could you ever imagine producing on the web a front page that is tailored just to me based on a, what you think is important, b, the type of content i generally go to, and c, the stories that my friends are reading. so everybody gets a different front page? >> i want to start the answer to that by saying i didn't set these questions up the way they are coming out, but we launched

a product that does something like that. it's in early stages, but you can sign up for personal posts. it knows what you have been reading and you can go through and tell it i'm interested in this content or that stream of content. and ideally what we would like to do is give people interested in that a front page of content that they are most likely to be interested in based on their past habits including what their friends are interested in. the experience of reading news becomes a more tailored experience and a more engaging experience, which naturally is what we'd like to see happen. >> you know, the 1995, the year you were launching, andy grove was on a platform at the american society of newspaper editors. and i was interviewing him. i said to him, mr. grove, you have a thousand newspaper editors in this room. what's their value in the future? he looked at them, the devil that he is, and he said, zero. i don't need them. because in the internet age, which was then coming abroad, i can create my own newspaper and i don't need an editor. i can pick and choose if i want sports, if i want health, business, i can get just what i want.

two years later, i was interviewing him again. and i quoted what he said. and i said, mr. grove, do you still feel that way? and he said, i was totally wrong. he said there's too much god damn information out there. i need help. i need editors to have sort it out for me. there was too much information. i would never have known to read about serbia. so and actually, that's one of the most hopeful stories i can think of in the importance of editors. and i hope we don't see and create individual newspapers because the readers are going to miss that serendipitous experience. of news that's a surprise, that you as an editor feel as a citizen it's important for you to know.

>> i think it's a mix. i'm not suggesting that everything you read is what you want to read, but it has to be a mix of content. not everybody wants to have exactly the same information delivered to them. there's clearly a role in any newspaper. the front page of a newspaper is a way of signaling what we think is important. we do that on our website now too. but we need to be attentive to what the audience areas of interest are. the audience doesn't always know what they are interested in. it's the under lying point andy grove is making is they don't know about rwanda. there needs to be a way of surfacing it. i don't think we're going to abandon that any time soon, but what you have to feather into the mix is some kind of personalization so that the news really is what people want to know about and the news is what their friends are talking about. >> steve jobs was great when they asked him, shouldn't we allow users to figure out what they want in this machine? and he said how do they know what they want until we have told them. there is a sense that you're trying to do three things now in the next five years as an

editor. one is to allow people to tailor based on their own interests. two is allow their friends to be the crowd-sourcing filter, but three is for you to say, and also on this front page, you should know that the health care law got shot down. or even what i would call serendipity. you have no interest in sports, but you should know that jeremy lin has just emerged as a phenomenon. that's not just important. it's serendipity. which is out of your comfort zone. >> we have a story on the front page of the print newspaper that's gone viral about had this guy in maryland who dresses up in a batman outfit. drives around to look for a lamborghini. nobody would know to look for that story. obviously, you wouldn't tailor that. it's clearly working because it's gone completely viral. >> you know, you talked about in billing this luncheon session

today is content king and there's been this debate for decades as to who is king? is it distribution? is it content? and the truth is, and it flows from what you were saying about social media, the consumers came. and technology gives them the armaments to become king. and basically, they choose to lower the prices on books through digital books, which is technology that comes along. free google searches and get news on that. and to say what they liked in your newspaper and what they don't like in the newspaper. or use the content on youtube. so that's something that we -- and that sometimes collides with traditional media. and our wants or our desire to play gate keeper or editor. eat your spinach. you should know this as a citizen.

maybe i don't want to know that as a citizen. maybe i find it boring. that's an ongoing conflict in the media. >> what happens to trust in a particular story or trust in media when there's nobody particularly responsible for the source? >> the argument that marcus would make and "the new york times" and "the wall street journal" and other reputable news organizations make is that we have a brand value. if we put our imprimatur on that story, you should trust it. and the problem is that on the web, you often don't know where that story is coming from. you do a google search. or your friends on facebook and their links. you don't necessarily know. so it inevitably risks diminishing the value of that brand. >> you have done a lot on google. what do you think google is going to do in the next five years to try to navigate this environment? >> well, i mean, people think of google as a search company and that's a mistake.

they are much broader than that. steve balmer, the head of microsoft, likes to say google is a one-trick pony. but in fact, they have four ponies that they are riding. search is one. and by the way, as mobile phones and smart phones grow, so does search share because people are doing it on their mobile phones. so that's not a declining business. second they have android, the operating system. it's now the largest for all cell phones. they will figure out how to monetize that. third they have cloud computing, which is a hot area, which is when you do on your blackberry or iphone a server, that's a cloud. and they are saying to companies, you don't need your own i.t. department. let us do it for you under our

cloud computing. and obviously, advertising is a huge area for google. and there's a fifth, which is youtube. 40% of the videos downloaded are done on youtube. this is relevant to what we're talking about content today. youtube was losing a billion dollars a year by relying on user-generated content. what they discovered is advertisers would not want their friendly ads next to some dog pooping on the street. so increasingly, google, like apple or amazon or netflix, is going out and buying professional content. and they are making money. it makes it important. on the other hand, the user gets to vote. i mean, i think content clearly has a great deal of power. you can see evidence that content power is outlasting some of the platforms that came before.

