i was one of the so-called gang of 8. the leaders of the democrat and republican of the house and senate and the intelligence committees. we were brought to the situation room and told about a surveillance program that the bush administration was undertaking. we could not bring staff. we could not take notes out of the room. we could not ask anybody other than the briefers about anything because it was so secret. this exposure to this kind of material comes under a procedure in the 1947 national security act. at any rate, it was not until the president -- president bush revealed the surveillance program publicly that i could call if you people and check if you things out at which point i

learned the program on which i have been briefed was being conducted outside of the law congress had crafted. i had not understood that from the briefings. i cannot describe the briefings even now because they are so classified. i had not understood it. what happened after that was a lot of jockeying around and finally congress was more fully briefed and fifsa, this law was amended to cover activities and questions. that was the right results. the law has to exercise oversight. issue two is libya. the involvement of the u.s. during the obama administration in the exercise over libya was

arguably -- no one is absolute about this -- something that should have been briefed to congress and much more detail on the front end. the war powers act should have been invoked as an issue about that as well. at any rate, that did not happen. there is still enormous resentment by many in congress. this panel may not be sympathetic. members of congress including a very signor republicans -- that i get some more attention on this panel -- they are very upset about to basically congress being disrespected in a process that certainly did involve an expenditure of $1 billion and the employment of considerable defense assets by our country. >> we talked a little bit in

advance -- obviously had discussion before we came out here. is it much different when a president is reelected? is a president more confident? does that reelection magically make a president more confident in dealing with national security issues? i wonder if your -- and your experiences, we have a wide range of presidents to deal with. she can talk about what she saw from the hill. it's a second term president much different? >> how can really testify to that. at the end of nixon's first term, one thought one had everything lined up. the vietnam war was over. there was talks with russia. we had a trilingual --

triangular relationship. the next step was to be improving relations with europe. that design could not be implemented because within four months, watergate to blow up. the part of the second term that nixon -- we still did some extraordinary things. the 1973 middle east war and brought in from the soviet side to the american side. that is not a good example. that is an example of crisis management under extreme circumstances. it is not a good example of how the energy system -- many the only thing you can take from the energy system is it survived that strain. it enabled nixon to continue

making decisive decisions at key moments. i do not think you can draw lessons for the sake of the country. i think it was a national tragedy. it was self-inflicted and parts. it also pushed to an extreme that many historians will think -- >> let me stay with that for a moment. as the watergate intensify, was like inside national-security issues? >> throughout its. in office, president nixon made a distinction between domestic and foreign decisions. the energy personnel were not invited to were encouraged to

participate in any domestic discussions. we did not even know the evolution of the watergate case until it -- until it blew open. there were some -- [unintelligible] -- and the middle east war. we continued the system. the about the time the president could appoint -- as it does any way in the second term. a good part of the first term had to be used to establish and agreed interpretation of where we are in the world. much of the second term as the

implementation of that vision. that was accentuated. we set up something called --and it was really a group in which the operation of decisions or pre discussed in that group before it went to the president. there was one theory in which they had resigned in no chief of staff had been appointed. i and the head of the federal reserve screen decisions because

there was no system working. but it was only a three week period. i only mention it to indicate the really painful atmosphere at the moment. it's what we thought had all of the elements of substantial achievement. >> on this notion of the second term. >> i think nobody elected president really knows what they are in for. i think nobody is really fully prepared to be president. i think most people do not know what the job is like. if he had been vice president for a period of time, if you have a father is president, but when it is really yours and the

responsibility is on your shoulders is all the difference in the world. nobody is really quite ready for that job when they step into it. secondly, everybody hopefully learned on the job. i think presidents do. they learn very quickly. third, over the first term they made a lot of decisions and a very tough decisions. president clinton and president bush had his. president bush had the response of 9/11, the decision to invade iraq. as dr. kissinger said, by the end of the first term, the president knows what the president thinks. they have said it bought a policy framework in place. the second term tends to be more about implementation and execution. i think it is very clear that a

