there is an issue happening in the native country that they need to be aware of and generate concerns here. we need to be aware of those communities. i don't think we need to have this particular unit to do anything. we are doing census tracking and many others. they still part of the practice of the rest of the force sn. >> certainly. we have community service offices and each of us have all there is to intimately understand what communities exist. all it is to go out pro actively and introduce themselves and the issues in those communities. ways that we can understand them and interact and protect them better. that's what i'm talking about. i have hundreds of community service officers that are doing a lot of the same work. they are doing it in a much more collaborative manner and a much

more trust building manner than the idea that somehow another one was spying on a particular community. >> if i could ask you the balanced question from the other direction, i wonder, do you worry or do you think that the public as 9/11 is becoming less concerned than we should be about terrorist threats. is this what keeps you up at night or what does keep you up at night northwest mostly in this job sn. >> in this city the concerns about terrorism are every day in the newspapers. we will have the event on the 15th. the opening of the 9/11 memorial museum. in october we will open a new world trade center. in as much as that is where 9/11 occurred here, it's constantly in our memory and constantly in

our day to day lives. throughout the rest of america. there has been a significant drop off. i really had to fight in los angeles the years i was there. 2002 to 2000 noin. to get resources to build up a counter terrorism capability. again even though los angeles had been the subject of several terrorist plots, they did not experience two airports and nothing on the scale of new york. they favored very quickly. for the new york city police department, we will be in this for the rest of our existence. >> another controversial practice that is stop and frisk. you made clear that it's an

essential part of the tool kit that you can't police without it. you are reforming it here. what is a reform version of stop and frisk sn it outlined the parameters within which police would have to operate. that you have to police. consistently and they are doing it. they have to have reasonable suspicion. it's less than probable cause. it's a lesser proof, if you will. it has to be something that he or she can articulate as to a belief that a person or persons

is or is about to commit a crime. they have to be able to articulate why they feel that. it might be at risk to the safety of the public. the officer can then frisk that person. it's a basic tool of american policing. something that you could not function effectively without. myself and mayor deblasio in the last several years. several year ago. six of the seven documented. a crime was going down dramatically. that belief was different than

the former mayor, mayor bloomberg and kelly. over the period of 2012, 2013, the numbers had declined dramatical dramatically. down to several hundred thousand. my plooef is that we are doing too much of it. the cops are asked to do it. i believe they are doing too much. the unions that represent them believe they are doing too much. similar to you going to the doctor for cancer. he is going to treat you with radiation, chemo and surgery. to the extent of your disease. after your feeling, you want

more chemo and more surgery. the disease is being dealt with appropriately. the question. >> the minority with the experience is so much of the remaining crime with those relationships that have the ability to be a proof. >> are the tactics changing the exchange between the police officer and the person on the street. i would imagine as the volume comes down, minority communities

will still find themselves and people within the communities. >> there is nor criminal type activity. the challenge is they do something constitutionally. you cannot break the law to enforce it. we have to have suspicion. i don't treat you differently as a white person than if i was dealing with a black person in harlem. there has to be a consistency.

in all instances you have to be able to articulate what that was. effectively we are trying to improve our training and supervision. that's an area that with the increased focus on that, we will also help to reduce the tension that existed over the last several years and some of the more severely stressed communities and the fact police have to be more active in the communities. #. >> our shot clock is down to about one minute and we have gabby giffords and mark kelly on next. i would love as maybe to hand it over to them, i would love to hear your thoughts on what meaningful gun control might look like. in a country where there 350 million guns said to be in circulation. that seems a bigger obstacle than to i wonder what you think.

>> the term gun control is that we lot of control. out of 50 million guns, let's face it. largely because of a lack of political leadership and all credit to mark and gabby. those who use guns, finding them and arresting them and working with the courts with the use of the firearms in the industry. put them away. the police exist to control behavior and do it lawfully and respectfully.

in this city they are still leading the country with gun reduction and citizen violence. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> the way that james bennett and bill left their conversation talking about the 350 million guns in the united states. the perfect pivot point into an important discussion. in 15 years, gabby giffords was in public service. the youngest woman ever elected to the arizona state senate and she represented the arizona

legislature from 2000 to 2005 and she was consistently ranked as one of the nations's most centrist members of congress. they flew desert storm and with the nasa astronaut, mark flew the first of four missions aboard space schultz endeavor. the same he commanded on his final flight in may 2011. he commanded the 135is schultz discovery and one of two who visited the space station on four different occasions. after congresswoman giffords was wounded in 2011, she and mark were known for their story of hope and resilience. before and after the shooting, here are views on responsible gun ownership in the 21st century. i have one other thing to add.

this is a bit of a fun element to it. beeno would from his conference. how many of you went to a bono concert sn remember when he was speaking to gab fre up in space and we thought it was live sn it was taped, but it was a magical moment between mark and gabby giffords. taped or not, it was astounding. the floor is yours. >> thank you. >> that's before we started. >> so i'm going to start out

with a few simple questions to get us going and get to know gabby a little bit better. are you a morning person or a night owl sn. >> a night owl. >> cat person or dog person. >> a dog person. >> and houston or tucson sn. >> tucson is my home. >> houston is okay. >> pretty good. >> you don't want to put down anybody. okay. >> especially texas. exactly. although you seem tough. >> coffee or tea sn. >> sugar -- tea. >> tea with what. >> sugar. two sugars. >> that's a lot of sugar. >> so from the very beginning you and gabby have made the stages of her recovery public. videos in the hospital and speaking like this. why did you do it that way sn. >> it's interesting when gabby

first got to the rehab hospital inospital in houston, texas about two weeks after she was injured, a friend of mine said i want to help. i want to do something for you. what can i do. i didn't have anything for them. he mentioned so are you going to record any of this sn i never even thought about it. why don't you grab that sn it wasn't something that was planned. it just happened. they got her therapists whenever they set up the camera and turn it on. it wasn't until later that we did at first and gab deher first interview on abc. they asked is there anything out there. they wound up having a lot of stuff. >> a lot of people would have said no. i don't want anything to see me like this. >> gabby had to give permission for anything that was put out

there about her. as we travel around the country, we still find this. her recovery and what she went through has been very inspirational for a lot of other people who had their own medical issues and injuries. so it seemed like the right thing to do. that would motivate others in their own therapy. >> didn't you visit the boston bomber people too sn right sn didn't you visit them in the hospital. >> in the hospital. >> at the rehab hospital. up in boston. we are in boston a couple of days ago and this was about a year ago. we visited with a lot of these folks that are now multiple amputees. just saw what they were going through and they draw a little from gabby. >> and have you been involved in the therapy and the recover at all sn.

>> not really! >> diin the beginning. actually now we are both really good. in the beginning i was like a lot of involved in physical and occupational speech therapy. gabby is at the point now where she is pretty much her own therapist. >> how are you doing sn. >> all kinds of stuff. >> do you feel like you are going back to the old gabby or creating a new gabby sn. >> better. stronger and tougher. good stuff. >> the new gabby. >> new gabby giffords. >> how do you maintain a positive dialogue. how do do you that sn. >> i want to make the world a better place. yeah.

>> mark, you once told a story about a ring. can you tell us that story? >> yes. actually this ring when gabby was in a coma in the hospital in tucson, just days after she was injured, you don't know and the doctors don't know the amount of brain activity going on when somebody is in a coma. we knew that gabby giffords was in there somewhere. while she was unconscious. but on some level she was still thinking and able to pay attention. with her eyes closed and still out of it held out the ring. pulled it off and started flipping it through the fingers of her left hand. >> while in a coma. >> yes. she was not exactly in a coma. we figured out that gabby is

still in there. >> that's something she used to do? >> usually sitting at dinner in a restaurant or something. >> that's amazing. >> and you don't remember? >> no. >> gabby, is it true that in the early phases of your recovery you just said the word chicken? >> chicken, chicken, chicken. chicken, chicken, chicken. chicken, chicken. >> for a long time. >> a long time. chicken, chicken, chicken. >> have you explained why? >> we knew that before she was starting to say that. the 1350e67 therapist said with the left side. >> they couldn't separate her. >> chicken. it could have been a lot worse.

