about yourself is yours, unless there is a law enforcement reason to go around that privacy screen. >> the question of technology and privacy, tonight >> this week, andrew kaczynski discusses his job for the politics section of the internet web site buzzfeed. >> andrew kaczynski, what do you do for a living? >> i am a reporter for buzzfeed politics. before that, i was a student at ohio university. i got involved in reporting because i started digging up these old clips of politicians and it turned into a job.

>> old clips of politicians means what? >> people really like to see where politicians' views have shifted over the years. people like to see whether mitt romney 1994 was campaigning for welfare reform, against welfare reform, for abortion. i think people like to see how these politicians have evolved. there is an element that is almost a gotcha element, but there is an element where people think this is incredibly interesting. >> what is buzzfeed? >> it is the viral beating heart of the internet. it is obsessed with the viral web post, stats. our number one referrals are twitter, facebook, stumbling upon the sites that are places where people go on the internet

and share things. it is the first viral news site. >> who named it? >> he is our ceo and founder. he originally worked at the huffington post. buzzfeed started as a side project. when he left the huffington post, he started working on it full time. ever since january, we have been sort of revamping it into more of a news site. >> did you graduate from ohio state? >> i went to ohio university originally. >> you graduated from st. john's? >> i did not graduate, i am still taking classes online. when they hired me, i was still in school.

i started taking on more work and i've been doing online classes and finishing my degree. >> why did you leave school? >> i think there is importance to it. people really like what i do. people love the old clips of the politicians. there is a lot of time that you break something in the news cycle that people did not know. i found this clip of mitt romney in 2010 when he was arguing for an individual mandate. look at what we did in massachusetts. people did not know that. at the time, that took over the news cycle. rick santorum was using it in the republican primary. >> we have followed you because you've gotten a lot of publicity over the last year.

i want to run one of the profiles that was done on you on pbs. >> the video i found in 2002 of mitt romney. i am a moderate republican, i am not partisan. >> i am someone who is moderate and my views are progressive. >> went to class and i came back, it was on all the new sites. it was everywhere. later that evening, it was nbc, cnn, all the channels were running it. videos are sitting around. they're out there. some of them are on c-span.

>> where did you start doing this? when did you start doing this? >> back in the beginning of 2011. i live in new york city, i live in the ninth congressional district. there was a special election. i went to find out more about the candidates. there is this video of david dancing at a music festival in brooklyn. it was the most awkward clip i had never seen. i put it on my youtube channel and send it to a couple of people. it was more of a silly clip, but i realize you can have this impact on the election just from sitting on your couch. >> when did you start getting interested in politics? >> i interned in d.c. back in

2010 for a couple of congressmen, one from california, one from new york. i was already interested in politics. but there was a point i realized i did not want to be on the side of the politicians. i did not think -- i like looking at things from a neutral point of view. that is when i decided i wanted to get involved in journalism. >> you started watching c-span when you were 11? >> when i was eight or nine years old -- my dad is a news junkie and he watches fox news, cnn all day. by the time i was eight, i was reading these books on nixon and eisenhower. i've been interested in politics my whole life.

i got interested in politics again in 2009 when chris christie and scott brown won the elections in new jersey and massachusetts. i started realizing that politics was interesting to me again. everything came together. >> what do your parents do? >> my dad is a lawyer and my mom used to be a teacher's aide. >> how do you look at the world compared to your dad or your mom? >> my dad is someone who really gets his news sort of from cable news. i am someone who really first started getting my news exclusively from online and from twitter. there is a difference between

young people and old people. people over 40 are exclusively getting their news from cable news or from newspapers. the conversation shifted, where people are getting their news from places like twitter or facebook, which is kind of the idea behind buzzfeed. i am 22. >> let's watch a little more of another profile that "new york" magazine did of you. >> ♪ it is irrational. i am very opposed to a single payer system. i am in favor of a 300 million payer system. >> in politics, it is pretty much standard operating procedure, when you're running for office, you look your

opponent's record, you find a place where he or she has changed positions and you say they are a flip-flopper. why he finds it so difficult to come down on one side of an issue. floats between both issues. >> does it help there is a governor named rod blagojevich that your name is barack obama? >> he is a hero of mine. >> you have the president saying that rod blagojevich is a hero of his. how do you do this? >> i remember when rick perry announced he was running for president, i started looking at all of his old videos.