second term president is very different than a first term president. the national security adviser's role and in some sense the nsc system needs to adapt a little bit to the transition. >> it is clearly the case that there is an awful lot of learning on the job. there just is no job before this that prepares you. all presidents have face the enormous challenges in their first year or two. they have had some difficult all comes. i've read a book before coming into the obama administration about the first year of presidential administrations and foreign policy. if you think about our history and how many perilous moments we have had during that time. you have learning curves about how you make decisions. you have learning curves about how to work with your team. he have learning curves about how to interact peron the world. what the dynamic is around the world you are living in. you develop a sense of confidence and how what you need, what kind of information

you need or process you need and where you want to take them. i think that is why there is a sense in which people really do step up over time. and second terms, the president can then say, i know where i want to go. i can set an agenda for my second four years and take them there. i am going to rise to his provocation about congress. i worked in the senate for five years. i think it is a challenge to make this work. it is true that the national security adviser does not testify before congress. the white house that does not. in the clinton administration, we try to find a lot of other mechanisms. there were a lot of informal confrontations. i have to say, i am not here as a representative from the obama administration. the president call the leadership got to the white house three days before he made the decision.

we had extensive conversations. the senate concern -- confirmed i testified a number of times to the foreign relations committee. is a sense in congress that was not enough engagement. i know who will the senior republican was? he is referring to. it is legitimate for congress to expect that whether we have succeeded, i think the white house administration always feels we are doing a better job in congress does. i do not dispute that there has to be engagement, there has to be dialogue. "i agree with that. it is important to remember that our constitution provides checks and balances. it does that for a reason. a good brake on presidential

action when it works is a functioning congress that has bipartisanship and seriousness. when that relationship works well, i think it helps the country and makes this make better decisions. a couple of comments on a second term, presidents in their second term are not running for a reelection. i think that frees them to some extent for good or bad to do things that they would have been reluctant to do as they were seeking reelection. many people talk about president obama in terms of, we get to this election if he is reelected he might take on some issues that have been put off before the election season. i have my personal list and he hoped -- i hope he does that.

that is another point. the prior experience the president has does matter. i am thinking of eisenhower who was a skilled military general who brought organizational skills to the security job in the white house that have been unrivaled since. he had a committee that took a 10-year look forward. his cabinet meetings which i did study because i was the one who took the minutes of the clinton -- the carter cabinet meetings were much more interesting to than some other presidents. rather than have a show and tell exercise where each cabinet member would report what he or she had been doing, he put a topic on the table.

the cabinet was aware in advance. they would interact and discuss the topic which i think is -- i am not sure how much of it was on foreign policy, but i think that is a much more interesting way to organize a very talented people who need to bond with each other and who actually one would hope would bring their own skills to this. i think it interesting to see if president obama wants a second term how his foreign policy changes because he is free from the real election process. >> dr. kissinger has to leave surely so we will have one more question for him before he leaves. i will ask this to the entire group. all of you have had to deal with very tough decisions over time. president nixon, president ford, a vietnam, dealing with china and the soviet union, president bush and the war on

terror, iraq, afghanistan, weapons of mass destruction and all of these issues came up, president clinton had issues to deal with including the transition of the cold war and the national security policy to something beyond that. what was the toughest decision looking back that you had to make? >> that is a very good question. the literature on the subject, we went on alert twice in the crisis. we did not agonize over that decision. that was done under tremendous pressure. you had to make a quick

decision. i would say the decision a lot of time was at the beginning of the nixon administration was how to deal with vietnam. we had 550,000 troops in that place. nixon made a decision that we would begin to extricate ourselves. how you extricate yourself when you are the leader of an alliance in the middle of the cold war. how to at the same time maintain a position of the united states has the potential leader of the free world and maintain the options toward the opening to china, we went through many

agonizing periods full of big military outcomes without was concluded by previous experience. bound by proposals that were not made one predecessors were in office. we chose what we chose. you are asking me about what was a difficult decision? there were many points. we spent long nights making decisions. the curious aspects is that it gets very quiet in the crisis.