>> she was talking about that. >> what can you do that you could not do two years ago? >> drive a car. >> it's amazing i think. a few months ago we were at the formula one track in austin, texas. the new f1 race here in the united states. it wasn't just a race. we were there in front. i said to gabby after that, so you are ready to drive? the last time she drove a car was to safeway to shop. she said she wanted to give it a try. she jumped in the passenger seat and i said left foot and the right one did not work well for the gas and the brake and the left hand and the third time around the track she was going 110. only went off the track once.

>> there videos of these guys skydiving from after the accident. you would be amazed what gabby can do. what's the toughest challenge now? >> i like it all. >> e phasia is the speech issue. but gabby's more difficult part is the transmission. >> meaning saying the words. finding the right words. so is it true you have to relearn spanish then? >> si. por favor. >> that's amazing. >> so once a week gabby has a spanish instructor that comes over and i try to not be there. she knows i took five years of

spanish in high school and this woman abuses me at the table. >> and i hear you now have a dog. >> nelson the dog. >> where did you get him? >> he was raised by a murderer in prison. >> never a dull moment with you guys. >> nelson the dog is a lab. >> mixer. >> a lab and golden retriever mix raised in a prison in massachusetts. a women's prison. we skyped with the woman after we got the dog. it was later that we found out why she was in there. which was -- >> murder. >> she was a murderer, but she

raised a great dog. >> a great dog. >> a good helper dog? >> a good dog. good stuff. >> now you two have gone from not living in the same city to being together a lot. what has that been like? that transition. >> snuggles. >> it's really great. you know when really bad things happen, sometimes it can be hard to find the positive things. in our case, our personal relationship, that's one of the things. >> closer. >> before we had one of those commuter marriages that included tucson and houston and washington, d.c. now we get to live in the same place. that's a positive thing. >> and being closer. >> closer. >> gabby, can you tell us what

you are working on now? >> american's responsible solution. >> that's our political action committee. >> that's our solution to get our elected leaders to do something about these pretty horrific rates we have of gun violence. i don't think people realize it, but we have 15 to 20 times the gun violence. we can do a lot better than that. we do not need to do that. they take it on as a serious issue. with reasonable gun laws that americans agree with. >> i have also seen videos of you shooting the guns including the same guns that she has. what can you tell people what your relationship with guns was before the accident and how it changed after the accident? >> i don't think it changed much. i have always owned a gun as an

adult. i got my first gun when i finished high school. both my parents were police officers and gabby is from arizona. she lived there and is a gun owner. it's not going we did every weekend, but we would shoot our guns at gabby's parents house way out in the desert? >> before? >> before and after. it hasn't really changed all that much. >> how was it to shoot a gun. now that guns have a different means for you. >> not really. >> it wasn't so traumatic. >> i don't think so. >> that's unusual. >> one of the interesting things with gabby's injury and her neurosurgeon told me this. if there is any positive thing about the injury, she won't suffer from post traumatic stress. >> you don't remember.

>> she was shot first in the head. >> what do you remember from that day. >> toyota. >> she remembers where she parked. if i was to drive to target right now and park my car and come out 30 minutes later, i may not remember where my car is. a year later when we went there, a year to the day, gabby remembered where she parked. that was remarkable after all that happened. she remembered one of her staff members struck. that's it. >> no noise. not the noise or nothing. that's lucky. now you are in a unique position because there two polarized cities. what do you think is critical in bringing together the two sides? >> it's a complicated issue. there is not one reason why we

have the rates of gun violence that we do. it's pretty complex. one of the things we need to do first is to balance out the politics on the issues. the gun lobby is doing an effective job for about 30 years, building a lot of influence in washington, d.c. we have to get that piece solved and we are working on it. one of the other parts is to try to keep the dialogue going. in all parts. around the entire country to build a community of people that want something done on this issue. >> what does reasonable drug policy look like? >> for us -- >> we have traveled around the country and we visited a lot of states. and getting ideas on what this

looks like. and after they traveled and figured this out, things rise up in power. closing the loopholes. it's an easy way to get a gun. it's not really illegal to do that. so it's those things. issues around domestic violence that is having success. >> this is important. >> gabby was in washington last week with members of the u.s. senate. it looks like we will get our

first hearing on the issue of domestic violence and guns. the senate judiciary committee. that's a critical and important step forward. magazine size. the day gabby was injured. the shooter brought two high capacity magazines. 33 rounds in each magazine. every bullet. somebody really needed the magazine to defend themselves. those things. >> do you have relationships with the nra that you can bring that? >> we tried. i have spoken with some of the leadership at the nra. they are important that they do a good job with.

there is an organization we feel has changed over the last several years. >> into a direction that i believe is to support the gun manufacturers. that doesn't make a scene. i don't think. you hopeful about the future are of common sense gun tell us? you hopeful about it? >> yes, hopeful. it has been a long hard road. >> i think what you are asking is so you know, the future, are you -- hopeful. >> optimistic. yes, optimistic. >> it will be a long road. >> it has been 30 years.

at least from folk who is want common sense reg slagz passed without a lot of hard work. >> you are both working on a book. what is the message you want to convey? >> enough is enough. >> enough is enough. >> it's exactly what gabby said. then do we really want to live in a country where after the death of 20 ginder gardeners and the national response to something like that is nothing. >> nothing. >> we don't need to -- we can do a lot better than doing absolutely nothing. we need to try to stop incidents of mass shootings that occur at a regular rate. we need to work on that aspect

and at the same time about 30 to 35 murders with a gun every day in this country. the daily toll of gun violence that that takes on the nation. not only the deaths, but the cost. the cost to society. >> how about we end this on enough is enough. >> the coverage features two governor debates. mary fallon debates her. oklahoma state university. that's live on the companion networks. also at 8:00, a debate from the

governor's race. here's a look at some of the ads in that nebraska race. >> all across our state, i see people facing the same tough challenges. nebraska just wants a fair shot. >> i stood up for family farmers and ranchers and we held 10,000 small businesses and secured businesses. as governor, i will invest. by expanding early childhood education. >> they are falsely attacking pete. he is staying positive. a nebraska businessman endorsed by sarah palin with the plan to cut property taxes. >> pip cal 308ticians don't give that. i started with a family business. we had 100 people working in

omaha. i know how to create jobs, set priorities and produce results. that's what i will do as governor. >> rickets is making false attacks. he tried to avoid paying his own taxes. rickets would lower taxes for corporations like the owned by him and his family. higher taxes for us, but lower taxes for rich people like him. nebraska needs a governor who fights for the middle class. >> the nebraska i grou up in expects people to take responsibility to treasure faith and family. those are nebraska values. >> pete rickits. >> from raising my family to running a business. i believe god gave us fundamental rights and our

constitution protects them. we are to inspire responsibility. as your governor, i will work to make you proud and leave nebraska with shared values. >> the nebraska governor's debate with republican pete rickets live on c-span 2 at 8:00 eastern. >> with live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and the senate on c-span 2, here we compliment the coverage by showing you the most relevant hearings. on weekends, c-span 3 is the home to american history with programs that tell the nation's story with the series. the civil war's 100th anniversary. american artifacts, touring museums and historic sites to discover what they reveal about america's past. history bookshelf are the history writers. these are the nation's

commanders in chief. c-span 3. created by the cable tv industry and funded by cable or satellite providers. >> the buzz feed was founder of the "huffington post." he recently spoke with the conference in new york city about the future of the news media. this is a half hour. >> it's going great. >> how many are you have read a buzz feed article today? how about in the past week? i guess here's a question. buzz feed has been evolving overtime. what would you say what is buzz

feed today? one is the history of media. when i would look for comps, what are other companies similar that are bigger like we can aspire to be like? hiring people and in the ukraine, doing stuff that none of the companies are doing. when you look at time warper, they are giant companies with multibillion and bill billions in profit that are using cable and broadcast and are very different than what buzz feed is doing. when i look at what is buzz feed, the companies that i find

