urban radio network. andy is a vice president with the association of american publishers and a guest of our speaker. we will skip over the podium for a moment. this may be her last luncheon today. we are thankful for the work she has done. we will skip over the speaker for a moment. alicia is with the wall street journal. thank you for all of that. jimjim, nice to have you here as well. rick, this is a long list of titles. former nbc president, washington bureau achieved, and president of our national press club journalism institute.

the carrot, a new member of the club --garret, a new member of the club. like to have you here. please give them a round of applause. [applause] sinn the summer of 2009, -- in the summer of 2009, everybody was taken by the death of pop icon michael jackson. his doctor is being tried for involuntary manslaughter in a california court room.

harvey levin new that to the story would become part of our nation's cattle reach a culture as well as a reflection of it. the -- nation's culture as well as a reflection of it. tmz.com was launched cha thousandin 2005. it was called the breakout blog. harvey may reflect the future of journalists. he broke several celebrity stories such as the mel gibson anti-semitic tirades. the tiger woods downfall.

of initial public account er's car with a paper street did not make any sense. they were right. -- with a neighbor's tree did not make any sense. he was right. [laughter] tmz has broken ground with the way news is packaged with an emphasis on speed. it was the 10th most popular web site. it ranks above bloomberg,

politico and npr. our guest has had a fascinating journey that continues to unfold. from the university of chicago law school, and and a litigator, and a journalist shinin the trenches. he covered many high-profile court cases around the country. he received nine emmy awards for his reporting. he created and produced "celebrity justice". he has come here today to talk about the tmz empire and why it is as successful and what it means for the future of journalism. the issue to be discussed today could not be more timely. what is the right model in the

digital age back we are pleased -- digital age of? age? we are glad he accepted our invitation. please give a warm welcome to mr. levin. [applause] >> i bet tom brokaw is not going and lindseyut it when the lo lohan anymore. i spoke with students at george washington university. what i noticed was they looked

depressed. they really looked depressed. they fell to the job market was bleak, their future was uncertain, they did not really have a vision for the future. and they were scared. it really shocked me, because it sounded like they were learning about the problems without learning about solutions. and not learning about how you can take an industry in trouble and carve out a niche that will make you successful. the overlay to all of this is -- there was a debate on whether they would invite me among one

of the professors there. tmz does not rise to the standard of what you should be learning. with all due respect, it does relate to what i wanted to talk to you about. i think there was a big disconnect today when i had this little talk with the students. what some of the profs are missing, is not the subject matter that is covered that is really important, but how it is covered. we are a news operation that uses the same skills, the same standards that i used as a working journalists at a very news organizations. we are extremely aggressive. we figured out a way of doing

its where i think the operation is relevant to what is gone today. that to me is what is important. i do not so much want to talk about celebrity news but the delivery system. that is what is important. i do think the delivery system in media generally is stale. i think there is a good chance that lots of people here will be put out of work if the people who run this delivery system do not change it quickly. i think it can be changed. that is what i want to spend a little bit of time before we open it up to questions. there have been a radical changes in the last 30 years. in the last 10 years, radical changes in technology, consumer tastes. i do not think that is being

reflected in the media, period. look at broadcast journalism right now. there is a standard way to present news, which has been going on for four decades. anchor throws to a reporter who throws to a package with track and sound, track and sound, and then throws back to the anchor. it has been done that way for 40 years. it can be done but be did better. -- it can be done better. people get treated when they had success that we need to -- 82

hold on to the success, rather than evolves with what is going on. i was watching, and i will use this as an example. my head is sometimes all over the place. i like to talk about the last thing i saw. when i was getting ready this morning, on cnn, they had a show called cnn student news. i thought, they are trying to attract a younger audience. they had a guy there who was young and not wearing a coat. a sweater vests rather. he was looking into the camera, he was talking about the same stories that everybody else was talking about. in my head, it reminded me of

jon benet ramsey, dressing up this kid that the news director wanted to be that is not authentically who he is. that is not the way he should have been presented. if you are really trying to attract young people, do it with the voice of young people. do it with a different delivery. the fact is young people are not interested in traditional media for the most part in a more. it does not speak to that. the audience is getting older and older. if young people are coming and old people are getting older, you know what happens in the end. it is inevitable. when you look at what happens

