4 $8, for $9, that is all profit. there are no trucks, no gas. there is no printing press. that is a revenue stream. if you're scratching it out on the back of a notepad, you will find out that you can generate $300,000, $350,000 a month if you get one-tenth of the baltimore sun's subscriptions to commit to you. with that, you can hire 30 reporters. the scary part of that is that a lot of our citizens are not going to get it because they're not in line. the delivery model is not as democratic as newsprint. that is something to contend with going forward. i think there is a future that begins with content. you will have to start believing in content again. you'll have to pay for content to provide it. to hire back to the talent. . . pay for. if we do not do that -- to put

out a product and no one is willing to pay for it, and the freshman business major will tell you if you do not have a product is time to stop attending. i the that is where we're going. i think, finally, some people are going to get there but it is are going to get there but it is way late in the game. that happy note, my shirt is dry. >> if you do not mind, we will shift back and forth. it becomes a bizarre square dance. we have several questions essentially survival skills for those who are still working in daily journalism. people want to know about young people. should they continue to strive for a career in journalism? what about those of us who still work in newsrooms? all of these dynamics that have to do with shifting sands and the pressure in many people

having to work more with your resources in the newsroom? a little practical advice for people who are still in the trade or thinking about working here. >> i really do not consider myself an expert on what to do if you're still in the game. one thing that worked for me in a multimedia cents where i have a marketable skill and i did not know i did -- in a multimedia sense, i managed not to get promoted. in some perverse way, i parlayed the police beat into something in a totally different medium. there is something in this. . . beach would be more specialized.

you would be assigned to cover something and you need to cover the web good magazine writer would cover it. they would tell us we would become more like magazines and magazines would become more like literature. that is what they said in the 1970's. one of my professors' work for upi at the time. this is where we were going. we were going to see the ambulance chasing too television and become more sophisticated. i lived for the moment where "usa today" showed up and they said we should start jumping stories. there is something i would argue, if you are a young reporter now, make yourself an expert in something. stay put. get to be aware of something,

because it may translate, if you are not at a newspaper tomorrow, there is somebody that wants to know about that. make yourself essentials somewhere. for god's sake, do not be a generalist. we've seen what generalissimo has done to newspapers. it has made them irrelevant. >> there is discussion of a not for profit model. do you see any future for that work? >> i see that if the chain newspapers in the second tier counts did not get it together, if they don't turn a corner and pull themselves through the keyhole of the pay model on line, it will fall to start ups.

you will be able to hire the cream of the bought out, laid off crop of journalists, and if you are committed to putting the money back in, i think it will actually grow. if you do the math, pulled out a cocktail napkin and do the math of of six, seven, $8 a month for 15% of what the newspapers prior subscription base was, and realize that all that money, all that is now profit. it is not circulation costs. circulation is a cost center. we did not see it, but that has been transformed. on a small scale basis, where everybody is committed to just covering the regional area, there is no room -- a lot of things are not relevant anymore to the local paper. comics, the crossword puzzle,

national coverage. but there is still a market in these regional areas for journalism. ultimately it will be a non- profit or very modest profit. somebody has to say, 6% growth is ok. let's put everything else back into the product. nobody has said that in journalism for 25 or 30 years. so here we are. >> somebody asked, how can reporters keep this from happening to the industry again? that presupposes that they can. >> in a way, the nonprofit model is the only way you can do that. i believe that some of these chains, the tribune company and its ilk are so badly off that if they do manage to create new revenue stream out of online subscriptions, they will run right back to wall street, rushing their profits in to try

to boost their share price and appease the analysts. i see no suggestion that suddenly leadership and journalism has turned a corner. so i worry about, even if the model changes and gives them some breathing room, i worry that they will not have -- in this country, politically and financially, nobody plants and olive tree. that all plant flowers they come 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 is going to look like six or seven years from now, which is why we are in that state wherein. the plant an olive tree, you will not get an olive for seven or eight years. but we need some olive trees. even if you create this new revenue stream, they will screw it up again. -- they will butcher it.