that are the most similar are media companies in the 23i6r9 10 or 20 years in newspapers and magazines and the hollywood studios. they are surprisingly similar and the new media companies that are emerging today. >> so a lot of people see buzz feed as a place to look at funny lists or cute photos of kittens and puppies. when did you start hiring journalists. >> we actually started as a site that was like a lab. we are experimenting with things. the social before people were sharing journalist and news and

entertainment and so we hired smith about years ago and he started building out a news team and we have an investigative team by mark shuft. he has been hiring a lot of really impressive reporters who are just now getting into the groove doing longer term investigations. we have two reporters in the ukraine there and we have been expanding in the last year or two years the news coverage we are doing. >> it depends on the time. when the boston bombings happened, there was the most

popular here and we also had people in new york who were using their knowledge of twitter and instagram to actually figure out what was going on on the web. we were the first site to authenticate the twitter account because we noticed that the avatars predated the pictures in the news and looked at who was following that. they all went to the same high school. they used our knowledge of the social web. they figured out what was happening and they made phone calls. during those moments, the most popular content is news and during slow news. the most popular is things like 23 animals are extremely disa pointed in you. what city should you actually live in. things like that. >> how important is the

journalism. >> people discovered it in the flow. >> you look at that and you see that mix. we decided why not do that at the stores. people like and move to tweet them. >> what percentage do you say is journalist is opposed to animals are disappointing you and problems that certain people were born in the 80s would understand? >> it's hard to put things into perspective. back to locking at the history of media, one of the things i found so interesting looking at the early history of newspapers, for example. there was limited space. you had to make the decisions because of limited space about how much news you were going to put and how much advertising and serious and frivolous stuff. during world war ii, the times and the herald tribune were in the battle to be in the number

one paper in new york and the country. there was newspaper rationing and paper rationing. there was less things to print stuff o. the tribune shrunk the size of the news and made huge profits during the war. the "new york times" cut their advertising. they had to say we are not taking your ads so they can have more of the limited space to cover news. they lot of money during the war. when the war was over, the circulation was higher. they came back to the "new york times." there was more paper and they were able to win this war, right? the decision of how much do you use your limited resources for ads or how much do you use it for news. what really meant something, we don't have to make the choice. we can say we will do all of the

news we can possibly do because the internet never runs out of space. we will do all of the cute animals and quizzes and lists. we won't run out of space for those. we will do all the branded content and native advertising and all those things that can exist on their own trap without scarce resources of either time like a television station or band width like radio or print like a newspaper. that has created a really interesting opportunity to build a media company that doesn't have the normal kinds of constrain constraints. >> there times when the different types and focuses come into conflict? >> i mean we have a tremendous food sex and diy sectiskand

. >> it's really awesome stuff. a lot of people don't know we have it. if they are not interested in food, they don't click on it. many are discovering it through pinterest. if you are active on pinterest, you likely find buzz feed's content on diy content. media is less about adjaysency where what are the two things next to each other. they reach their full potential. by spreading on the platform and that's why there is not the conflicts. there is still lingering. people think that if you do one thing it means that you can't do something else. it's not true. if you take that calculus, that

means a weird site. if you think that no constraint that you can do and adjaysency doesn't matter, you understand more what we are actually doing. >> other instances where someone who is familiar with buzz feed and being a place for cute animals comes across an article that is serious journalism and doubts the credibility because it is the buzz feed brand. >> i think that increasingly, people are used to one brand doing multiple things. even if you look at network television, the classic network television where on cvs during the evening news. you had soap operas and comedy and variety shows in the evening. alfred hitchcock on the same network. on the evening news.

they have the mix. the bundle that was the media and all of the wars with papers fighting over the comet. "the washington post" when it was initially fought by the family that was up until recently owned "the washington post." he said comics really matter? if you lose them, you will lose half the readers. you will have to fight to get the comics in the paper. it was a big bidding war. because fewer people would read the journalism if they were not there. they drove more readership and it's snag our news content reaches a much larger audience than it would if we didn't have almost 200 million video views

among massive aims of viewership on quizzes and lists and other contents. >> sure. there has been a lot of new media start ups. why do you think that is. there so many media start ups happening. why is that a trend right now? >> media start ups are more of a thing right now than in a long time. there has been a lot of tech start ups. had when you generally see, it's new technology emerge that often is a distribution technology. it starts to get built out. then people start creating content companies that take advantage of the distribution that didn't exist before. for example, a lot of people don't know this story on cnn. which was wtbs was a local station in atlanta owned by ted turner. cable was this new thing where

satellites could beam a signal to a region and the region would have cables that would go to the homes. so ted turner realized i could have this be carried on cable and all these places? it was a few million homes, but it seemed like an exciting new thing. people initially thought why would anyone want to watch this local station in phoenix or new york or somewhere else? but he started licensing old television shows and movies and lots of other entertainment. he started to be a distributor of other kinds of entertainment. i bet there is going to need to be someone to dominate news on cable. he started cnn. to me it started with entertainment and moved into news.

at the time the networks were spending 150 to $200 million a year to do a half hour of news on the evening news. cnn's plan to was to spend 2o to $30 million. everyone thought it wasn't going to work. because you could go live and stay with stories and cover things that you couldn't if you only had a half hour. he had to build this by making content fit. today cnn spends more on news than any other networks and has grown into a giant company. when you look at what the newspapers were exploding, people couldn't read them all. they aggravate the newspapers and print them on magazines that could be dploszy and look nice. magazine was impossible to print photos for the first time. people would listen on the radio. they listen on the radio and

they would be able to know what newsmakers look like. life magazine let people see what they look like. when you look across or even radio, skruft to give another example, when thing, people thought he would go back to cigars because they are a better business than radio. they disrupted the flow and this radio would never be a big business. i think that the key is, the reason there is so many new media start ups is the explosion of distribution technologies. whenever there is an explosion whether it's radio or new kinds of printing presses. or cable television, there follows close behind an explosion of new media companies. today with smart phones and

social media, you are seeing the ability to distribute media internationally more quickly than ever before in history. they take advantage of that massive distribution that didn't exist exist five years ago. when buzzfeed started the iphone didn't exist and now we have 60% or more of our traffic on mobile devices and so that is really enabled distribution that people didn't even think was possible just a few years ago. >> do you think there's a point of saturation at some point where there's only so much that media start-ups can grow and only room for so many even in the context of the internet and distribution kind of unlimited distribution accessibility? >> yes, so i think there used to be these -- what people call natural monopolies which is if you are the biggest newspaper in philadelphia, you would end up having a natural monopoly because you had the big printing press, the trucks to drive the papers around, you then attract

the best talent and best reporters and who else can start something in philadelphia that can be with you and the argument was on the web we'll never see that happen because any blogger can start a site and it doesn't cost a lot to publish and it's going to be tons more content, no limitations of space. likewise with radio there's limitation in spectrum, if you get a slot on the dial you have an advantage or on television or cable, if you get carriage, you have an advantage. i think what you're seeing with the web is that the competitive advantage is having to come from technology. it's not coming from spectrum tore region but having a better tech platform, a better cms or editors make content more quickly or have flexible tools, pages loading faster, better data science to ott mize your site so it's still possible to build a great media business but the way that you build competitive advantage is not

spectrum and geography but technology and that's why buzzfeed does such a good job for news and entertainment. that's why a lot of other companies are focused on that, as well. >> what is the future role of technology in media? >> i think that technology, you know, you really can't build a good media company unless you also have great technology, you know. >> is that limited to the platform or is it beyond the platform epa moving forward like in terms of hiring data scientists and data visualization? >> well, i think we take a vertically intergreated approach where we build a lot of the tools we use and we think that allows us to make a better product because all the pieces fit together and, you know, some sites make the mistake of having a kind of frankenstein approach where everything is powered by some other tartup and they're stapling them all together. i think that's a better approach

but i think there also will be some start-ups that end up commodifying one of the layers like you might see, you know, you know, google analytics be used by people because nobody wants to build their own sort of analytics platform for scratch or something like that but it's still up for grabs which layers are going to end up being outsourced to other, you know, tech companies and which ones should -- publishers will have to build themselves. >> what is your prediction? what do you think will happen? >> i think that there will be several -- i think -- i think when you look at, you know, cable or when you look at newspapers and you see that there's often this virtuous psych until media businesses where people who build a better platform end up attracting better talent and that talents ends up improving the platform and it's a virtuous cycle so i think there will be several