with the dynamic in the audience, the question is, what are people doing to attract those young people, to regenerate interest in what is really important, which is the news. it can be the politics, city government, celebrity. what do you do to attract those people. then the question is how did you reinvent yourself? that leads me to newspapers and magazines. look at newspapers and magazines that have had a story run for 100 years and that had useful functions. when the newspaper started, there was no such thing as video or a photo gallery. technologically, there are so many things that have evolved into so many ways people can get their news, what is the magic of

holding a piece of paper in the air when you read back what is it that drives professors and others to sing the praises of newspapers still, when it is not the future? i know that sounds harsh, but that does not mean that newspapers have to fold. it means they have to reinvent themselves. perhaps online, but not in a way that is being done now. right now, what is happening, online the newspaper can be on two platforms, online and the paper. they compete with each other, not complementary. if you break the story in the newspaper or on line, there are lots of struggles going on with the newspaper organizations on how to do this. you have to choose.

there is something about newspapers, the holy grail that people talk about, that we have to preserve. why? what is it about paper? it is not even politically corrected in more? what about paper that makes this so rooted in the past? what is it that forces people to shut down when they talk about how to devolve this into what is going on today? there has been a resistance to going onto the web, because people say it is too fast. if you go on the web, there is not enough time and he will be inaccurate. it will be a resht published. that is a cop out. the web does not force you to publish before you are ready to

publish. it gives you the technology and devices to do it when you are ready. you still decide when to pull the trigger. it is your decision. it does not force you to do with you do not want to do. i always get to this, that to the weather is bad because it is too urgent. there are these devices now that let you recreate and let you recast in a way that can make everybody more timing and i think it is met with some resistance still.

we published a story today, an interesting story, about nbc that they are secretly trying to get the casey anthony interview and they have a producer that made contact with literary agents trying to score a book deal for casey anthony and trying to get her front and the money. the representation is that if we get a book deal for casey anthony, we will get a one-hour prime-time special on nbc. this producer is quietly shopping this around. we had this story -- we got a tip on this story last tuesday. we published it this morning. i wanted to get jose baez on the record because i knew he knew about it and we did not accomplish that until yesterday. it felt like it was worth the wait to make sure we got that. that took six days to get that story and it is important and good. it took six days.

and then again, there are things we get that we publish immediately. when michael jackson died, we didn't publish that story until we were 100% sure. and then we waited a little longer still. it does not force you to do what you don't want to do. i think that is just a really important point. i want to mention the mel gibson dui story. many people say that this is just covering celebrities. for better or worse, celebrities are important in our culture. people are interested in that. i think the kind of disdain that some people have for covering celebrities reflects a disconnect with a taste of the american public. you may not like it that people are interested, but they are.

when you look at what we give people in journalism, to me, it is not the front page of " the new york times." it is more like a magazine. people are interested in all sorts of things. i cover celebrity journalism. my favorite thing to read his books on abraham lincoln. i am not a one-dimensional guy and i don't think many people are that one-dimensional that the only like one thing. there is a diet out there where people can be intensely interested in all sorts of things. it serves a function that people want. that is what i care about right now. i am looking at my audience and our business model, i look at what my audience wants, not

what i want. i am way older than the targetdemo and that is the reason i like having young people in my office. i listen to them. it is very egalitarian. i cannot pretend to know what they know. it is not thistop down or people at the top of givethese edicts. we have an open office and a bullpen where everybody throws out ideas. i could not possibly tell you about urban music or sports the way other people in my office can. we cover all of this. to open yourself up and understand taste is so critical to staying relevant. it is as important as technology and i think people need to open them's of cells up to that more. rather than have disdain for, there has to be exceptions. ultimately, we are in business. we're all in business.