this guy is going to have some issues. he is not the most articulate speaker. there were videos i found that i did not think would play well to the republican primary as a whole. >> where are you looking? >> i am looking at youtube, c- span -- with c-span, you can search people's transcripts by words. if i want to find paul ryan when he is talking about medicare or talking about romney's health-care plan in massachusetts, i will go back and watch a program that paul ryan was doing in 2010. sometimes, it is just searching by whether things were said in a specific date range or

sometimes you are just looking for keywords. >> let's go back to a 1995 clip. paul ryan was not even in congress. >> he was a legislative director. >> where did you find this? >> this was in the c-span archive as well. i noticed there were four people named paul ryan in the archives. this is the paul ryan running for congress. nobody would notice it. >> he is a legislative assistant. let's watch this. >> i want to go back to what the woman was saying about medicare. the definition of a cut -- only in washington is a cut with an increase in spending. only in washington do you call when you are increasing spending a cut. the house republican plan increases spending on medicare

from $913 billion over the last seven years to $1.60 trillion over the next seven years. i do not think there is a basis for that. >> that was 17 years ago. i cannot do the math quickly enough. you are 22 and you see something like that, where do you think you will be in 17 years? >> hopefully a journalist. the one thing that takes me to journalism, i think, is that you do not have to play politics. everything is about truth. with politics, everything is kind of set into this partisan box. >> what did you study? what was your major? >> history. >> what kind of history?

>> early american. >> why did you study tt? >> it comes back to my love of old videos. the past relates to the present. >> can you remember the first time you ever found a video that you got excited about? >> i did not even get the idea to start searching for videos until the special election when i realized i wanted to find out more about these people. >> when old people talk to you about what you do and you tell them what you do, what is their reaction? >> some people really do not understand it. i know my parents -- there is this a joke at buzzfeed when people go home for thanksgiving or christmas. who had the toughest time explaining it to their family?

what i am doing, i do research. that is how people understand it. >> when i was growing up, i watched the same television my parents watched. do you watch network news at night? >> i do not watch television at all. i stopped watching television in 2008 or 2009. i find the internet a better place to get my news. >> what about the rest of your colleagues? >> i think most of them watch television. in our office, we have cnn, fox, but i do not really like watching it. ever since 2010, when msnbc shifted to be more partisan to the left and fox to the right, i do not like getting my news from a site that is openly partisan.

>> we have another clip. this was vice-president biden praising paul ryan. >> the paul ryan budget -- paul ryan is a decent, honorable smart guy. i do not want to hear democrats talking about, he is a bad guy. he really thinks for the way for america to own the 21st century is the prescription he has laid out. every republican in the congress obviously thinks so as well. >> why did you pick that? >> i put that video online because i thought it is important for people to know that politics -- there is this demonization that comes about. whether it is from the candidate or the super pac, people demonize the other side. whether they're doing it openly

or behind the scenes. with videos like that, it is important for people to know that the other side, they do not necessarily think these people are bad people. >> what do you think of politicians? >> that is a tough question. i do not know. it is tough to tell. some of them are really politicians in the sense that they will shift their views which ever way the wind goes. with someone like mitt romney, who is almost a market-based politician, he changes his views to fit what he thinks is going to win an election. republicans were supporting the individual mandate as late as 2010. now they are against it.

with democrats, the same thing with medicare. politicians do not necessarily have these core convictions. >> you are a moderate republican? >> i have my own political views and i would say i find myself in the moderate spectrum of politics. i am not someone who looks at things from a partisan point of view. i look at things -- why would you? why would you want to only look at things from the left or the right? >> what do you find in the buzzfeed newsroom? you will see the newsroom from the new york offices.

what are all these people doing? >> our staff is made up of about 50 people in editorial, we have a staff of 130. a lot of people in sales, advertising. what you would not believe is just back in december, buzzfeed had eight people only in editorial. 30 people working on the tech part of the site. buzzfeed has exploded, they had 60 employees less than a year ago. now we are up to 120. >> how many people deal with politics? >> about eight. eight of us on the politics team.