companies in this current crop of new companies building media businesses that get that virtuous cycle going and end up becoming, you know, big players and build enduring companies that last for a long time. i think that if you work at buzzfeed as a reporter or someone creating entertainment you should be able to reach a larger audience, you should have better tools, you should have better understanding of how people are interacting with the media you're creating and should be a draw that makes you work at buzzfeed and once good people -- as more and more good people come to buzzfeed people want to work with them and we're focused on that and other people are also -- have similar focus and that will lead to some really interesting new companies that will keep growing for the long term. >> so given that there is this upstart and rise of the new media start-ups and given that, you know, you don't think that there's a saturation point, what advice would you have for

someone who's launching a media start-up today? >> i think that it is good to look for new emerging platforms that people laugh at and think respect really that important. people laughed at radio when pelley went into that and people laughed when ted turner went that cable and looking for areas where people think, oh, this is silly and never going to happen amount to much is often a good place to go because other people aren't there and you can figure out how to build something that is unique for a new distribution platform before that it matures, i mean at buzzfeed we thought we would be a niche site on social and social and mobile converge and mobile become bigger than pcs and that was not something that we predicted or expected but we were really interested in

social almost for intellectual reasons than anything else so i think being interested in something when it's small helps you have a deeper understanding and already and a unique approach before it's something worth chasing. >> so what are some of the lessons or things that people launching new media start-ups should look into as far as lessons learned from old media? >> well, so i think that if you remember that every big media company was once a start-up, if you look at cbs today, there's not that much you can learn. because they're a giant and you're small and just starting out but if you look at cbs when it was three stations and no one was listening to radio and they were losing money and, you know, then it's like, oh, that looks like a lot of start-ups, when you look at time magazine when there's ten people subscribing to newspapers and writing summaries of them, you know, and putting that out, that looks a

lot like a lot of new media start-ups that are starting today. hollywood studios also really interesting. people don't -- i mean i was surprised reading about the early days of hollywood that you would go to a movie theater and you would see a bunch of short films and then you would see a newsreel like updating you about the war or something and then you'd see maybe a 60-minute western and that's what you'd pay to go see at the theater so people look at start-ups today in the media space like media start-ups and say they're doing these small little silly thing, not like paramount or these big movie studios but if you look at what paramount was doing when they were a new company, they were making little short films that are more similar to what we're doing on youtube than they are to the feature films thatary they doing today and so i think it is a case where there is something to learn from history and lots of differences but the

closest cause for this new generation of media start-ups are old media companies, 6 onto 100 years ago and there's lots of interesting, you know, lessons to learn there. >> definitely. so do you have like a list or what would it look like if you were to give advice or to wrap up the history of old media in a list? >> so i don't know if -- i'm not actually as come up with lists as like the pros at buzzfeed, but i think that for me the things that have been most interest something newspaper, early newspapers, early magazines, early hollywood studios and early cable television and those are sort of huge industries that went on to be these multimillion dollar industries and so -- and i think when you look at their early

days, it's shockingly similar to the way, you know, small media start-ups are operating now so they'd be on my list but it would need a better name created by our buzzfeed editor, not by me. >> awesome. all right. well, it looks like we're just about out of time but we have some time for some questions from the audience. does anyone have questions for jonah? >> we have a microphone here. >> we've got question over here and then one just back there. >> okay, hi. hi, jonah, you guys published this week the 96-page report of the new media people at "the new york times" as to what they need to do different. good advice for "the times," i guess. did you see some lessons this there for new media companies of what they need to do different based on "the new york times" staff's research of where media is headed? >> i think it depends a lot on

what the new media company is but certainly mobile is huge and can't be ignored and so if there's a new media company that is not, you know, thinking deeply about mobile then they should be. and i think, you know, that report was had a lot in it so there's also the question of how do you fee cuss, you know, so there's a lot of really good ideas but you can only focus on a few things and there's the question of what are you going to focus on if you're a particular company or if you're the "the new york times." if you're bigger you can focus on a few more things so you have to stay focused so sorting through is sometimes the hardest part even harder than coming up with them. >> other questions? all right. >> so do you see yourself as you evolve as a media company do you see yourself get nothing other things and other mediums like

conferences and events that you stage and then you record for your own purposes, for example, and other areas? >> yeah, so we do some events. we do something called buzzfeed brews and interviewed jerry seinfeld and anthony weiner and ceo of hbo and it is an interesting way to generate, you know, media as live events. i think there is a kind of trend of live events plus content associated with it that's pretty interesting and you're seeing that with the super bowl and the vmas and industry events like this. >> great. another question? >> yeah. >> can we get -- >> here. yep. do one more right here. it'll be quick. just say it. i'll repeat it.

[ inaudible ]. >> hey, first of all, i want to tell you, jonah, how much i respect your model, your business model and how you went back and studied the foundations of the real media companies. i'm from atlanta, and you're exactly right. turner's deal would be nothing if it wasn't for a guy by the name of reed schoenfeld. he read his book and i met with reese. he's in a80s and lives in new york. reese recruited all the people from new york to atlanta and all lived in a flea bag hotel. >> yeah. >> while they founded cnn. so -- >> yeah, it's a great story. i haven't read reese's book but read "cnn: the inside story" which is just lots of amazing stories of the early sort of

entrepreneurship with schoenfeld being a major player while ted turner's out like on his yacht -- >> oh, no, yes. >> trying to win like america's cup, the guy who was actually president running the news. >> right. >> operation, was reese schoenfeld. >> we need to wrap up. thank you very much, jonah. i really appreciate it. [ applause ] >> the congressional hispanic caucus is holding its annual conference in washington this week. tonight, president obama is the keynote speaker at the group's awards gala. this is the fifth year in a row the president has spoken at the event. it gets underway at 7:50 p.m. eastern. you can see it live on c-span3. after the president's remarks, a conversation on islamic terrorism and the causes of extremism. we'll hear from a college professor on what he sees as the 15 causes of terrorism. then a discussion with leaders from the muslim-american community. that starts at 8:35 p.m. eastern

on c-span3. >> our campaign 2014 debate coverage continues. tonight at 8:00 on c-span, live coverage of the minnesota governor's debate between mark dayton, jeff johnson a andindependence party hannah nicollet. thursday at 8:00 p.m., live debate between joe dorman and the incumbent governor, mary fallin. thursday 8:00 p.m. on c-span 2, the nebraska's governor's debate between chuck hassebrook and coverage of the debate between john lewis and former state senator ryan zinke. c-span campaign 2014. more than 100 debates for the control of congress.

>> over the next few hours we'll bring you the new york ideas festival. a conversation on young people and social media. later, an executive with linkedin and founders of ideapod and change.org and mental floss. this is just over an hour. >> please welcome to the stage megan garber, christina lewis halpern, tao feek rabiu and rassoules rassoules. >> good morning. >> so today it's my honor to welcome this great group of people. i'm going to get right to the conversation and do a lightning introduction of all of them then we'll get right into it to my right is christina lewis halpern founder of all star code a

nonprofit dedicated to closing the opportunity gap between young men of color and tech sector. welcome. next to her we have taofeek rabiu who is of the senior technical manager of aol. who he both manages products and team development and coding since he was 14 and last but not least we have rassoules rassoulnikolas rassoules pathways early college high school in brooklyn and he has been on the robotics team at his high school as a software developer and you guys went to nationals this year, right? >> yes. >> awesome. welcome, you guys. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having us. >> i would love to start with christina. tell us about all-star code and what the program does and also in particular why you wanted to focus on young men. >> sure. so all-star code is a prep program for the tech industry, there's college prep, law school prep and we're tech prep. we attract, prepare and train

young men of color in coding as well as an intensive summer program and professional soft skills and feel these two are the recipe for success in the tech field which is, of course, the engine of job growth and innovation in this country and is a field that is extremely underverse. only 3% of computer workers are black or latino and fewer than 1% of the start-ups have an african-american on the founding team >> that's amazing. >> we recruit students from low and middle income areas with interest in tech and give them these extra skills and intensive training so that we can help place them in the tech career pipeline. ultimately after our program, we'll provide college guidance and other assistance in choosing their path and an advisory role. the reason we're focused on boys this prep program concept is so successful there are already two national programs focused on girls in the space.