cable televisions is an interesting situation. i don't presume to be an expert, but if you think about what cable television does, it delivers content you're not consuming. and you could pay -- if you could buy online just the espn that you want to watch or just the cnbc you want to watch for $10 a month, they would get more money than they are getting today and you just have the content you want. any time you have this situation where the amount you're spending is vastly more than what you're getting for it, the technology has a way of come pressing it out. and i think that platform is facing some challenges and i surmise but don't know is one of the reasons comcast wanted to buy nbc universal. content still has great value.

what youtube is doing, what comcast did in buying nbc universal, we see it too. our audience has been growing terrifically in the last couple years. our digital audience -- this "washington post" social regard started in november is up to 18 million downloads, which is extraordinary in a few months. people are reading "washington post" content in larger numbers. >> let me pause there. there's another major shift that's about to be happening in what i would call internet or digital-based content, which is not only to social networks, but a way for desk top computers and web based to mobile, but more important to apps, which are not actually the same as a -- necessarily the same as a web-based application. where the apps have more functionality. they can be paid for and often are paid for. do you think the move to an

app-based digital content is a major shift? >> not clear. i did for awhile. there's now a new technology that people are starting to write websites on called html 5. it works across platforms. and the app really became common place with apple's use of it in the ipad. and the iphone before that. now you can actually create a website that was the same website whether you're on a mobile phone, a tablet, a desk top. and you might have all the qualities and the attributes of an app, but it might not be an app. >> so html 5 will blur the distinction between an app and a website. >> i would think so. the other thing is they are basically two basic streams. there's open which is google, and there's closed, which is amazon and apple and middle ground is facebook.

it's a closed system but it has 850 members and makes its app available for people to build things on. and i think you may see a lot of apps built on facebook that are unique to facebook. and that may be the way a lot of people consume content. but it's slightly different from the notion of the app that you have on an ipad where you're often paid money for an app. >> so you think this it's hard to make people pay for them? >> i don't know. the financial times does. they charge for people. i don't know. i think that i wouldn't say that we're necessarily going to end up in an app world. microsoft and big companies think that's the direction we're going, but i don't know. >> i think the battle is the platform battle. it's not an app battle.

apps are within the platforms. it used to be that the powerful platform was cable. and broadcasters and others had had to go through them. well increasingly if you think about it, facebook is a platform. youtube, google, amazon, they are all platforms. netflix is a platform. and these platform companies are competing and diminishing the power of cable. and increasingly, traditional media wants to be on that platform and what kind of money will facebook offer me to run my shows. and that increasingly is a battle, i think, that's taking place. >> so the last of the great gate keepers, in a way, are the cable companies. they have some control of what gets from the curb side into your living room, you know. they own some of that pie. do you they that disappears in the next five years? >> it doesn't disappear because it becomes more commoditized.

so cable programming companies, fx, amc, hbo become very valuable. and they can then sell that content to some of these various platforms. not just keep it exclusively. >> but will i ever be able to take out an ipad and be able to watch espn and cnn? >> you can now. >> not exactly. >> time warner will let you extent your subscription. >> go through the cable? >> if you were in the arab spring, you were riding around in a taxicab on your ipad and you could watch streaming live. you realize how come i can watch what's going on but i can't -- and the answer is cable.

>> does that get blown up in the next five years? >> it has to at some point. >> the other thing, i don't know if you follow this. it didn't get a lot of publicity. but they announced a new technology, which is totally disruptive to cable and broadcasting, it's a little box you have in your house. it's like an old antenna. but wirelessly you can get television signals from broadcasters. they set up a plant in new york city and they are going to roll it out in new york and bring it to other cities. $10 a month. they're going to charge you $9, $10 a month and they're not going to pay the broadcaster anything. they say we're going to sue you. they say, no, it's free over the air broadcasting. and huge battle is about to take place because one of the ways that broadcasters -- >> but we're rooting for them aren't we? >> one of the interesting things.

you believe in content. one of the ways that cbs or nbc or abc and the broadcasters have been able to pay for content is they have gotten from companies is retransmission fees. which are quite lucrative for them. why would cable pay them hundreds of millions of dollars a year if had he is competing with them for free? so there's a huge battle potentially if the technology works down the road on this. >> looking further down the road, each new technology and medium eventually creates its whole new form of content. they didn't go back to the

printing press and novels get invented. you can look at television and at first it was the only wine being poured in the new bottle, which is radio shows but with pictures. and suddenly people invent new forms of content for television. it seems to me that with the exception of perhaps blogs, there really isn't a new form of content that has been invented for the interactive digital age. >> i'm not sure i would agree with that. if you go on your website and you read that, what is different about that than the paper you're getting tonight or tomorrow morning? for instance, on "the new york times" today, i could find out what happened in the supreme court at 11:00 in the morning. i would have questions about that in terms of how much time is there to report that story. and you know, maybe they are not being able to report as well. but on the other hand, in addition to that, i'm on my ipad and i'm watching video and i'm reading about an obituary of somebody who died and i can look at their artwork and go to the archives.

suddenly a newspaper becomes a live event and i can talk back to reporters and other stories. it seems to me that has changed the nature of what a newspaper is. >> there are several strains that are different that department exist before. the first one is, you know, when ken goes to our website at 11:00 in the morning, not only can he see an early version of the news, and we are competitive there now, but we have a lot of very talented, smart bloggers who write fast analysis. and it's a different form than what we would have published in 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. 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. i don't know who the supreme court reporter was back then. how is that different from what you did yesterday when you wandered around and how is that

different from what you 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 the day. 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 anaconda, 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 fend 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 d