>> 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 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, intellectually 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, 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 polarization 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 gutenberg 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 democratization, 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 vitriol 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. congress is cheerily partisan to the point of almost dysfunction. but i'm not sure -- i don't know that i would start by blaming media. 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 democatizes 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.

and his paper is reliant 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 professional. to decide what's on the front page. and i think citizens necessarily have that, but they have a virtual -- 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 lot. >> are you going to use 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 when the community 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 as we can get them. i'm not sure what's called

citizen journalism, which is 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 metropolitan 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. woor -- we're not losing money right now on an operational basis but we're okay. 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, 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 a 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 and see what sticks.

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 end up being beholden to 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 changes 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. well, who would not like them? first, the cable guys. but then what happened? they do, you know, youtube and others and realize oh, my god, advertising is a weak link to lean on. 2009 hits them and suddenly, the advertising drops even more. they say, god, maybe we made a mistake. i got the ceo of google to admit this. we made a mistake into thinking this internet should be free. maybe we needed two revenues streams and had to charge. so what do you see happening today? the polarization that existed between digital and analog an traditional media is actually much less severe because itunes

says we need your content. amazon comes and says we need your content, for it. cbs says i'm willing to sell to amazon, i'm willing to sell to netflix but how much you going to pay me for it. that's where we are now. that's a hopeful sign. >> i was going to say, it seems to me that what apple did, what others are doing with apps, allows more options. people can do publishing for free which is great. people can do books if they don't have advertising on but sell, which is great. people can have a mixed -- >> when i did, in 1991, i came out with a book on television networks and at the time, broadcasters had one revenue stream, basically. they had advertising, then they sold in the secondary market, syndication, if they owned the show. now you think about it. if you're a broadcaster, you get

money from -- you're going to get money from facebook, you're getting money from amazon, getting money from netflix, getting money from the studios, getting money from the cable channels which are running your shows in repeats. you've got multiple -- and you got retransmission consent from the cable companies. >> you think newspapers will ever have that option? >> no. >> to ask google pay me? >> it's a little late to be doing that. they could try it and the problem is google will say wait, we can get information from other sources. for free. >> i don't think that the payments question is answered yet. i think there are a lot of experiments going on right now. i don't think -- i think setting out to solve the problem of single institution is not going to lead you to the answer to payments online generally. i think in the end, we in newspapers probably will benefit by some broader payment solution where people are paying for

information the way that people pay for electricity or water. information becomes a utility. you pay a bill at the end of the month that includes your new yorker, whatever you read from the "washington post," maybe the espn you watched. that's your bill. if we can get to a place like that, then maybe we benefit as

part of a larger -- >> they're doing that in eastern europe. there's actually a website that pools newspapers, not one newspaper. >> i read e-mails. that is your brother, right? >> there is going to be a metering function where it kept track of everything that happened because many felt that whoever was putting the information out, you should k t allocate the resources to it but that's sort of deeply imbed in the dna of http and other iteration. >> i'm wondering if there is a third possible source of revenue beyond advertising and direct subscription payment and things of that sort. call it philanthropy, call it investment. there are experiments being run in trying to aggregate money to commission content that is more of the reflective in-depth sort that we've been bemoaning. do you see any conditions under which that would be more of an isolated event, to become a much larger phenomenon? >> to some extent, that's the

npr model. you raise a lot of money. there are foundations i know that now are willing to and in fact are sponsoring journalism in certain streams of content that interest them. i don't see it as a big solution right now. i think -- i don't think -- i think right now there's no single model. we need to look at everything and if it turns out that that's a source of funding for journalism that can be independent objective, you know, high integrity, the kind of stuff we care about, then we would consider it. i don't see a model emerging which is totally dependent on philanthropy and foundation money right now. >> [ inaudible ] is obviously foundation funded and a very serious journalistic enterprise run by your predecessor at the "wall street journal," paul stieger. many newspapers, i'm reading livingston awards for young journalists, national awards thing, and every year now i see entries, they do really good

work. you pick it up sometimes. so that's good. but it's an isolated model. but if i were running a journalistic institution or any media institution, one of the first things i would do, and i learned this living out in silicon valley, i would go hire an engineer who spoke english and i would put them in the office next to me because engineers are the content creators today. those apps are created by engineers. they're coders. they know how to do that. they know how to reinvent content in new ways and force the editors or publishers to think in fresh ways about how to ride that digital wave. >> if i were hiring a journalist today, i would say the three languages you really ought to learn to speak, chinese, arabic and coding. you got to do python. you got to know the language of

how to engineer a product. real quickly to sum it up at the end, what makes you hopeful, what do you think may be coming down the pike over the next five years? what's the new new thing that might happen? >> i think you're -- everything is continually gravitating towards that hand-held device. you're just going to see many more things. the speed, internet speeds are going to be greatly enhanced and you're just going to see a lot of cool new apps and things but you know, if you said to me ken, five years from now what's going to be the hot new thing, if i were mark zuckerberg, i couldn't answer that question. one of the reasons mark zuckerberg like all of us in this room is frightened is because they know everything is happening so fast that tomorrow, he may be extinct himself just like newspapers worrying about extinction and that's actually a

hopeful sign. that's what's different about this age, from guttenberg's age, the speed of change is exponentially faster. >> two answers. first, i think it's an exciting time digitally. i think i would reduce it to mobile social video, those things are going to be transforming and transformative, and the second thing i would say is i'm greatly encouraged because every indication we have and we know more about our audience than we have ever known about it, is that what our audience cares most about is really strong original interesting journalism, good journalism works, and the fact that good journalism works across any platform is hugely encouraging. >> i think the new new thing that will be transformative the next five years may be the advance, you see it in your iphone, but in just voice recognition which leads to sort of an artificial intelligence, almost, where you can just communicate with any device, it learns everything you want. the interface is so simple, you just say show me somebody

interesting on media on charlie rose and your tv will do that for you instead of you having to work with a brain-dead cable tv system, and i think natural user interfaces and interfaces that learn your preferences and the preferences of all your friends and aggregate the wisdom of your friends and your own preferences by just allowing you simply to talk to them will help transform media in the future. >> that's really well said. in a way it's like the new remote control of your life. it controls everything in your life. if you google and you think you're on top of the world, sirri is a much more efficient search engine. so they have to worry about that, too. >> thank you all very much. i thank our friends who have sponsored this. let me just say that this tmg communications series as i said at the beginning is starting with a narrative arc and we have

started with those three of us who for 20 or 30 years have been part of traditional media and looking into the new age, but we do hope each successive one will bring on new waves of people who started different parts of the new media spectrum. we invite marcus and ken and myself back for the very last one when we try to make a synthesis and show where it all may be going as well as where it's all come from. thank you all very much.