i spoke with the founders of those organizations, they felt as i did that minority boys needed programs like this too and there's no need to duplicate their work. >> yeah, okay. awesome. >> we've been operational six months. >> so really long-standing program, yeah. >> yes, and are piloting our first summer program this summer here in new york city. we just selected our first class. >> nice. how many people? >> 20 students and got over 130 applications. >> wow. that's amazing. that's really amazing. okay, well, let's talk about some of the particulars of the program. nikolas, can you tell us experience about the hack-a-thons? >> i've only been to one hack-a-thon which is the tumblr hack-a-thon and i from it i received a whole bunch of education when i went and they showed me how they took a problem and used coding to solve it in a way that was unknown to me when i went. they stated the problem to a

whole group of people and then they decided how they would use -- they would use the certain apis that tumblr gave them to solve the problem and it was cool. i've never seen anything like it. >> that's really awesome. apr's application programming interface. >> yeah. >> one of the -- what we can offer these students is exposure to the tech industry even students like nikolas who already knew he wanted to get into tech and is studying it at his school is on the robotics team have so little access to actual technology professionals. have never visited a company that a technology company in new york that the first company that we brought you to was spotify and nikolas said i thought spotify was just overseas in europe. he didn't know that actually they have their new york -- u.s. headquarters is here in the city. >> yeah. >> and that's where we can really make a difference because if you can't see it if you can't

see how and understand what you learn in school can be used in the real world, and that path we feel you can't dream it. >> right. >> you can't follow that path so that's what we expose our students to. >> awesome. well, let's talk about this idea of exposure. you do hiring and team development, et cetera, et cetera at aol. >> yeah, care and feeding. >> care and feeding. let's just i guess dig into this idea of sort of networking and what networking -- i know that's a dirty word in some ways and maybe rightfully so in some perspectives but it can actually be really beneficial, right? >> absolutely, absolutely. so, you know, a large part of what attracted me to the program was the premise of, you know, networks these kids with professionals, i mean i found that i have benefited a lot from mentors and my own social and professional network so i thought it was intriguing to be able to offer that to these up and coming technologies.

>> that's awesome. how actually do you do that? how does that play out within your mentorship role and all-star code, as well. >> it's strange. mentoring isn't so prescriptive. it's about being available and providing exposure so that was one of the things that i enjoyed just i'm at the hack-a-thon, what questions are there? let me bring you to the different teams and explain some of the thing s ths that give yo quizzical looks. you're not quite clear what you know and what you can convey until you're asked about it. >> that's awesome. what's been your favorite moment of mentorship so far. >> just stepping back and watching the kids enjoy what it is they do. when you -- i found in teams when teams have that internal spark then it's limitless what can be created. when you see that spark in the kids you know that they're on a particular path and, you know, very little that they can't accomplish at that point. >> that's awesome. awesome. nikolas, i know this might change like tomorrow or in a year but at this point what do you want to do later on?

>> at this point, i would like to do a little of web design and i would like to start learning a little bit more about photography. >> what? >> photography. >> oh, awesome. cool, cool and integrated within technology? >> yeah. >> okay, that's great. awesome. well, one of these ideas that i would love to get your perspective on is this idea of culture fit. it's a term we hear a lot in hiring in silicon valley and the tech sector in general and i think it can be a good thing because people want to hire people who can work well with the team and who can integrate and communicate well and all of this stuff but at the same time it can be sort of an excuse to hire people who think like you and look like you and act like you so what -- what sort of "a" is the ideal sort of hiring approach you guys would like to see and "b" more particularly what do you think of this particular idea of culture fit? >> well, my career was originally as a professional journalist, i was a reporter for "the wall street journal." i was not familiar with the tech

industry until i went to a tech conference three years ago and it was a different world with a different set of expectations from the corporate world that i knew so culture fit is kickty of that and i saw at the same time that there were very few minorities and i could see that things like culture fit and emphasis on inform app ality and being a self-taught learner that black and latino students aren't as familiar with and needed exposure to and i think that things like culture fit are effective in the tech industry and what we're doing is supporting our students and educating them in that so that when they do pioneer into this and we fully expect our students to be able to do that, they won't feel so different when they arrive. we have to prepare them for that. can i talk a bit about the inspiration for all-star code.

>> please, do, yes, yes, yes. >> my father, reginald lewis was a pioneer on wall street but he was born in 1942 in segregated baltimore and went to all-black schools all his life until he went to an early prep program that was run by harvard law school and that program opened the world to him and eventually -- and gave him the education and credentials to springboard him on to wall street where he went to a white shoe law firm and ended up being successful as a financier, prototypical of the white boys club in the '7 osby and '80s and early '90s. the -- so because of that i have firsthand experience in seeing how early access programs can have a huge effect on the lives of interested and talented students if they're exposed to

the stage where they can take advantage of it. that's why i feel confident that with this program, we can -- our students can innovate and pioneer into this sector. >> that's wonderful. >> and, yeah. my father unfortunately passed away 21 years ago and -- >> this is a wonderful tribute to him, i think, yeah. >> absolutely. >> well, wonderful. i mean this idea of sort of education in general, you know, it has come up a lot and what would you guys like to see about sort of the education system as it currently stands? what should we sort of change if there could be something changed about the way that we sort of approach, you know, teaching skills versus teaching approaches? >> everything in our teachers and in our mentors is project-based in terms of our learning, our students are taught -- are exposed to video game design, to wearables to, of course, well, web development, mobile apps and in the end if

there's a focus on the final project, all of our workshops at the end, the students demo what they've learned and have actually put together a product instead of working one-on-one where the teacher assigns the students work and they do it, they worked informally in teams always so that they understand they have to collaborate work informally, put something together and i think w]x& and many people feel that schools have to do more of that with their students in terms of lab work and other things that help students give them the skills, the holistic set of skills that are so important in the job market today. >> yeah. okay. >> absolutely. >> that was great. >> and nikolas, what was your final project? >> final project in all-star? >> one of them. >> one of them. >> we worked before we started working on the robots we worked on -- they gave us three problems and i believe -- yes, i chose the problem that there's a rundown park in the neighborhood

and what are going to do to get your community come and fix the park? and what my team and i did, we went and we photo shopped a bunch of posters and said we were going to put it all over the neighborhood and get the word spread. >> nice. oh, that's excellent. well that i think -- did you have one more? >> i was going to tell him to talk about his project from the first workshop. >> modify what -- we had to build a place where people could learn about music and learn about the new music that is coming out so i coded a website and it was basically a prototype of what it would look like and it was a whole bunch of articles where you can talk to the rappers or talk to the musicians or the pianists and learn about what they're trying to make. >> that's amazing. >> really creative idea. >> i have it but it isn't up on a domain. >> i hope it gets up soon because i could totally use site. that's wonderful.

all right. well, thank you guys so much for being here. i wish we had more time. this has been wonderful. thank you. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> please welcome to the stage deep nishar. >> thank you. wow, that's loud. it's great to see everyone here. you know, i was a little worried getting on stage when i saw the line of this morning because for those who were here at 9:00 a.m. you saw first the soul cycle folks and biking, can manage that, many of the tough other guys -- has anyone done tough

mudder? any of your friends do it? there's one in california in past weekend and i saw some pictures, it's pretty gruesome. and the thing that people pay $100 each to not only slide through mud but at the end you have to go through a wall of live wires. you actually get jolted with electrical shocks. if you slip they will jack up the voltage on you. really. some people will go to any extremes. so i thought that i had to notch it up a bit so i will talk about not economic empower. but bare hands and feet, rock climbing with 00-pound nknapsacs on your back. dollar idea. no, just kidding. i want to talk about economic empower. and the context for what i want

to talk about i want to bring you back a few years and talk about a communication device which is quite expensive, you had to wait in line for a long time to get one and it was only available in one color. anyone guess what that is? yeah, i heard some people say iphone. almost close. one color, few hundred dollars, you had to wait in line for months. my friends i though that waited in line for like 48 hours or so in palo alto. that's not what i'm talking about. i'm talking about the big black phone. anyone remember this? probably an exhibit at the naturalist museum next door. this phone was a very important device when i was growing up in india. this is one of those phones that made that sound when it goes by, the rotary dial. it's a very important device.

