up pretty in the form of quarterly profit statements and price per share on the financial side. politically, it is the same thing. nobody cares about what the economy will look like in six years from now. with an olive tree, you will not get an all of for seven years, but we need some olive trees. even if you create this new revenue stream, i worry they will screw it up again. . .

the kemper bought raw information that can be synthesized by professionals. i believe that journalism is a craft and a profession. you put it to paper and then edit it. the films on the internet that provide a professional product. it is obvious to anybody who has been in journalism. the best editor i worked with was a guy who was at the washington post. he could make a story disappear with three questions. he can make it go into the metro basket and never come out of it.

there were premises that seemed plausible and yet there was a hole when he scratched the premises. that was an incredible gift. the ability to destroy a fraudulent piece of journalism before it was published. no such thing exists on the internet. people sit in a room and they put two back together, and it will = four whether it does not. there is some great stuff being done in the realm of a commentary. there are a lot of smart people who blog. it is worthy of the internet. to cover a beat as a reporter -- i would not have done it for free or to inform my blog or for some sense of civic duty. i did it because the baltimore sun paid me a salary that i could support my family on, it was a living wage that they paid

me to go to the baltimore police department and a kiss enough desk sergeant's fast enough every day to find out what was going on and then to kiss someone else's as and then compare one to another and take them for drinks after to find out what else did make a follow- up story. it was 15 hours a day. nobody does that as a hobby. having approached the very edge of what journalism is, the vanity of the internet is to say, we are already doing journalism. i went to a council meeting, i reported on this. yes, and you went to the public face of politics which was the council meeting, but if you actually knew anybody in the city's administration, and you may actually have reported on what was going on. but she would have needed and deserved to be a full-time paid employee.

journalism has done so badly at that -- the guys at my paper were pursuing this pulitzer and that project and we are going to report on how good our reporting is and we will try to get the governor scheduled hearings and then we will put it altogether, and we will do this from january through december of, so we will not care about this issue because the pulitzer is over -- while they were doing all of that, the baltimore sun and ceased to have a pot of the reporter and labor reporter -- a poverty reporter and a labor reporter. it ceased to have a court reporter covering a city courthouse for a year and a half because all they did was generate copy for a news hole that was shrinking. what do we do?

we stop covering the court house because that way we will fit. the beat the system was the first thing they need this r- rated because nobody wins a pulitzer prize and is promoted what or the editor in chief of the l.a. times because they cover the heart of the city. journalism has its own appalls statistic on the editorial side. that is the pulitzer. if you want to fix in journalism on the editorial side -- if the pulitzer prize committee started saying, you know what, we will give out five pulitzers for beat reporting every year, but they have to cover the beat for five years. when you have actually covered it long enough to have an impact in terms of you are all over the agency or issue -- you have been a medical reporter for five years, nelson some of your stuff to the pulitzer. -- now send some of your stuff to the pulitzer.

you would be increasing the papers capacity for doing great journalism. the gamesmanship of our rewards centric profession makes it so that that will not happen. >> i have never won a pulitzer. >> me neither. >> is it your view that one of the turning points had to do with the concentration of the media amounts shareholder driven companies? is that what really changed in the time span you have referenced? >> yes, the publicly owned newspaper companies run by businessmen, not by people who come up to the newsroom, completely divorced journalism from its original mission and made it a profit center for wall street. the very quickly came to the conclusion and they were correct that we can make more money in

the short term by putting up a lousy product than by putting out a good product. let us cut the staffing -- think about the idea of a buyout. that was the operative way we reduce ourselves as a profession. that shows you the content that we have for our own product. you need a reduction in force because somebody at the head office says so, layoffs. signore, -- do it by seniority. take the young guys who have not covered that beat for 10 years -- do not take the institutional memory of the paper. the people would take the buyouts, they have an option -- someone is saying,, work on a television show or getting a book option. the people who took the first six of buyout at the baltimore sun had options. not all of them. there were some good people tuesday because they really

wanted to stay. but by and large, when you go with buyout instead of layoffs, we want to take the most expensive reporters and the ones with the most benefits and making the most money. all we care about is the bottom line. the buyout ranks will be filled with the people who are the best people will have other options. we won buyouts not layoffs. that tells you what was going on back in chicago, l.a., and everywhere else. they deny give a damn about the product. all they cared about was the 15% -- not enough. you have to make 37%. it is shameful. we destroyed ourselves. >> one member of the audience asks given how badly the media outlets performed on stores like the iraq war, why should the public trust them at all? >> the alternative is even more miserable. kudos to the pulitzer this year