if we don't run our business well, we don't survive well. i think there has got to be a balance there. i think there -- i think you have to pay homage to the fact that it is a business. two other things -- we have spent a lot of time working on the web and the television show. to me, this will all change within five years. in five years, this will be a radically different business. i don't think the web will look the way it does. i don't think television will look the way it looks. i think there will be a merger of the two. it will have qualities of both but it will look like meter. that is where my head is right now. i think the delivery system has gotten stale generally in traditional media. i want to fall victim to that. my effort is being spent on

that land. we are experimenting with something we are calling a tmz lie that we run on the website and radio and it is trying to blend those two elements. it is another example of how everything changes and to stay relevant and to capture an audience and keep an audience and grow an audience. if you get some measure of success, you cannot say how can rival the success because everybody in this room has had it. what do you do with it? do you grow it or try to maintain it? i think we are in a technological world where you cannot maintain. you grow or you die. i think that is the reality.

what i told the students was that you all look so depressed. rather than looking at this as being hard to get a job, there are people running the studios and networks and magazines and newspapers that are looking for the answers. if you got the sensibility of someone young to attract an audience, they will listen to you. this is an opportunity for you. this is a revolution right now. this is an opportunity to quickly make your mark. don't be depressed. think about a vision for what you want to do. don't just plug into what exists. you have to think about that. we have had a measure of success but i am always looking for those people do come and say you are doing is wrong and you could be doing this better. every day i walk into my office, i walk in scared. i am scared every morning when i walk into the office. i have this feeling in my stomach. will we get the right story? will we produce this well

enough? what is happening to the business? there are a million questions. i run scared. i do, but i don't run scared looking at others. i run scared myself. i don't know whether that works for other people. it works for me because it is genuine. i don't think i can never rest on what we have achieved in terms of audience and what not. i know that if we don't keep looking ahead that what i said at the beginning will be about us. i don't want that to happen i am more than happy to take some questions. >> thank you very much. how about a round of applause? [applause] thank you for that inspiring

speech. i have to say about the young people -- i could not agree more. i had an opportunity to write about blo on myg recently on the press club website that the young journalists out there and perhaps the ones not so young have a tremendous opportunity in this transition. it is unfortunate that so many people seem to only see the negative. your enterprise has been a beneficiary of the change and there are positive things to mind in this environment. lets talk a little about the entertainment industry and some of the special things that you do. we will have a name forq &a and we have some questions passed up from our audience for it in terms of the market that you are serving and i could be defined any number of different ways -- entertainment news is the heart of that -- are we now in a culture where entertainment

news is more popular than ever before? how do you assess the market for entertainment news at this point in our history and our culture? >> i think there has been a real interest in it in the last five or six years but for a reason. when you look at traditional media and the way they covered hollywood, the media did not choose stories. the publicist shows stories. the traditional media was always based on getting interviews with stars. publicists were smart enough to say that we can leverage invest. we can dictate what traditional media and entertainment does and does not do. they would go to shows, two magazines and say you want so and so, do this story. it did not matter of the story was true or not. they would do the store because they wanted the person. conversely, if the publicist knew that ratio had gotten wind of a story that the publicist

did not walk out, the publicist would call and say if you do that story, you will never -- never get any of my clients and it worked. it worked for years and decades. everything was false that was coming out. everybody played the game. nobody broke ranks. if we did anything fundamentally different when we created tmz it was that we decided we would not do any interviews with stars. the reason is because we wanted to change the balance of power. we called all the publicists and told them that this game about do this and don't do that, we will not play the game. we will do honest stories. we will be fair. we will be honest. and we will be accurate and we want to work with you but you cannot tell us what to do and what not to do. some jump on board and others did not. it took time. they are all on board now. they realize that they have to change.

the store is the last five years have become more authentic. people are saying this is different than managed, phony celebrity stories. when they see the true hollywood, the good and bad, it has become more interesting to them. i think that is why there is the spike in the interest in journalism because it was all a sameh and veryo-hum. there was a sense it wasn't real and that has been blown up and i think it is more authentic now. somebody has been sending this morning and it is like in russia when everybody had grey clothes the g thenap came in and you -- the gap came in and you could have all sorts of