several decisionmakers -- to have to feel your way very quickly through a decision, at least that is how it was in my experience. it was a strain. in my experience, the key people who made the decision in the crisis moments work together. we are not arguing -- i apologize for having to leave. this is something i told the organizers a bout. i was eager to do this. i want to make one final point. in this year of division, people

like us who served in different parties and secretaries of state for over 40 years for here, it would be the same thing on the main outlines, we would be pretty close together. we would feel we could look to each other. we could consult each other. this country as -- is not as divided as it looks. [laughter] -- [applause]

>> we are glad to have dr. kissinger for the time he was able to be here. i want to continue our discussion on the toughest decision that your president and you had to make. but i think for president george w. bush it was three things. one was how to respond to 9/11. he told a group in 2008. he said, i did not campaign as a national security president. i campaigned as a domestic president. he had a very robust domestic policy agenda. a lot of it he got accomplice, some of it he did not. on 9/11, he said that all changed. after 9/11, i became a wartime president. how to respond to that, we can have all kinds -- all kinds of discussions. what was right and what was wrong, i think the bottom line

is as you have seen with president obama and it through iterations with the congress, what has emerged is a national consensus about how to deal with war and terror. how to deal with the terrorist threat that has descended two administrations. the second was iraq. if you read the reports that i read in 2004, 2005, in 2006, we were losing this war. when the president asked me to be the national security adviser, i was very concerned about iraq. and i said, great. i am going to be national security adviser when we revisit the vietnam. it was -- those of you who remember it was a dark time for

our country. the toughest decision i think the president made was the additional troops search, the change of strategy that transformed a situation on the ground. it presented a situation whereby the end of this year, all american troops will be out of iraq with honor having accomplished their mission. the feature of iraq is uncertain. it will be decided by the iraqi people. i think that was the toughest decision he made. the third was the financial crisis. it was at the end of eight years in office, at one. companies -- condoleezza rice said i think you have had everything in your administration accept the earth being hit by an asteroid. he said, house, there is still time. very difficult decisions the

president had to make in order to prevent a repeat of the depression of the 1930's. i think those were probably the most difficult. >> there are different types of hard decisions. i think the decision of -- the president has to make to send servicemen and women into harm's way is the toughest decision. it is a tremendous personal responsibility to ask people who volunteered to defend their country to put their lives at risk. i know being involved in the president's decision to intervene in costco was something that weighed heavily on him. he had to ask and so, will i be able to look in their eyes of them and their loved ones and their children. you cannot assume it will work. there is no way to share it and now we to understand how burden

and witty that decision is until you watch a president that decision. the second decision will probably surprise you but it is what i give president clinton and a lot of credit for was his decision to go to pakistan during his trip to india. not only because there were questions about if that would have an effect on the image he was trying to portray as far as building our relationship but because of the serious risk he was receiving from the secret service about the dangers of going to pakistan. he was so persuaded that we needed to not lose that relationship. the consequences of going to the subcontinent and not trying to go to pakistan were so consequence so he decided he would do that. this was a decision on the president can make from the south. he stepped up to the plate and decided it was the right decision to make. the third was a policy one. that was a decision of enlarging

nato. the reason i cite that is because president clinton had invested a lot in the beginning of his term with president yeltsin and trying to build a relationship with a new and democratic russia. he knew it would have deep consequences for the relationship of russia. he had to balance against that to be part of this community that have been so important and had been there aspiration for so long. he had to wait two choices about what the risks were in a deep and consequential way for our american policy. they were different views about how to persuade waiting and prioritizing. there was one in which the president had to think deeply about what he thought the core of dali's work, the core strategic interest work, and to make a decisive choice one way or the other. you could not split the baby on

this one. ultimately he decided that sustaining the democratic movement and keeping faith with that commitment was important. >> that was the islamabad trip. i remember the secret service covering that. in the presidency. --that period in the presidence. there were a lot of precautions on takeoffs and landings. i remember when he left to go to islamabad, it was a controversial decision. he did not even want chelsea and hillary to be with them because of the concern about his safety. as i remember when he was taking off there was at one. a plan to have him pretend to be on one plane and really get on another plane. there was some debate -- he will not get on the first plan but people will think he is on the plan. we will put the press on that plan.