the reason was it cost 10,000 rubles to get in the '8 ots, six months salary for a person in india at the time. you had to wait in line sometimes for five to ten years to get one and it was only available in the color black. this phone was so important that most of the time it would be under lock and key. it would be in drawers, it was not readily available. it was a very expensive hard to get important device. '80s mumbai where i grew up looked like this. lots of tenement housing. i grew up in one of these apartments, 200 square feet, me, four siblings, my parents. we shared an outside toilet with a whole bunch of other ten apartments who lived on the same floor. you got running water for 30 minutes every evening between 9:00 and 9:30 and we filled up

every bucket and a big plastic drum so we could use that water for the next 24 hours. in other words, we had a very happy middle class existence. yeah. that's true. in the '80s, india, that's what middle class used to be like. most of us also aspired to go do something different. and as i was growing up and i was in the early '80s i was in high cool and was a science geek, go figure, one year the project that really wanted to do for the science fair was to create electricity out of geothermal energy. my concept was the following, a lot of extra energy that comes out of the earth through volcanic eruption, through geysers, it all goes to waste. what if you could harness this energy and then, you know, use steam turbines and work that into electricity and the way i wanted to demonstrate that was to have a little red light bulb

glow at the end. so my partner and i spent months making all this work. we like built things, we welded things together, we glued them. did a bunch of research at the libra library. there was no internet then. and we got this thing to work and in practice interceptions all this was working and then finally the big day arrived. the judges came by, we were presenting our project to them and then that exact moment happened. showcasing the demo i knew that i was going to become an engineer because i had that moment that every great engineer has at least once if not multiple times in their life that demo fails at the big moment. [ laughter ] the light bulb did not light up and i was like crushed.

thankfully the judges saw the power of what we could do. they were excited by our enthusiasm and we placed second and not only did we place second, we showed up in the national newspaper the next day. i was famous, loved it. i even got over the fact that the first place winner was some kid who had copied a "popular mechanics" thing of creating a robot from bicycle chains. come on, like, people, no, i'm kidding. i was jealous. i was on cloud nine. if i only had one regret it was that i did not parlay this fame into a hot date. [ laughter ] because i went to an all boys school. couldn't really do anything about that. the person who was behind a lot of this work was really my middle school and high school

science teacher. let's call her mrs. j. mrs. j. not just taught the principles of scientific inquiry but she also was part disciplinarian part the person who brought you back on track. she would make you think about the problems you were facing. she would try and connect the theory we learned in the classroom to what we were trying to do in our projects to teach us why on paper the geothermal energy project could always work flawlessly but in reality the simplifications and the coefficients of friction were not always what the textbooks told you and why things didn't quite work then she went a couple of steps further. we didn't have space or time sometimes to work on the projects that we were doing. she literally opened up her home and we would work on these projects on evenings and weekends and holidays in her

living room. she enabled us to go beyond. once i had a bunch of questions that she couldn't answer and she said, why don't you go call someone. here's the person, here's the number. go talk to her. you imagine i'm like 12, 13 years old, barely able to use this phone, we don't have one at home. it's intimidating. there are only two such phones in our entire school. one was on the principal's desk. the other one was in a drawer with the school clerk under lock and key. and so i go up, i go to the school office. i ask the school clerk, mr mr. dyer, i'm like, i need to make this call. he reluctantly hands me the phone. i get my answer. and something changed for me from this scrawny 12-year-old kid i went in intimidated and as

i walked out i felt an inch taller. suddenly i had found a connection to the world that was beyond the one kilometer radius between my home and my school. it's almost like mrs. j., the mentor in my life had shown me the art of the possible. beyond the confines of where i lived and where i studied and she did this not just for me but for hundreds of other folks like me and we have all gone on, many to become doctor, engineer, lawyers and in some small way try to make the world a better place. she gave us this key that opened that lock. i've been thinking about this quite a bit recently because even as the world is becoming increasingly connected, and

nowadays this is in my old neighborhood, i can walk in there and can takenously be connected to all sorts of information, all sorts of people around the world. still have a fundamental disconnect and the disconnect is what andy mccav tri and his book "the second machine" and andy will speak this afternoon. i highly recommend listening to him talks about as the second half of the chessboard. what we are teaching our young people these days is about how to solve technical problems. the challenge is the computers are already solving these technical problems. what we need to teach them is to also how to construct these problems together. and that is something that needs to be really embraced through something called scheme. sorry. signs science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.

s.t.e.a.m. is important because of one reason. we have to not just have the ying of scientific problem solving but we need the yang of having how to construct these problems. if you can't construct the right problems to solve you're not going to be able to solve them correctly. at the same time computers are becoming better and better, technology is becoming better and better and we company solve these problems very easily. the phone that we have in our pockets has more power than supercomputers had just 20 years ago. it will make scientific problem solving easier and easier what even deep blue and watson, the computers that beat the best grand masters in the world on chess cannot do is then they cannot go and solve the genetic code because they were programmed to do a specific thing. as we program computers on each one of these problems they'll solve them. we need to construct the problems together and bring together the disciplines of science and art. countries that have embraced this, countries like china,

india, israel are already seeing the value of this, they're seeing the economic prosperity at rates greater than what we see that in the west and the gdp. this is important to me personally as well. not just as the special person from mumbai to silicon valley. i have two teenage kid and as they start on the journeys of academic and professional lives the one thing we all worry as parents is what will they do? will they have a job will they have a future in this age where all of our skills are becoming quickly obsolete. these problems are not easy problems and they may even feel daunting. unemployment, poverty, inequality, but at the same time all of us at some level or the other have overcome big problems in our lives and we've helped to

make the world a better place through our work, through our communities through our professional work. so as i think about these issues specifically the issue around unemployment, i feel like there are three discreet problems that together we can tackle. something that i learned from my days growing up in mumbai. the first issue is that of the skills gap. we've come out of one of the worst recessions that we've known historically. about 3.9 million open jobs in the u.s. right now. even as 30% of young people under the age of 21 in the city of detroit are without jobs. we cannot fill the jobs in silicon valley. there are 30,000 open jobs as we speak there. a new college graduate with a computer science degree is getting $100,000 in signing

bonus alone. in silicon valley today yet there are tens of thousands of people in middle america that don't have a job. it's because we don't understand the skills that are needed in silicon valley with what is being taught to all these young people whether it's in high school or in college. this is why the world, what they're doing is so powerful. we are teaching young people the kinds of things they need to know in order to be successful in tomorrow's economy. we need to do more of that. the second issue is that about creative thinking. what i was talking about earlier. you know, once famously said computers are useless. they only give answers and he was half right. they do give answers. they're not useless. not completely useless. the second part that have equation is they're giving

answers to the problems that we are setting as human beings in front of those computers. and this is that left brain and the right brain. this is the s.t.e.a.m. discipline and gives us the i d iphones, the teslas, the inherent ability that technology can't mimic but have to bring together and teach this our young people. it is a teachable skill. the final thing is diversity. most of the jobs, these high paying jobs are still the domain of white males. nothing against them. it's not their fault. but it really isn't. you know, they are capable. they are available. they get the jobs. the challenge is that since 1984 when we had 38% women representation in computer science disciplines in university, we've come down to