different colors. >> there still is a lot of the old way of doing business being done, correct? you see some products out there in new products and is about the next thing from a celebrity will be the best version of that product ever and five days from then, we will never remember that product in >> again. absolutely, it is not like -- what has happened is some of the traditional entertainment media have become schizophrenic. they realize they have to be more real so they will do some of those stores and that they will go back to being these supplicants. suddenly, the problem with that is they lose their identity. it is like who are they? they are doing both ends of the spectrum. i think they are losing their brand. >> it occurs to me, why isn't

there more transparency in the reporting of entertainment news to the extent that the washington post as an arms but men as well as npr. -- the washington post has an ombudsman as well as npr. just because you get access to the celebrity, you do coverage? the emphasis of the piece is that this product is coming down the pike and the emphasis is entirely on the product when if you are going to really write a story, that is probably not with the news is. >> for me, the more interesting stories are what we did today with nbc and casey anthony. it is going to the back door when you cannot go in the front. that, to me, is a lack of

transparency and that is an interesting story for me. doing stories about phony things -- i am not interested because i don't think the audience connects to that stuff anymore. i think our people doing those stories but i don't think audience cares. i think they see through it, when they start to see that these are the real stories, the way they are presented are real, they are authentic -- the other stories feel false. they don't matter as much as the organizations that pushed them. >> you talked earlier about how you like a lincoln. do you worry that our culture focuses too much on this material overall? it is a great market for you to be serving because you are successful and you are giving the audience what it wants but the worry that in the marketplace sometimes we are missing the big picture? before 9/11, you could not help but watch an hour's worth of coverage about co garyndit on

cnn and then things changed that fall. as a nation and as a people, do we sometimes have our eyes on the wrong thing? >> i think we do have our eyes on the wrong thing a lot. i don't think it is limited to celebrity. i think about monica lewinsky. i don't think about her -- [laughter] but my recollection is that all three anchors at the time, peter jennings, dan rather, and tom brokaw were in cuba cover pope when the story broke and when they found out what she did to him in the oval office, there on the first jet out of cuba. pap cubanal visit wasthe -- papal visit in cuba was historic. you cannot tell me that this story delmonico wednesday -- that the story of monocot

lewinsky had any connection. i think everybody is guilty of it. to say it is endemic to celebrity, it is not. >> what kind of stories work best for you? you have been gutted breaking certain kinds of stories. what are the stories you really like to have in your space? what will you not touch? could it be a video confrontation or a factoids? >> i like balance. all day long on the website, the tv show is different -- the tv show is a comedic take on hollywood.

it serves a different function than the web. we have 13 stores on the homepage of the website and i look all day long as to whether we have balance. i want something important to balance the site and something interesting that grabs people. i want photos, one a video, once in the light, i want something ironic, what that balance on the pace. it is not any one thing i want. i always want a balance. what we try to do is have our audience is split evenly between men and women on the tv show and the web which is the. unheard of we try to give people enough that there is a general interest. i think that is was really important to me. it is not any one thing. as for what we won't do -- we reject stories all day long. all day long. we will reject things that we know other people will do. you know the michael vickbon

phelpsg story? -- phelps bong story? we had that three months before it broke and it felt wrong to made. felt like he was set up. it felt like circumstances were wrong and i put the picture in my office for three months and i knew it would break. these are the things we won't do. i remember not too long ago, we covered with the courts and we are aggressive in the courts. we got these documents and the britney spears case in the conservative ship. there was information in there that was really personal and i think hurtful to her children. i looked at this and the person at the court who we have called me up and told me what she had. i said this is a mistake. they clearly never meant to have this thing public. it should have been sealed. it was just hurtful and it would have heard these kids.

-- it would have heard these kids. -- a h it would haveurt these kids. hurt these kids. we are aggressive reporters but it felt robert i called up a lawyer and said you could not have meant for this republished and chief redoubt. -- and she freaked out. -- this published and leaked out. and she freaked out. she called the judge. but judge silda but we have the only copy. the copy we had was legitimate. we never publish did. we have debates all belong of what to put on the website and what not to put up and we encourage lots of debates. it is a big bull pen. we want everybody participating. you'll also learn who is coming

up. there are young people who could become producers. you want these voices. we debate all day long about what to put up or not. at a point where you become a big operation, many people send you many things and tips. this is a constant thing in the office. >> i had a number of people ask me in person before we came here >> -- where the ground rules -- what are the ground rules regarding paying 04 content to? content?rally about ho talk generally about how the process works? you have a staff of about 100 people which is sparse given the amount of output you have. rules, a the pay. >> i will gladly buy video from anyone in this room who has good video. i have absolutely no problem with that. i have no problem buying photographs. people talk about this and say you pay for the eggs.