it was a decoy moment. we did not appreciate that when we heard about the discussion later. i do not think we heard -- i do not think they did that in the end. >> congress gets involved deeply in some of these decisions as well. here i have been dragging on the executive branch. on 9/11, i was at 9:00 in the morning heading to the dome of the capital which is where the intelligence committee was housed. it is now in a bunker. out of nowhere came these attacks -- that is not really fair. i had been on something called the congressional commission of terrorism which had been one of three commissions that have predicted it would be a major attack on u.s. soil. to the surprise on that beautiful morning and every one

of you who were involved in it to, this happened. as a member of congress with senior responsibility for national security, it was very personal to me. congress immediately did the wrong thing which was to close the office buildings in the capital. the congress needs to be going -- is to be open at a time of great crisis. it finally reopened later in the day. but to be supportive of an enterprise where there was no disunity on that day -- not any. everyone understood this was an attack against america, not a political party or a subgroup. trying to find a way to force the unity is an enormous occupation. i used to represent 700 dozen people who look to me to represent them here.

i always took a very seriously. we are much closer to the ground level than a president is. the decision since 9/11 had been excruciatingly -- very tough decision. some of these issues have been very tough. some more right and some were wrong. the stakes that congress made that i think the president made have been a number of mistakes. something henry kissinger said is sticking in my mind. that is if you are focused on national security wherever you are, if you are in a fairly senior chair in very serious about your work, there is a bond that is forged among those people. i was in a rare position in congress where i got to know the

senior national security people in both the bush administration's and early obama on the intelligence side in defense side. i got to sit next to henry kissinger for a day and a half this week. it was quite amusing and interesting. all of these people know each other. they are different ages and from different administrations. that is a good thing. he wanted that to happen. it does not mean we have agreed on every decision. but the fact there is some can -- collegiality should make everyone a little bit more short -- assured that the primary work of the united states government, which is to protect the security of the american people, is getting a lot of brain cells focused on it. >> if i could add something to that.

one of the times that is most important his presidential transition. you cannot imagine how perilous a moment thises 11 president leaves -- especially when there is a change of party. these are moments where the world is watching. people who would not wish the united states well are watching. i have been transitioned in and the transition out. it is remarkable the degree of cooperation and support. what he has done as far as providing information and cod to do in each -- continuity is extraordinary. it is something that testify to the professionalism. there are often very vivid differences highlighted in the campaign. there's still a sense that came from president george w. bush and to present o >> .

>> i want to open this discussion up to your questions. if you have questions please make your way up to the microphones. i am not going to do with the moderators of the debates do and just ask you to raise your hand to answer a question. that would be a little too simple. just look at the range of challenges we have. i would like to ask you what you think the single biggest challenge to our national security is. is it still terrorism? is it dealing with china? there are so many challenges now. if you had to pick one, what would it be? >> one of the thing about the modern world is people in national security positions are dealing with 12 or 14 things at

one time. it is the world we are in. i think there is a lot that has to go in anyway. getting our economy back on track is a national security issue. [applause] i think there are two there is over the next decade were a lot of important issues are or to get decided. what happens in asia and the middle east. these two things have to be a real focus. i am very worried about whatis happening in europe.

challenges we got as my old boss would say, he would say inside of every challenges and opportunities. your job is to find it and take advantage of it for the united states. [laughter] that is what the folks in the warehouse at the do it right now big time. >> i agree that it is the economy. it is not stupid. it is more than just getting our fiscal house in order. it is the broader sustaining of our competitiveness. i in focused on making sure we have opportunity for our young people. it is distressing to see people coming out of school without a sense that they can build a future for their children. we have the infrastructure. it was support sites and technology.