12% today. the trend is going in the wrong direction. if you don't have enough diversity in universities reflecting the skis we need clearly we are not going to see that reflected in our workplace but we need the diversity, diversity breeds creativity. enough research that's happened in there. this is where programs that folks like president mario from the harry mutt college have put in place are so heartening. i published this morning on linkedin a discussion on how she has actually increased over the past few years enrollment at harvey mud which is one of the pre-eminent education institutions in computer and science engineering from 10% to 40%. gone in the other direction. and she's done it using some very well-known techniques and more and more universities are following suit. so the challenge is clearly are big. the problems are big. but as i think back on that

little black phone and mrs. j. i think we have some possible solutions in our grasp. the first is connectivity. when you think of the skills gap, the challenges that no one is studying 20-year-old in detroit they should not be taking shop class because a lot of the automotive and manufacturing jobs are changing. either going to robots or they are going overseas. however, that same person could be taught welling because as we speak there's a power plant in georgia that's being delayed because there aren't sufficient number of welders in the country or that same person if is so inclined can be taught ios programming or android programming because there are 3 billion devices inment world and there are millions of apps and people want to build more of those. we also have a huge advantage today with programs like

linkedin we have more than 300 people on it, hundreds of thousands of jobs, over 3 million companies, a lot of professional knowledge, education institutions, all of these can come together and programically we can figure out where the skill gaps are and what the skills are needed and we can start pointing people not just individually but also through policy, public policy and governmental work and we already are working with the u.s. government on things like this for say veterans, we can do a lot more. the second and the human connection, i've had dozens of mentors during my 30-year career and i'm really thankful for that but all of us can be paying it forward. all of us could be mentoring the young people. we have to create more institutions like all-star code like mentor net and other organization that we have recently gotten involved with at linkedin and me permanently.

mary fernandez, the founder and chief executive of mental note is a great example. she was a computer science student who almost dropped out in college interest that discipline and went to do something different then she found a mentor or the mentor found her and said, no, can you do it, pear and let me help you through it. she went on to get her ph.d.. worked at ibm. became a very illustrious engineer and is now taking that body of knowledge and creating a network of mentors to help other young minority people and youths in colleges and helped them become better and not drop out. bring people in and they drop out because it's a hard field. and you need a support system. you need other people like you that's very difficult to be a pioneer in those spaces. the final thing we can have is leadership.

leadership not just in terms of thinking, but this terms of actually doing. things like what's happening in all-star code, the platforms and tools we are creating through chan or yourra or edx. this makes technical subjects very, very accessible and available everywhere in the world. we also need to use the platforms in order to connect the right people with the problems they are interested in. there are 30,000 nonprofit boards right now, there are nonprofit boards that have 30,000 board memphisships available that are going unfilled every year and at the same time there are so many folks who have accomplished search who can give back to the community and they don't know about these opportunities. so we created a platform for them to come together. we can do the same for any discipline that we choose to. this world is a very daunting

world. it doesn't matter that i was 14 years old in the early '80s and feeling like the doors were locked. if you ask any young person today whether they live in silicon valley, new york city, mumbai or hasao paulo, they all face the same insecurity of what the future holes for them but just like my mentors, the leaders in my life who connected me to the outside world by virtue of the metaphoric big black know, we can also enable the young people that we know in our lives and we want to help and see them help them see the power of the big beautiful world full of opportunities in front of them. i hope that today we can take some of these ideas back and help at least one young person in our lives and make the world a better place. thank you. [ applause ]

please welcome to the stage justin brown and ben rattray. >> well, thank you very much to new york ideas. it's a real pleasure to be here. my name is justin brown one of the co-founders of ideapod which is a social media platform for ideas and it's my absolute pleasure to be here interviewing ben rattray, the founder and ceo of change.org which is the world's largest petition platform. they're got over 65 million users from 196 countries in the

world. so i guess to begin this interview i'd like to ask ben, can you help us understand what a petition is by giving us an example of a successful campaign from your platform? >> yeah, thanks and great to be here. so, you know, a lot of people historically have been skeptical about the power of petitions and i think understandably so because historically they've been run in a way that's not strategic and effective and i think what we're see something a dramatic transformation in the efficacy of online to offline movements so i'll give i guess one example from last year, but i think it was epa inspiring a 10-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis who needed a double transplant to live except there's an old law restriction that prevents kids under the age of 12 prosecutor receiving adult lung transplants and she was on the first of the list supposed to get a transplant but couldn't get it because this old regulation despite the recommendation of her doctors and many more given her size and

so her parents go lobby inter l internalally, try to change the policy. they're unsuccessful. it looks like she is going to die and then they started public campaign, started petition on change.org, 300,000 people to join, get the endorsements of her two senators in pennsylvania, a member of congress ends up being the case huge national media, cnn, abc and hundreds of thousands people mobilized, government ends up changing the regulation, giving her two lung, saves her life and then changes it for all other kids now to have hope. we have this kind of thing all the time. it's not even, you know, just the case that it's around sort of government stuff it's a lot of corporate stuff as well. just yesterday coke and pepsi announced for the first time they'll remove a very controversial chemical from all of their products, bvo and the reason is because of a 15-year-old girl literally. this girl sara cavanaugh last year decides to petition gatorade to remove this

chemical, it's a fire retardant, it's banned in europe, banned in japan, supposed to be investigated by the fda but the lobby of the soft drink industry has prevented it from doing so thus far and gets over 100,000 people to join her campaign, on the cover of the business section of "the new york times" and on "dr. oz" after a few weeks of campaigning and the context of never having addressed the issue, gatorade announces they'll remove the chemical and then she subsequently starts a campaign against powera powerade and aft year they change again the policy entirely and remove all this toxin, this chemical from all other soft drinks literally because of a 15-year-old girl and this stuff seems remarkable that people that don't track the company but it literally happens every day, dozens of victories like that every day. >> it's amazing to hear the specific examples of campaigns. what we're seeing today is a real explosion of these campaigns, particularly on

change.org. why are we seeing this explosion and what do you think explains the success of these campaigns? >> you know, historically one of the biggest impediments is the expense of organizing people together rapidly for common cause so very expensive in time and in money and that has impeded the number of social movements that could be born, structurally disadvantages, large groups of distributed people. limited resources and advantages small groups of monied interest is what you have. a situation in which private interests oftentimes overcome the public good. but what's happened now is a radical reduction and barriers to collective action and result literally not two or five types but 100 types more campaign than will ever exist before and when you have the incredible ease with which to start and spread campaigns they start to look different, as well. so instead of campaigns around changing the health care system, it's a specific campaign around a single young girl 10 years old to get her new lungs and change this regulation which spawns

many more campaigns, it's not a campaign that to change and end all toxins and all products but specific campaign to get a particular chemical out of two particular companies, products coke and pepsi. and what's interesting is, while they look small because the capacity for massive scale not one or two campaigns but hundreds and then thousands of campaigns, you end up having greater national impact through this distributive movement than the historic large small number of movements people have run nationally. >> what would you say would be the specific components of a successful campaign? >> the most important thing that we see is that the campaign is achievable and specific within a small short period of time. traditionally the reason petitions haven't worked online historically they're mostly targeted at the u.n., the president or congress. like the three least responsive institutions in the entire country. and so campaigns that are targeting individual mayors or city councils or school boards and individual companies end up

being much more effective not because that's the ultimate aspiration of the movement you try to run, it's rather than necessary small step required to build the movement from person to person, city to city. and what's interesting is it's not as if we've inmow separated on understanding how to run social movements historically. the most powerful movement in american history was started in no small part in a narrative speaking because a woman refused to walk to the back of a bus seems crazy. spark the necessary to move from city to city, state to state over thousands of campaigns many years to end up winning that massive epic national battle. >> ben, would you say that change.org and these citizen movements are leading us towards a direct form of democracy? >> you know, yeah, i think if you look at traditionally speaking how they've responded to their citizens, there's very small communication between elected officials and their elected representatives, it's

literally some private communication via e-mail sometimes but mostly not for most campaigns or most pieces of legislation and the result is, you know, for every single piece of legislation there's a lobby group that is pressuring because of monied interests and have this disproportionate influence of small groups of people but as you have an increasing per sen taej of the constituencies of every elected representative mobilized and have i guess in the next few years literally half the voting public on change.org taking action you increasingly provide incentives to elected officials to respond openly and transparently to their own constituents which is a radical transformation regrettably in the world we think in many ways greatest democracy. this is an exciting thing and it actually properly incentivizes elected officials most people you talk in congress and state reps don't want to be spending a huge amount of time around raising money and only responding to narrow interests in the service of having the kind of resources to buy attention during elections which buys votes. and if you can more directly go to constituents and have access

to a much larger percentage of your electorate you have incentives to engage them effectively and that's what will happen more and more. >> can you provide us with an example of a petition and a campaign on your platform that's gone directly to elected officials that's led to policy change or change in government? >> yeah, i guess -- one of my favorite and it starts with a real tragic story is there's a loophole in the department of transportation authority bill that was passed in early 2000 that made it such that rent-a-car companies were not legally required to return rahmed cars because it's expensive so enterprise and hertz lobbied to make that change and tragically in 2004 two young girl, sisters, 24, 25 rent a pc cruiser recalled three months before. was not returned per the loophole in the law. it ends up catching on fire per the concern of the recall on the highway. his a semi, they die.