for not giving anything out for financial reporting. [laughter] they got that one right. in iraq, it was pretty much a failure by most mainstream media. all smelly, i do not believe that any other framework -- it does not matter -- i do believe that bringing dead trees to a doorstep is now anachronism. whatever else happens, we are on a path where more subscriptions are going on-line. the issue is whether people will pay for them. given that i do believe that is the future of journalism -- people are paid to do this job. if more people are paid more to do this job, if the salaries improve, you will get a better reporter. if you are able to hire more editors not less and they have more experience, you are going

to get a better product. until that happens, i do not see any merit to the idea that a thousand blocker'sggers equals a certain amount of reporters. i read a lot of blogs. there are things that are and newspapers that are irrelevant. criticism, the television criticism, criticism, that is basically irrelevant. there are better size for film criticism and there are film critic said newspapers. there is no reason why you cannot watch films and comment on them as a hobby. that, you can do. journalism, covering something that is self sustaining as of protecting as an american institution be it a police department or the state department -- i do not see it happening except if people are

paid to be in an adversarial stance against the institution in terms of acquiring institution that the institution does not want you to have and get that out. i do not see that being done in any other way than the mainstream media outlet. perhaps it could be done through a newsletter that covers one aspect of american government. it does not have to be -- the thing that will make it consistent is whoever it is working for what ever from work has to be paid. there must be paid enough to make it worthwhile. until that model is restored and people are paid, watch what happens without us over the next 10 years. >> someone asked, how do you propose greater stake colder involvement in improving journalism? >> -- how do you propose greater

stakeholder involvement in improving journalism? >> this is going to sound really wrong, but i never cared about what the readers thought. i am the worst marketing guy in the world. they used to tell me that the readers want shorter stories. the one localized news. they want this, they want that. i am on c-span. i cannot. i was going there, but i won't. >> it is cable. >> it is not my cable. in a way, i have come to believe that i do not right for those people if they exist. i wanted to write stories for the people who had intimate knowledge about what i was writing about, they would say, yes, that guy caught it.

it was a detective -- not that he would like everything, he would be mad about stuff. he would not like it if i went on a cop that he thought i did not deserve to win gun. if i got it right for him and if he was able to get through the story and not be disgusted, then the readers would follow. i have proceeded on that basis since i began writing longer articles. at some point, that became what i actually thought newspapers should do. i really against journalists. the idea that you can cover something well enough to explain it to the set -- mythical seventh grade reader -- that is what they told us in journalism school. your reader will have a seventh grader -- seventh grade education. to hell with that guy.

i do not want to write for that. they have a whole newspaper writing for that guy. it is called usa today. 12 and stories. we went through that phase. -- 12 inch stories. we went through that phase. i want to write stories that i know -- i really know the speech. i had all of the headlines -- i really know this beat. i have all the headlines. the journalism started to get worthwhile. i believe if you tell a story that people do not know -- if you come to a campfire with the best story, people will call you and listen. trying to anticipate what readers want, that is what got

us into this mess. >> now i know what our president of usa today was kind enough to let me host. i want to ask you about the creative process. that is a good jumping off point as to what you have been doing of the last few years. do you take a different approach for creating content for your television audience? >> know i am just as indifferent to them as i have always been. it is a different model. i do not say, " the wire" is comparable to journalism. it is a little different.

it was trauma. journalism should not get its nose up a joint by trying to compete with -- when you can make it up, you can shift the story and make it as graceful as you want it to be. you get to make choices. he denied it to do that in journalism nor should you. -- you do not get to do that in journalism nor should you. when i left journalism, the first thing i had to do is -- everybody was a playwright. they had a lot of success on the stage. they told me to read all of these guys -- at best i read one or two checkoff place. -- chekov plays. it is not the same day. the best i can say about it is

that the impulse behind doing that show was in journalism, but just the impulse. >> you have done remarkably well for somebody who was not prepared for it. how have you done so well in making that transition? >> i had one good skill set which is i had a pretty good ear for dialogue. i am not an irish or a german- born african-american cop. i am not a drug dealer. but i found that i had to delay things that could translate which is a good ear for dialogue -- 60% of writing drama is dialogue and 40% is pacing. i had a good teacher teaching me the other part which was pacing. every line justifies itself. it is more ruthless than journalism in a way.