>> there was some back-and- forth between you and arianna huffington. he would like to see a blogger a city council meeting 3 to go over the bridge between the traditional journalism outlet and the blogs and what you see as a challenge in the migration of quality content? >> i do not believe in citizen journalist. i do not believe in bloggers as anything other than an additional resource that can't provide raw information that can then be synthesized by professional journalists. i believe that journalism is a craft and the people will -- people. it is obvious to anyone who is

actually been in the journalism, but i will give you one of them. the best editor -- or one of the best team of editors i ever worked with was the guiding celebu might know from "the washington post" -- a guy some of you might know from "the washington post." some of these stories, there was a hole to drive a delivery truck through. 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 said in a room and they put two facts together and goddammit, will equal four. there is some great stuff in the realm of controversy. for commentary, which sells itself cheap on the internet,

that is completely were the. 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 b altimore sun" a mean to support my family. they paid me to go to the baltimore police department in a kiss ass every day to find out what was going on and to find out -- and to kiss someone else's ass. i had to compare one life to another and, take a mounted drinks, find the follow-up story. it was 14-15 hours a day. no one knows that as a hobby. the vanity of the internet, and approaching the very immature medium, we are already doing journalism.

look, i went to a council meeting. you went to the public kubuke face of politics. if you actually knew anyone in the bowels of zetia ministries economy might have actually reported on what was going on. for that, you deserve to be paid. journalism has done so badly at that. listen. while the guys at my paper roll -- were pursuing this pulitzer and this project, reporting on how good their reporting is, reporting on hearings. finally, we care about this from january to december, because after that there is another pulitzer submission. while they were doing that and pouring resources into that, because that is the reza may, the ceasto have a labor report her in a city with the unions were being eviscerated. it seems to have a poverty report or half of the adult

black males are without work. that is not an economic model that is liable. that is a model for unbelievable party. -- that is not an economic model that is viable. that only generated copy for a news all that was shrinking. the stopped covering the courthouse because that way, it would fit. the beat system the first thing the eviscerated. among its promoted and it's a pulitzer prize because the cover the hell out of their city. journalism has their own false statistics. that's is this is the pulitzer. if you want to fix the journalism, is the pulitzer prize committee started to say, "you know what? we're going to give out five every year, but you have to

cover the beat for five years.' we never actually covered -- to have an impact to have an issue, now submit your stuff for a pulitzer. . .

>> completely divorced journalism from its original mission and made it a profit center for wall street. they very quickly came to the collusion and were correct they could make more money in the short-term by putting out a lousy product than good product. let's cut out the news hole, the staffing. think about the idea of buyouts. buyouts were the operative way in which we reduced ourselves as a profession. that shows you the contempt we had for our own product. you want a reductions in force because somebody at the head office says so? layoffs. seniority. a lot of these are gild papers. if not do it by seniority. take the young guys who haven't covered thabeet for 8, 9, so

the guys who can take the buyouts, they are jerks like me. someone is saying come and work on a tv show. someone else is giving them a book option. the people who took the first four or five or six buyouts from "the baltimore sun" had options. there were some people wanted to stay because they were committed, because their kids were in school. by and large, when you go with buyouts instead of layoffs, you are saying we want to take the most expensive reporters, the ones who are making the most money. all we care about is the bottom line. we know that what is going to happen is the buyout ranks will be filled with the best people who have other options. we went with buyout, not layoffs. that tells you what was going on back in chicago and los angeles and everywhere else. they just did not give a damn about the product. make 30, 35, 37.5%. it was shameful. we destroyed ourself.

>> one member of the audience asked "given how badly the big media outlets performed on huge stories with a ton of resource like the iraq war, why should the public trust them at all?" >> the all the self more miserable. listen. cudos to the pulitzer this year for not giving anything out for financial reporting. [laughter] >> they got that one and iraq was pretty much a systems failure by most mainstream media. but ultimately i don't believe that any other framework -- listen it. doesn't matter whether -- i do believe that bringing dead trees to your door stem is now a and knack criminal. we're in a path where more and more subscriptions are going to be going online. the issue is whether people will pay for them. but given that i do believe that

the future of journalism is people who are paid to do this job. if more people are paid more to do this job, if the salaries improve you're going to get a better class of reporter. if you're able to hire more editors, not less, and if the editors have more experience you're going to get a better class of product as well. but until that happens, i just don't see any merit to the idea of 1,000 bloggers equals 100 paid reporters. and then because there's so many more of them they'll be in so many -- i just don't buy it. i read a lot of blogs. there's very, you know, everything from commentary to arts carettism. there are things -- there are newspapers now that are irrelevant. criticism. television criticism. film criticism is basically irrelevant. there are people -- there are better sites for film criticism than there are film critics at