that is the platform for america to sustain and preserve its interest. without that, we cannot do anything else. if you look at the history of the competition with the soviet union, they could not sustain it and we could. we have to sustain that. we will not be able to meet any of the challenges. i answer concerns about nuclear proliferation. we are on the cusp of a very difficult time. it could become a domino effect if i ran it moves forward that others will want to move forward. also the danger that some will get access to nuclear materials. it is a concern of mine as we think about the challenges of what is broadly called and the needed to sustain our own

interest and an open vibrant use of these technologies that can sustain our economy and support freedom, our vibrant lives in ways that do not threaten our security. we can meet them. we can meet the challenge of rising power at all of these things if we do what we need to to sustain that. >> last word. >> i agree, but a couple of additional points. there was an interesting point in the washington post. the most important thing in these emerging democracies will not be constitution's but smartphones. if you think about that, smartphones enable us to be linked to each other.

the world is geometrically changed. the challenges we have going forward are going to be what the could not have imagined 10 minutes ago. i was going to say on the foreign-policy side, i think our biggest challenges fastening a narrative about what america stands for that is not perceived and much of the world as we are anti muslim and what we do to protect our paris's >> muslim countries. i think that is a misunderstanding of what we are about. it is important to demonstrate to millions of people all it around the world the dollies we actually live by. >> we will take some questions. we will alternate one side to the other. >> unfortunately, you have preempted my question. i am trying to think of some fallback question that has to deal with how important it is

for a president to have some kind of understanding of the culture and history and be sensitive to that of other people. the state department is supposed to be their expertise. nixon seemed to do exceptional in his grasp of the big picture. i was wondering if you recommend a president actually do some kind of scholarly boning up on the history of china or the middle east or so forth? >> what do you not start off on that. >> the question was about whether people need a cultural understanding of the different parts of the world. i would say yes, and a respect for differences in the world. i in not sure any particular president needs to bring that inventory into the white house.

here is a plug for woodrow wilson, our only ph.d. president who was highly skilled and ford and domestic issues, he was only a politician for two years before he became president. before that he was a professor. i think not only a president but congress needs to have some skills and understanding about the different parts of the world. [applause] i think it is just appalling to hear a number of members of congress and bragging about the fact they do not have passports. it is not that everyone needs to take a vacation and beautiful -- pick one. it is willing to travel and learn about the trouble spots in the world. take the trough -- tough trips. i have got to north korea and libya twice.

it was extremely useful travel and helped me do my job better. i think that is a very good question. we have a culture sensitivity gap that is huge and is one that we should both recruit people in our government to bring those skills including language skills but also reach out to people living and around the world to learn from them how they perceive their own lives and how they perceive us. a little key military would go a long way. -- a little humility would go a long way. [applause] >> with all the present -- all the things the president has to do, it is amazing that there are readers. i think presidents do have this understanding that they need to deepen and find a broader way to get their understanding.

just reading options and memos. there are looking for different perspectives in history and culture. i think it is great. i do think there is a need to get to this broader community. the old days when diplomacy could only be done by eight heads of state and foreign ministers have long passed. understanding what we do is going to be served by people in pakistan or india or bridget -- brazil is every bit as important as understanding what the prime minister is going to say to us we need at high-level meetings. the biggest challenges is not because policy was partly intended but because we do not have the good sense of what we think we are doing the right thing how it is perceived by the audience is we have to reach. having that understanding about what we do will be perceived by others is critical to making

sure we achieve the intended results. >> i think the more cultural experience and understanding we have the better. i would echo two things. one thing is respect. you may not understand these cultures but if you go in and show respect to people, whatever their cultural background, it gets you a long way. congress and members of congress traveling. you get 70% credit just for showing up and showing people the respect to come to them rather than expecting them to come to you. >> there has rightfully been a lot of discussion about the process of the national security council and how decisions are managed when there is time to make a decision. i am interested when there is a crisis moment. how do you manage a crisis and how you make sure the president is hearing from who he needs to