their mom understandably not just distraught wants to fight this so she files a civil lawsuit against enterprise, takes seven years and she wins 2011. but the law hasn't changed. and there are a number of senators that had tried to change this but this is an incredibly obscure thing and a small group of monied interests that are lobbying heavily to maintain this and generic law most aren't paying attention to but the mom in this case ends up starting a change.org petition, gets on the "today" show and they call enterprise for comment and after a decading of lobbying for this policy turns around immediately announces they're changing their position and going to support a law which is just recently passed under the names of those two young women. it's incredibly powerful example of a once opaque situation that advantaged small groups of monied interests now being pierced by a massive mobilization of everyday people paying much more attention in some no small part because weernl personalizes issues that

once seemed abstract and impersonal and inaccessible but now powerful and emotional and sort of leveraged the empathy that natural amenability to empathy human beings have have & engages them in politics. >> it's fascinating to hear about the to empower citizens in creating change around us in the local context. but i guess there's a huge role for the traditional media in helping us advance change. . can you tell us about the role of traditional media on the website, change.org and how it creates this successful campaigns? . >> there is a lot of members of the media who lameant what looks to be their inevitable demees. the media has more power than ever before and the reason is, historically the power of media has been a transparency. sort of revealing things that lead to hopefully accountability. but the effectiveness of the kind of media that is fully

trans parent is predicated on a population of people who consume that content and then mobilize to enforce the accountability that it requires. used to have a lot of articles that end up being investigative reports that seem to reveal awful practices after which the issue falls flat, no subsequent action which justifies no subsequent news coverage and dies. you have this reader base, immediately and direct response to articles, mobilize a campaign that ends up extending that into a citizen movement, drags it out over a period of time that prevents the target from just ducking and covering and avoiding it. the one example i'll give here that i love recently is "the guardian" has been writing in the past about the tragic issue of female genital mutilation. it's illegal but 24,000 girls are subjected to this threat every year. they don't know the exact

number. it's hard to get people engaged in the issue. so they partnered with a 17-year-old somali-born girl now a uk citizen and she had been campaigning around this issue. starts a position on change.org. gets over 200,000 people to join and covers i think seven times the cover of the guardp gets it endorsed by ban ki-moon and malala, an meeting with the education minister and the next day in the context of trying to avoid this issue for many years the education minister, because of a 17-year-old girl, amplified by "the guardian" announces they will educate teachers across the uk to inform and educate the girls at threat and friends who can identify a solution for it and would not have happened with "the guardian." it would not have happened without the amplification "the guardian" provided. >> that's amazing. we've had here a picture painted of the future in which citizen

engagement direct democracy and technology are helping us all create that bit of future together. what words would you say to those of us in the audience that would like to bring that future a little closer towards this so that we can get a little more active and create that change of an accelerated pace? >> i would say a couple things. one very pragmatic level. a lot of people in the audience who are a part of members and influences of the institutions going to be responsive to citizen moments and while it is inevitable this will happen and unfold over time we do see there are pioneering elected officials and companies that are embracing the reality that we now live in a different time in which consumers and constituents have more power than before and hold the brand of these politicians and these companies in their hands. we've seen -- we started to establish formal channels through which elected officials can engage and elizabeth warren and paul ryan, who don't do a

lot together, both committed to responding to constituents through the site and companies are doing the same thing. to the extent you work for a company or a politician or a member of the media that can start to embrace this new reality, to respond directly to constituents and consumers or amplify those in public there's immense opportunity there. the second thing i would say is the remaining thing we see as a primary im pediment to social change isn't actually the tools necessary to make it happen, it is a belief that is possible. so one of the things we fight is, the cultural skepticism that people have that everyday people cannot make a difference. so as citizens, which we are all, as citizens i think the passionate belief, the suspension of cynicism and skepticism, the recognition, this is not some random episodic small incremental change but the technology is to transformative change between everyday people and large institutions and our belief and ability and

commitment to engage in that as citizens, not just as workers of these companies and politicians, i think is an immensely important thing as influencers and hope to see more do it. >> i think we've had a wonderful picture painted of how technology is changing the world. we often hear about social media and how it's going to lead to massive change but it is tools like change.org that put ideas into actions. thank you very much, ben, for joining us. >> thanks so much. please welcome to the stage derek thompson, william pierson and david burstein.

>> hello, guys. hello, everyone. the new people in the room. i hope you find a seat. we're here to talk about young people and reading habits. how young people read. and how we all read in these -- on the new screens that are ubiquitous. david has a difficult job of speaking on behalf of 86 million people, the millennial generation and they have the easier job of speaking on behalf of two people. keep that in mind in assessing the quality of their answers. the first question for the mental floss guys. facebook has become the home page of news for news publishers, the atlantic has seen this, facebook drives more of our traffic than our home page. it is our most important page for news but not necessarily a home page for news, for most

people. a pew study found 10% of facebook users go to the site for the purpose of reading news. and i was looking at a piece i wrote recently a few months ago of the most viral stories of 2013, the stories that were most successful on facebook, in the buzzfeed network which covers a lot of publishers. here they are, how y'all and you guys talk. "new york times." two years after she passed away a woman gives her family an unforgettable christmas, buzzfeed. it's thanksgiving so we ask the brits to label the u.s., we're so sorry america. 30 signs you're almost 30p. you go through this entire list. there are practically no news stories. there are, however, lots of interesting stories and what mental floss it seems to me discovered early on is that there's something about the curiosity for content that doesn't necessarily prize timeliness or news worthiness, the journalistic principles, but rather, interestingness. tell me a little bit about how that's animated your fill

loss fy at mental floss and seen an evolution in reader behavior since social medias has really picked up in the last few years? >> well, i know, you know, obviously facebook has made a number of changes to their algorithm and really trying to feature these interesting stories as you would say. i'm not sure that i would look at facebook necessarily as an outlet for news so much as an outlet for conversation around that news. and so what we found as an interesting challenge is that whenever something huge is going on, that's what everyone is going to be talking about. as the news source or information source, if you were to just repost or tell the story of what just happened, you're not going to get any pick-up from that. the key is to cut through the clutter in some interesting way. one interesting example i can givep that during the presidential debates you have obama and romney up on stage the left and right are bashing each other on social media. romney brings up "sesame street."

rather than having commentary on that or telling the story about what he would have said about sesame street our social editor tweets the fact that big foot is 8'2". that's all he tweets. it becomes one of the most retweeted comments of the evening and that key that people want to share that most interesting thing that happened that night and not usually just the story itself. >> mental floss started as a selfish endeavor in a dorm room. it was the mixture of cocky and naive you were in college and we thought, you know, there's no magazine like this. we're going to start it. we started a print publication in 2001. which wasn't a time to start a print publication. also from necessity. this was a gut feeling that we had, that you could create a magazine that was optimistic, very inclusive, that could educate in a quick and fun way. but it also had to have a shelf

life and stay on stands for three months, four months and so we concentrated on interesting. it really was what felt natural to us and what we wanted. >> i love that description of a mix of cockiness and naive. it animates web vernacular these days is some combination of that. david, there's a sense that i think millennials are likes this post-human tech utopia when it comes to news habits and it's weird because there was a pew study that looked at how young people read and it was surprisingly conservative. they were exactly likely to use their smartphones and tablets for news as 40 something and 50 somethings and 50% said they preferred print style reading experiences over these graphics rich, snowfall-esque reading experiences. so shoulds