things. we pay for videos and photos, absolutely w. hy not? -- why not? what is the logic behind paying for it or not paying for it to? if i buy a video, it does not change the video. it is objective. the video is the video. if somebody shoots it and i am in a business and someone comes for my business, we want to charge you something, i look at it and there is value, i will buy it. and i will say it is no different -- i'm sure many people worked in local news here -- when there is a fire and a house in the middle of the night for a crash on the freeway -- it is stringers out there shooting these things green thesand these stringers' go tow stations in the morning and say we have a video of this crash or fire, do you want to buy it? same thing. it has been going on forever. i have no problem with it. i will absolutely by photos and videos for interviews are different we don't really do

interviews but the problem with paying for interviews is it is not objective. when you offer somebody money for an interview, you're basically encouraging them to make this a good story and you are incentivizing the person to shade the truth or lying or make it worth their while. they know they're still our willx worth if they tell the right story or three times x if they embellish. they will go for the money and you don't know they are not telling the truth. that is the problem with paying for interviews. what has happened with traditional media is they think they figured out a way of getting around that which is they will not pay for the interview, we will pay joe jackson for a high-school yearbook picture of michael jackson. right. that is the way the got around

for a long time. we found out that all the network j courtsose baez to get the case he entered -- casey anthony interview. he was talking about how much money this is war than we did a story about this three months ago. two days after we did this story, abc news said we will no longer pay for photos and video connected to an interview with the thought was interesting. --, which i thought was interesting and a revealing statement. it was that kind of back door way of doing it which i think is the real problem. video or anything objective, absolutely. in terms of the staff, it is like any other staff, we have aggressive journalists and we have managers and a lot of my staff has been trained from the ground up. we thought we would get a mix. from the ground up.

it has worked for us because they have the sensibility very they understand the sensibility of who we are and what the brand is. they need to be managed but we have good managers. >> let's say i am a member of a law enforcement team and i have a fact out there that i think you guys will. like i will say i it will cost you $5,000. >> you can do that. -- no, you cannot. we have numerous law enforcement contacts. i was a reporter for many, many years in los angeles and much of this happens in l.a.. i was a reporter there,ithere developed a lot of sources and police departments, lawyers, judges, all sorts of people. those people did not evaporate. at the same time, i have a step that has been remarkable in that they have a work ethic and have created a ni their ownches or that have found their own sources.

myoporum tick -- my operation is very egalitarian. everybody is in the morning meeting. when we did the mel gibson story, the person who found the d about theui was a pa who saw -- the person who found out about it was a pa at moonshado ws, who saw the red lights after mugginess and walked out. if i did not include him in the process, we would not have broken the original story. this is a very egalitarian thing. everybody has doubled to their own context. it is a very kevin bacon-like city. somebody knows somebody who knows somebody. we have a lot of sources and they trust us. difference between success and failure. think you will be fair, they will come back. if they don't trust you, if you trust you, it will damage us greatly.

trust is the biggest thing. we have lots and lots of those sources. >> briefly, what is the dna of how you broke the michael jackson death? >> i'm trying to think of how much to say. part of that was -- we made a phone call the biggest part of the michael jackson story was not when we found that he was dead. that had the biggest splash, obviously, but for us in terms of chasing the story, the initial story we had was an ambulance went to his house and he had doctors all the time. we knew that. when he died, that was a huge thing but the biggest story hat says it for us, that mmade us understand the urgency was

that we found out that he was in full cardiac arrest. i will not say how we found that out but we made a certain phone call that anybody could have made. we found out that information. that changed everything. from there, we started working our sources. we knew early on how desperate it was. that was a call at lots and lots of people could have made. it changed everything. >> what is the most ridiculous or hilarious video or picture of a celebrity you had published. you could say the when you did not publish false >> of. [laughter] >> any come to mind? >> everyday things happen. honestly, for me, it is like a bathtub. it is bathtub knowledge. the bathtub fills up with water every day and you pull the plug and fill up again the next day. i can't remember from one to the next.