hear from? >> does anybody want to start with that? >> i think you are always in a difficult situation and those kinds of moments where you have to respond quickly. a failure to act quickly is consequential and its own right. just one example from the clinton administration is after the bombing of our embassies in africa, there was a clear impulse had to ask very quickly and respond because there was a need to show we were not going to take this, we were going to get out and have a response. there was a fair sense of where it had come from and why it had happened. there was a back-and-forth about if you want to take more time to develop a stronger case and the conviction before you respond or

argue risking that you will not have a risk -- effective response at all. that was the period of time that ultimately left to some military action by the united states. you have to decide in each case , how confident are you you have the in formation to make that decision? what would be the consequences of being wrong because it turned out to twas otherwise? i do not think there is some -- a magic answer. there is a challenge for the president to decide how to make those trade-offs. in each case it depends on how the experience of the team has to come together quickly and to use the ability to convene the senior advisers and be available at all times to get, what do we

more, what might we know - of? >> you can be sure that despite the best of four -- efforts, you will not know all you should not. yet you have to make a decision. if it goes bad, there will be some commission of inquiry. hundreds of people, they will find all this fuss -- stuff you wish you had announced. that is how it is. a lot of tough decisions you have an hour-and-a-half to make because the world does not stop what you're dealing with a crisis. you do the best you can. you can be sure you will not have all of the information.

>> we have time for one more. one more question. >> my question concerns -- concerns the influence of the media. my target is the 24-7 news. it seems that it spends more time on generating the news and interviewing each other rather than reporting the news. [applause] i think it leads to a lot of polarization, not just between cable channels but also sometimes the conservative channel or the level -- liberal channel some to argue with each other. >> i know you would have thoughts on this one. it is a problem.

i am not one who likes to take positions on things. it is not just the velocity of the news cycle, the provocation. everything has to be pushed to an extreme. i remember when president clinton took over, his communications director said there was a missile strike. he said the commentators were already talking abut the mission and they hadn't even landed. to me, it is a problem, it is the idea that more and more in our news business, we're push to make snap judgments to push things as far as we can. that does not help anybody. [applause] >> it is easy and a fashionable

to dump on the 24-7. it puts pressure on the ministrations. if you look back over the last 20 years, decision makers are getting used to it and figuring out at the end of the day you make your decision. you know you will be beaten up. everybody is trying to see if it is growing. you're judged by the outcomes. we are learning how to adjust and to the steel ourselves and hang in there when you have convictions about what you're trying to do. and then be judged by the outcome. >> i want to say wanting. we can talk about the 24 hour

news cycle. but a free media is important in this country. as a national security practitioner, the news was a terrific source of information. especially some of these reporters that are in combat zones like afghanistan four months on end and have a perspective that is important. there are tensions between the government and the press but it is a terrific resource for this country. [applause] >> i agree. i would add wanting from my perspective. if you are running for elected office, the pressure on around you from organized groups of of

various kinds are huge. they do not give the room to think and deliberate. it is hard to find room to think and deliberate. it takes courage to take any one of these groups, passionate groups that are in your face about, you have to do this. back off, i am going to think about this. it is going to be what i think is the right thing to do. marshaling the personal courage and the energy to do that is a very hard. it is human nature, the taking the easier course. let's do this because the pressure will be to artist we don't. that is not good for sound policy.

it is my hope that someday at the screening and screeching and the amount of money in our political system will reduce end we will let our best people, including our young people, to run for office and be what wasn't supposed to be the greatest deliberative nobody on earth, the congress. that would be a help for our republic. instead of having a silly season where the most outrageous thing gets the most attention, would never be nice if the most intelligent thing out the most attention. [applause] >> that will conclude our panel. thank you for being with us. for taking an interest in this

important theme. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> tomorrow, a look at the 2012 campaign. herman cain announces he is suspending his campaign. after that, robert walker discusses rules on insider trading by members of congress. later, barbara on the recent sanctions passed by the senate against iran's central bank.