newspapers. there's just you can't watch films and comment on them as a hobby. that you can do. but journalism, covering something is self-sus take and self-protect as an american institution, be it the police department or the state department, i don't see it happening except an adversarial stance again that institution in terms of trying to acquire information that institution doesn't want you to have and get it out. and i don't see that being done in any other way than with the the mainstream media model. it could be a mainstream media model where it's directly an internet. it could be the equivalent of an i.f. stone newsletter that just covers one aspect of american government. it doesn't have to be, but the thing that will make it consistent is whoever is working for whatever framework, they'll be paid. and they'll be paid enough to make it worthwhile and they'll be paid enough to bring people

into the profession who can do that job. until that model is restored and people are paid, i don't see any -- as bad a job as we've done over the next 10 years, watch what happens without us. >> someone asked, assuming that you would, how do you propose greater stakeholder involvement in improving journalism? >> i'd have to ask what a stakeholder is. >> well, my guess is, someone who is a consumer of news. >> you know, this is going to sound really wrong. but i never really cared about what the readers thought. i'm the worst marketing guy in the world. they used to tell me that the readers want shorter stories. the readers want really localized news. the readers want this. the readers want that. the readers want punchier headlines. the readers -- you know, i can't on c span. [laughter] >> i was going there but i'm on c-span. >> that's cable.

>> it's not my cable. >> but in a way, you know, i've come to believe and i came to believe as i was a journalist that i don't write for those people. if they exist. i wanted to write stories for the people who if they had intimate knowledge of what i was writing about, they would say, "yeah, that guy caught it." so if it was a detective and i'm doing -- you know, i wanted a homicide detective not just in baltimore. and not that he would like everything and he would be mad about stuff and he wouldn't like it when i ranked on a cop who i thought deserved to be ranked on. but that i didn't want him to say, "this chump doesn't know my job." and i figured if i got it right for him, and if he was able to get through the story and not be disgusted, then readers would follow. and i sort of proceeded on that basis since i began writing like longer articles. at some point that became what i actually thought newspapers should do.

again, i'm really against generalists. the idea you can cover something well enough to explain it to the mythical 7th grade-educated reader? that's the guy they told us about in journalism school? your reader will have a 7th grade education. to hell with them, then. i don't want to write for that guy! no, really, who does? [laughter] >> but eventually they published a whole newspaper to write for that guy. it's called u.s.a. today. and the guys at the "baltimore sun" saidner" onto something there. no jumps. 12-inch stories." we went through that phase. i want to write stories for the people who are living that event. and then i'd believe other people who follow it because then you're writing with interior knowledge that says i'm worth reading. i really notice beat. and it took years dish wasn't a good police reporter for the first two or three years. i had all the headlines. i didn't get beat. but there's nothing there that i would save. it was only after i'd been on the beat four, five, six years

and eligible for a buy you the that it started -- that the journalist started getting worthwhile. so i just believe if you tell a story that people don't know you come to the camp fire with the best story, people will follow you and they'll sit down and listen. so trying to anticipate what readers want, that's what got us into this mess. go out and get the best story. >> now i know why our president of u.s.a. today was kind enough to ask me to host today. [laughter] >> i wanted to ask you about that creative process. >> best in the business. >> sure they appreciate that. >> so that's a good jumping off point to go into what you've been doing in more recent years. do you take a different approach in creating content for your television audience in terms of trying to please them? >> yeah. no, i'm just as indifferent to them as i've always been.