it all blends together. >> let me rephrase the question -- anything that you ran along those lines and regret it? >> this was not a shocking photos. it was just the way we dealt with it. my staff is really created. -- creativity. creative. the push the envelope sometimes with non-important stories and sometimes they can become, if they're not man is right, they can become big stories themselves. jennifer love few it had gained some weight and there was a photograph of her that clearly showed that. somebody on my staff who was a clever guy and i will blame this on myself because it did not register.

he wrote a story on the debt wait. it was two sentences. for those of you who are familiar with her movies, you'll get it and for those who are not familiar, this will be named. mean. that line was"i know what you ate last summer." we were severely criticized for that. and rightly so. and rightly so and it literally became -- people magazine did a weight and on a wait an general he lovewitt. jennifer love hewitt. i regret it. >> you talked earlier about how

many people don't get what they need to be doing in the business. what do you see where they get it? what about new or old enterprises doing something new or correct? >> i think people have this sense that the internet is a huge player. it is how to harness it and what to do with it. i read a politico all the time and i think they do a good job. there are others that are doing a good job. "the new york time" has figured out the web better than most. "the la times" is good but there are still issues there. that is with their website. i think people are struggling on the internet and i think that is good. they need to figure that out. tv is more problematic. the problem with tv is i don't think people realize how broke in the delivery system is. -- broke in the delivery system is. ken the delivery system

is. jim and i were talking last night and you don't need the middle man as much anymore. that may sound threatening. the notion of anchors and reporters who front the stories -- i'm not sure if that is as compelling as the people who actually get the story. the main outlook is good, perhaps, but i don't think it matters. i think the authenticity of seeing people especially in broadcast media, in seeing people who really owned the stories and have the stories and they don't have to present them with soundtrack but they can present them in a different way. when we do our tv show and i'm not using that as the best example, but we never look at the camera. we have real meetings. they are funny but they are real. i don't think they have to be funny either. i think there are ways of presenting things that can be fundamentally different and fresh that can convey the same information may be in a more compelling way or any more

current way and a fresher way that may attract an audience that left because they are bored. in some ways, broadcast does not understand the problem as much. >> you have talked publicly about being gay and how difficult it was to keep that a secret until you did not any longer. kenya took about those pressures -- can you talk about those pressures and how liberating it must've felt now that you can talk openly? what is the environment in the industry about viewing an issue like that >> ? i was agoraphobic for a long time. i freaked out when i was on television because i thought this would end my career. if i was not working,i did not leave the house for three years. i literally was panicked when i

would go out. it was a panic that was this irrational panic that made no sense. finally one day, i said to myself that i am running my life. -- i am ruining my life. i had a show on the station or was a reporter and i said i was miserable. but did not want to make a declaration but if the news director really hates it, screw him. i will do something else. this is ridiculous. you reach a tipping. . -- tipping tone up. -- tipping poiont. nt.

there was a tipping point for me and i thought to myself that it. it was just one day. nothing happened. it was the same. i build things up in my head and i can create scenarios. i'd create a nuclear war in my head when it is not that at all. it is one of my many flaws. i think i did that with that. that said, there are areas in the country where it is a huge problem still. i think it is a liability in terms of career for people who come out and i think there is still a lack of tolerance. i think there is a long way to go. i have been pretty lucky. >> there were all kinds of rumors for a while that tmz was going to have a presence in washington. what ever happened with that? >> it will happen someday. it is my passion. i want to do tmzdc and the only thing stopping us as we have some much going on back in l.a. between the website and the tv

show and mobile and tmz live and how we have long staybus ytour -- launched a hollywood bus tour, which is so much fun. it is so much fun. it is a show and are so many things we are doing. i realize it will require me to be here for awhile. i want to do that and i will do that. the reason i want to do it is because i really believe that so much of the media that covers politics is really covering it for inside the beltway. there are millions of people out there who want to be interested in politics and they feel badly that they are not but it is not acceptable and it is boring and too complicated and they cannot find an entry level. i want to make tmzdc a personality-based site.