tomorrow on newsmaker, gene sperling. he talks about the november jobs numbers and the economy at 10:00 a.m. here on c-span. >> it is convenient to listen to c-span with the free c-span radio application. you get streaming audio as well as all three television networks. you can also listen to our programs including q&a, the communicators, and afterward. available wherever you are. >> next, a look at the future of journalism and the impact of social media. you will hear reports from commentators moderated by time magazine editor and richard stengel. this is a little over an hour.

>> it is appropriate we are here at a museum of broadcast communications. the questions we're going to talk about is whether that idea is an oxymoron. how much broadcast is there any more? everything is delivered to you directly. there is no twitter museum yet. there are television and radio museums. museum is not always a great word. it has to preserve something that is going away. there is still the radio. people still write poetry. it is all changing in ways that are dramatic. you will hear from this panel about what is going on and what the future holds. evan ratliff is one of the best

magazine writers around. he wrote a fantastic piece a couple of years ago where he went off the grid. it was fantastic. he is here because he is the founder of -- something called "the atavist," which i would recommend you all down lead. he has a many-publishing empire where he takes tax and puts it to music, video, enhancing in a way where all media will have to be going forward. kara kara swisher is the editor of a site called allthingsd, and i have been reading her closely because she followed aol like nobody's business. and it was nobody's business. those folks like me who work at a company which used to be

called a all-time warner read -- aol time warner read everything you wrote like it was the bible. joe mcginnis, the selling of the president, one of the seminal books about politics in america. it changed the way the people report about politics. he went outside the nixon campaign. it is a book i read a couple of years ago. it is incredibly well reported and well written. joe has written 11 books since then. many of them bestsellers, including the series about the jeffrey macdonald murder case. he has been in the news once again because he rented a house next to sarah palin and has written a book that sarah palin -- sarah palin and her many fans do not think is great. that may be good for you. i was reading it this morning. ayman mohyeldin, the only time

100 honoree here. he used to be -- he worked for nbc many years ago. then he migrated to al jazeera where he had opportunity to do something that was a one left on -- once in a lifeti a lifeti. you're at the epicenter of something that i think is truly transformational. ayman has cast that in and is going back to nbc as a foreign correspondent. only in american media company would call an international correspondent of foreign correspondent. any place that is not america is far and. -- foreign. you will fix that. jim warren managed to figure out, how do i keep the best and most important of old media,

shoe leather journalism, talking to people and going out and reported which he still does, mashing that with new media, twitter, facebook? jim was the managing editor of the "chicago tribune." he now writes for other magazines and i think you will talk a little bit about that when we start talking. we're going to figure everything out for you today. we chatted beforehand and basically this is a conversation that all journalists have all the time. what is happening and what is the future? we will talk about what is happening now in the future. kara saw i had a piece of paper stuck to my foot, and then just said, print media.

when i was walking out the door, the editor as me, why are you leaving? i said don, the water is rising and you are on the lower plane at the "wall street journal." >> the first book where things were going wild. -- well. i was very adamant that this be the end of the newsprint, everything i was doing at the washington post. when i was walking out the door, and he asked why are you leaving? i said the water is rising in

the lower plane at the wall street journal. won nothing felt was important to me was that new organizations did not understand what was happening. everyone else was covering -- one of the media reporters, that was the hot thing at them journal to be of media reporter, they said that you'll be covering cb radio. that is what they called the internet. there was a smart executive there who funded it and let us do it. they were losing big retailers who were not advertising anymore. it was almost impossible not to see the implication on news and how was delivered.