[laughter] >> but it's a different model. i mean, i don't get my nose out of joint from journalism and say, oh, the wire is in any way comparable to journalism. "the wire" and "homicide" and "generation kill" "generation kill" is based on journalism so it's a little different. it was drama. journalism shouldn't get its nose out of joint by trying to compete with -- when you can make it up you can shape the story and make it as graceful as you want the art to be. and you get to make choices. and you don't get to do that in journalism, nor should you. so i wouldn't compare the two. it's a different skill set. when i left journalism, the first thing i had to do, i walked into this wright room on "homicide" and everybody was a playwright. they'd all come out of the yale drama school and had a lot of success on the stage. and they said, "oh, read chekov"

read all these guys -- at best i'd read one or two chekov place. pirendelli i don't even think i had the cliff notes. but they basically said you're in another rem now. you're doing something different -- another realm now. the best thing i can say about "the wire" the impulse behind doing that show was in journalism. but just the impulse. it was being strained through something that has a totally different purpose. >> you've done remarkably well for someone who you might suggest is ill-prepared for it. how have you done so well in making that transition? >> i had one good skill set, which did come from journalism, which is i had a pretty good ear for dialogue. you know, i'm nod -- i'm not an irish or a german or an african-american cop. and i'm not a drug dealer. but i found that -- i found i had two things which could

translate, which was one was a good ear for dialogue. and 60% of writing drama is dialogue and the other 40% is pacing. and i had a good teacher teaching me the other part, which is pacing, which strip it down, -- every line justifies itself. it's even more ruthless than journalism in a way. but the other thing i had going for me, does anything know who homer bygart was? i see a few nods. ok. when i became a nmallist, bygart became my hero very quickly. my dad told me about him. he was a new yorker so he remembered bygart from his time at the herald tribune and the times. bygart's great skill set was that he didn't mind being a jerk or an ass hole. not like an ass hole but like a goof. i'm serious. journalism is supposed to be an innately curious profession. i can't tell you the number of people i worked with that didn't

want to be seen asking stupid questions, or didn't want to be seen asking any question, or didn't want to ask a question where it wasn't clear they already knew the answer and they were trying to catch you. the idea of a journalist asking -- sort of walking into a room and saying, gee, i don't understand any of this, help me. there's a great story about -- bygart had a terrible speech impediment and they didn't let him be a reporter until his 30s at the herald tribune because they thought, he's an idiot. he's a copy boy. finally they let him be a reporter and he was great. i mean, he was just pulling back things as a metro reporter nobody else was getting. he won his first pulitzer. he went up in the elevator with laguardia. he went up the elevator at the empire state building when a plane hit the building and he won a spot news pulitzer because he was the guy they didn't notice going up with the mayor. he went up to where the plane hit the building. but his great skill was to find in -- defined in this one story. i forget who it was but it was

some captain of industry who was just talking to punch salts berg and said, i can't believe the reporter you sent in to interview me. salts berg said, why? he said, i plain everything to him. -- he didn't understand anything. i had to explain everything to him. imagine a white 30 something standing at rose and fayette streets saying you guys sell drugs? how does this work exactly? it was not a loss more sophisticated than that. years later the 15-year-old at the center of the book when he was about 22, if we were sort of remaining 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 vine street, selling a ground stash and running back and forth from the corner to where he's hidden his drugs. and he cease me out on his grandfather's steps watching it. and he said, "man, david, you

just look like you didn't know anything. you looked so pathetic. and i just decided i had to help you, you know? it was like, it was a wonder you weren't getting robbed every day. and that was my skill set was, "ok. i don't know anything." and those two things made it really easy to learn. and it also made it really easy when i walked into that writers' room and saying, you know, how do you do this? and to this day, i mean, we have guys who come in and they're doing spec work or going to write a spec script and they're like, you know, they want to act like, well, i know how to do the wire because i've watched the show and i've done this and i did three law and order episodes. like i know they're going to mess up. it's like they don't come in terrified and with 20 questions on their sleeve, they're doomed you, know? and i think journalists, you know, it's amazing how many

people who got into this profession are just not curious or terrified of being cure cross. >> a question was, what kind of relationship do you now have with the rank and file on the baltimore precipitation and how have they reacted to some of your criticism of the department policy of not releasing names of police officers involved in shootings? >> the detectives and patrolmen who are still there -- you got to remember it's been a lot of years -- but the ones who are still there, up to maybe the rank of lieutenant, are fine with me. and the ones who are in middle management it can either go either way up to the rank of maybe major. and colonels or above hate my guts. by the way, that's the way it should be if you cover the a beat. that's the way the to cover a beat, bosses can't stand you. middle management sometimes will talk to you if it's in their interest. everybody who's below that is just somebody to buy a beer for and listen to them rant. at