the other thing i had going for me was -- does anybody know who homer was? when i became a journalist, he became my hero very quickly. he was a new yorker. by dagart's skills said was that he did not mind being a goof. journalism is supposed to be an innately curious profession. i cannot tell you the amount of people i worked with who did not want to be seen as asking a stupid question or asking a question where it was not clear that they knew the esser. there is a great story -- this man had a terrible speech

impediment. they did not let him be a reporter until his 30's because they thought he was an idiot. he was a great reporter. he was pulling back things that nobody else was getting. he won the first pulitzer. he went up the elevator at the empire state building when the plane hit the building, and he won the spot news pulitzer because he was the that they did not notice going up with the mayor. his great skill was to find in a story about a captain of industry who was saying, i cannot believe the report you sent to interview me. the guy was a complete idiot. i had to explain everything to him. [laughter] tried to imagine a white thirtysomething guy standing on

the street and saying, are you guys selling drugs? how does this work? it was not a lot more sophisticated than that. years later, the 15 year-old kid who was at the center of the book, when he was about a 23, we were reminiscing about the book when i met him, he said the reason he decided to start talking to me is that one day he was selling on a corner and he sees me up on his grandfather's steps watching him. and he said, david, you looked like you did not know anything. you looked so pathetic. i just decided that i had to help you. i was wondering why you were not getting dropped every day. that was moscow said. ok, i do not know anything. those two things made it really

easy to learn. it also made it really easy when i walked into the writer's room and said, how do you do this? to this day, we have guys who come in and day are going to wreck a spec script and they are like, they want to act like i know how to do the show because i watch it. i did these episodes. if they do not come in terrified with the 20 questions on their sleeve, they are doomed. i think journalists -- it is amazing how many people who got into this profession you're not curious or terrified to ask questions. >> what kind of a relationship to you have with the rank-and- file of the baltimore police department and how have they acted -- reacted to some of your criticism? >> the detectives and patrolman

that are still there -- the ones who are still there up to rank of lieutenant maybe are fine with me. the ones who are middle management can go either way up to the rank of major. colonels and the but hate my guts. that is the way it should be if you cover a beat. that is the best way to cover a beat. the bosses cannot stand you. middle management will sometimes talk to you if it is in their interests. everybody who is below that is somebody to buy a beer for. that is always the way it has been. i cannot imagine covering a beat any other way. >> many people are anxious to hear about the other products you might be working on. can you talk about the product you are working on now in a louisiana and how it is coming along? >> we are filming a show which is about new orleans after the

storm. it. "the wire -- it is not "the wire." people are trying to reconstitute their lives. in all the years that followed, the national response to what has gone through is an embarrassment. that will probably air to a dozen 10 on hbo. i cannot run for anything else except hbo because of my pocket right. that will probably air in 2010. if you are on an airline flight in my name is on it, turn in the headphones. it will not make any sense. >> did i read that one of the intentions of the working with

the subject matter is that you wanted to use katrina s an analogy to the federal government's performance as regulating the financial crisis? >> that sounds so didactic as a room clearer. i think there is an analogy that needs to be made. if any character would to say anything that directly, it would be cut out of the script. new orleans was hit with a category 2, not even a category 3 hurricane. if you tell anybody from new orleans and say they were drowned by a hurricane, they will get mad at you. their city was drowned by shoddy workmanship and bad decisions in terms of transportation policy

and the ineffectiveness of congress in terms of dealing with mississippi river issues. this is our country and you compare it to the dutch which has been able to keep their country out of the north sea for generations. it is humiliating. if you think about those canal walls, how badly they were built, how much corruption went into the poor maintenance and poor planning of them, and you think about the sec and all of the regulation that was not there so that you could not sell crack and collett gold on wall street's -- selling crap and calling it a gold on wall street eventually comes home. eventually came home to new orleans before it came to the rest of the country in a very little way. normans, but i admire about the people there -- northlands, what

i admire about the people there is that they are trying to find their way home. they are doing it on their own. if you look at the way theme of the cave in the way money was administered not just -- if you look at the way fema the cavbeh and the way money was administered, that city has been trying to find its way home on its own and not an illusion about what the country is and how hollow america actually is when it comes to certain things. i find that to be interesting and admirable. that is what i want to pay attention to now. i think we all are in that boat. a lot of things that we've believed were there to keep

certain parameters and certain standards inherent in everything systemic in our lives, really were not there. they had been eviscerated over the course of decades. now we are where we are at, and new orleans is looking at us and thinking, what did you expect? we have been there. >> before asking the last question, we have some important matters to discuss. we have upcoming speakers. we have someone from the u.s. marine corps. on june 25, president of the washington nationals will be here. i do not know if they will put chicken wire in front, but we will see what happens. chairman of the financial accounting standards board will adjust regulatory reforms in the financial markets.

we would like to present you with a traditional npc coffee mug. and one final question, which is simple, to what newspapers do you currently subscribe? [laughter] >> i subscribe to ""the new york times" about for the same prize as the "baltimore sun." >> i thank you. let's offer him a round of applause. [applause] public like to thank you all for coming today and for listening at home. i like to thank some about or staff members for helping to organize today's lunch and thanks to the npc library.

the video archive is provided by our broadcast operations center. our events are available for free downloads on aidid's and the website. -- on itunes and the website. for more information about the press club, you can go to our web site www.press.org. that is it for today. thank you so much. we are adjourned. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]