my premise was that people did not want news, they did not what the newspaper. i was not reading the newspaper. years later when it did a saturday journal, they had focus groups, but people liked about it. i thought it was hallmark. having to read it on saturday. i would sit in the back. they would say what you think about this? they finally got to me, what you think about the saturday journal? i wanted to put their money into online. how can we get people to read the news? i said if you take a joint between every page that will work. [laughter] it would be fantastic. it would give you a new perspective on warren buffett. so i kept pushing and pushing. i was going to leave because they did not want to find --

fund a blog. this was 2001. i was pushing them. my partner and i threatened to leave. we believe this is the way it is going. there was a smart executive there who let us do it. it has worked out well. itis still struggle within the journal for everyone to understand how quickly everything is changing. how you can do more with less. >> in that struggle, it is what people worry about. is this going away? i find it a strange question. never in the history of the world has there been more information available to more people in greater amounts and death in human history. in sunday's, it is the greatest -- in some ways, it is the greatest era of media. we have not figured out had to

make money for it. you have a foot in both camps. how was it going to work? can they charge for it to? people like brands. they like the new york times. there are in different to the form that it takes. >> i am here in a museum. i did not see any of this coming. i was clueless. when decisions are being made in almost likeit was lbj and vietnam, 50,000 and then he had more soldiers on the ground. similar with the internet. you woke up and everyone was using the internet.

you're giving it away. i come from an industry that has seen its revenue good to $24 -- go from $49 billion to $24 billion. they have come down crashing. one third of the people in newsrooms a decade ago are now gone. i agree with you that there is a lot of access instantaneously to lot of information. if you look at the local level, this situation is very ambiguous. you cannot have 32 people covering the state legislature in this state. now they have a little bit above 20 to have major papers in the second biggest city pullout of the state legislature for financial reasons, and not have ambiguity about the quality of local content. we were born as a result of a tumultuous times at the tribune, and one of the bigger ones in the country, only 30

television stations and a lot of newspapers, they went into bankruptcy. we started as a small nonprofit. the good news is our main client, the new york times, we produce a couple of pages on friday and sunday, very happy with the product. the not so good news is do we have a sustainable business model? i think that is very unclear at this point. whether the one will be able to get to folks, mostly the old foe is paying $700 to have the print subscription, to pay anywhere near that for the stuff that they may get online, and when we get into this later when it comes to politics, the lack of consensus, fragmentation, if personalization the media, there is a real potential loss in these local communities where many of the paper goes serve a social medicine, doing the things -- social mission,

doing the things like the chicago tribune on the subject of the death count, robbing a long -- writing long exposes expo's these -- right team along expos days -- writing long expose about the death penalty. there's some questions to be raised as we go along, and i have a distinct sense of a transitional period, as we head down another path, even with all the wonderful new means of twitter and facebook and all that at our disposal that can get a lot more information out to folks theoretically. there's still a big question about what happens at a local level if you do not have enough revenue to support a high enough quality staff so that you can have reporting in a

sophisticated way, rather than some $35,000 deal or something like that. to me, that is the big question. what will be the sustainable model for any of these newly flowering, very idealistic, well intentioned organizations like ours? >> i will get to you in a second. one of the things you put your finger on and a worthy topic of discussion is, is the social mission of what we all do. the constitution protect one industry, media. they did not have the word then, but it is the free press. you could not have a democracy without a free press. the mantra of the internet for years has been information wants to be free. i always think that people want reaffirmation. information does not want anything at all. but you talk about a sustainable model. putting something together that, i do not know, will people

pay for? will preserve some of the traditional values by packaging it in a new form? >> that is what we're trying to do. that is what we have done so far. part of our premise starting out was that you can actually do the stories that we do with a smaller scale, a smaller scale operation. instead of being a magazine that has 100 people working for it, we're very focused on paying the writers to go out to the world and report on something in debt, find the narrative story and bring that back and then we have a small system up fact checking, we have an in-house fact checker, but a is all contained and it is all around the story. you do not have to sell that many stories in order to make up what you have put out. so that as kind of like one