not because it will be the most important material but it will introduce people to politics on a level they can relate to. it will be on a personal level. we did a er this within hsock in a funny sort of way. -- we did this with aaron schock in a funny sort of way. we interviewed him. we were going to make him at the brody jenner of washington, d .c. i think the cameraman is --colin here? your the cameraman who did that. his press secretary called me up and said how dare you. i said you will call me up in a few days and apologize. we got this video on cnn and fox news and nbc station in chicago and peoria where he is from and the bottom line to this is we did a series of stories about him that more

personality-driven. i went to dinner with him not too long ago and he said before we go, come to my office. we will do a telephone town hall. the easily get 50-100 people prayed he had like 12,000 people on the phone. he will be very open about this. he talks about this and says that tmz did more for me to get people interested in who i am and now i can talk about what i am interested in and it will actually listen. i think there is a way of getting a lot of people involved in politics on that personality level and then we will do other things. that is what i want to do and we will eventually do a >> it. can you give us a timeline [laughter] ? >> i could die first. i don't know. there is a lot of pressure right now with all the things going on in la.

if you try to do too much, things can fall apart. >> what about next year? [laughter] >> we will do politics next year, just don't know we will be able to do tmzdc as a formal site. >> if you can stand by, i will make some last announcements and we will get to the last question and a little presentation. we're almost out of time and we have a couple of housekeeping matters to take care of. i want to remind you about some of coming speakers. upcoming speakers. the first is october 31, herman cain will be in the ballroom. tom brokaw will be here to talk about the political scene as well as the new book he has out. we will have the u.s. postmaster general here to talk about the troubles affecting his organization and the solutions they would like to try to enact. harvey, we always give a parting gift and believe it or not, the gift will give you today is the first of its kind we are aware of the branding you

have when your tv show. typically, we give a coffee mug but we are aware that you don't use a coffee mug. it is a national press club travel mug. >> i will use this on the show [applause] we think it would be a great launching point for your next d.c.-based publication or a website. >> thank you. >> we are glad to have you here today. it has been an interesting question and per answeriod as --and answer period as well as your speech. we'll ask a final question -- is there one particular celebrity from the past that you would have liked to have covered or gotten to know yourself? either currently alive or from the past? >> yes, the person that i wish i would have gotten to know and the person i wish i could have

done something with on the website was steve jobs. i think steve jobs may be the most influential person in our. lifetime lifetime. he blows me away. i cannot believe the. is vision -- believe his vision. -- he is an historic figure. what he did was he changed everything about our world as profoundly as the airplane did. he changed everything about our world. it was not just one thing that he did. he did thing after thing after thing. i have never read about anybody or seen anything with anybody with that kind of vision and our lifetime. i think he was a remarkable -- i cannot wait for this book to come >> out. out.

>>thank you very much, how about a round of applause? [applause] thank you. i would like to thank our national press club staff including our library and broadcast center organizing today's event and if you want more information or you feel like a copy of the program, please check out our website,ww.press.org and we are adjourning. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> here are a couple of congressional hearings we are covering tonight. president obama discusses deployments of u.s. forces to you donna. -- uganda. live coverage at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span2. and a hearing will examine the effects that the european debt problems can have the global economy.

it gets under way at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3. >> although this headline proved false, the defeat by harry truman was iconic. it continued to impact political history. this weekend on "the contenders" it down and it force and national politics. it is a live from the roosevelt hotel in new york city, friday, 8:00 p.m. eastern, on c-span. >> coming up in a few moments, your calls and comments "washington journal." at noon eastern, the house will take a measure that will have a requirement on contractor payments. and in 45 minutes, a focus on adam smith about this week's

joint congressional deficit committee meeting. into the investigation into the company. cliff stearns shares the energy oversight committee. fter that, john still gordteeln on the income tax system. ♪ ♪ host: usa today, no 1 million homeowners will get a shock to save on their mortgages. president obama made an announcement. announcement.