we opened up the d.c. bureau and we are hiring more people for that. we are expanding to love people to work on politics in new york and people reporting in d.c., and we have a small team. >> going from politics to the extreme, i remember one of the first things that hit me on your web site was you can see katy perry lose her bikini bottom in a wave pool. how much do you rely on that kind of thing to draw people into it? >> people who do the funny posts -- people have this idea where people insult me. you are just full of pictures of cats. i love lol cats.

i kind of embrace that stuff. >> you also have a cat. >> i have a cat, too. she is in my twitter profile picture. >> explain that to the old folks. twitter. >> the draw of twitter, you can have this conversation about things that happen in politics and come to a consensus over what just happened. back in 2009, you had people getting their news just from blogs. people do not need to go to blogs.

they can see what is happening in real time on twitter. with twitter, people can participate in the dialogue. >> go back to your earlier years. getre beginning to interested in politics. what was your life like when you were 11 years old? >> my parents, they loved politics. i was reading these books and i just got interested. i grew up in cleveland, ohio.

i lived there until i was 18. cleveland is a boring place. i have just been interested in politics since then. i played hockey as a kid, football. when i came home, i got my interest from cable news. >> how many of your same age of folks were interested in politics? >> there were a subset of kids interested in politics. >> another young person we had on here, michelle fields -- here is a clip of her interview.

>> i feel as though twitter and facebook have enabled people who are not in the media, they do not have a loud voice, to become one of the loudest voices in media. we see people like matt drudge, he is a political outsider, look how far he has come. >> do you know her? >> i know michelle fields. >> she has a video camera and puts a microphone on people when they least expected. >> to go back to what she said. she basically nailed it. people can have this voice on twitter.

with her, she is doing something that people are not doing. sort of what i am doing with videos. you are confronting these politicians at times when they do not expect it. you are able to build your own little niche. >> why should people your age have a say in this business? >> people my age should get involved in a political debate. when you look at the paul ryan budget over obamacare, these are things that will affect us in 50 years. bere the people who should most involved.

they're taking money from medicare, these are things that will be affecting our generation. people in our generation should have a voice in politics. >> seven years ago, i took a camera to oakland, california. 2005. he is sitting in his living room. with this computer. he started a website on the left. let's watch a clip of that and put him in perspective. >> you have a laptop sitting here. is that where you do all of your work? >> that is my office. >> fox news, get off the air.

this is an apple computer. >> yes. >> why did you pick an apple computer? >> i do not like to worry about my technology. i sound like an apple commercial. i can focus on my work instead of focusing on the technology itself. >> do you read it? >> with twitter, i follow 2000 people on twitter. i interact with these people. >> the old people, you can hear them saying, the world is coming to an end. we're losing everything we had. these young people are living in 140 characters on twitter.

the silly stuff on these web sites. for those old people who are worried about the future, what do you say? >> it is no different than maybe 30 years ago, 40 years ago, when you had people who were getting their funny news from newspapers, they were reading the comics sections of newspapers. the interest in silly and fun things have not changed. >> there is a man who is 58 years older than you who was on this show a few weeks ago. i want to listen to a little bit of what he said. he is in love with the past.

>> december of this year, you will be 80. why are you still writing a couple of times a week? >> i love doing it. i am doing it for an institution i love. i've been lucky enough all these years to be free to write what i want to write and to try to make things better. >> what is your reaction to his point of view? he has admitted that he is a liberal and has been active and has been writing news stories. how do we define journalism? >> what he is doing is not necessarily different than what people are doing today with the

internet. he is just doing it through an older medium. the "washington post" has been around for forever. he is using it to his advantage the same way young people should really be using twitter to their advantage. >> he would say to you that he has an editor and that was important in the process. twitter does not have an editor. >> i have an editor. a lot of people who use it to get information out there in real time. i would not say that tweets need editing. i am on the train, i could not watch paul ryan live, but i could see what he was saying because people were tweeting it.

we become faster in the press at correcting ourselves because of the internet. somebody might report something incorrectly, someone on twitter is going to point out you made a mistake. you can fix that in 10 seconds. with the old media, someone could report something wrong in the "washington post," before the internet, they contacted, they have to issue a correction. with how fast things have become, we have become very fast at correcting. >> how important is jon stewart or colbert in your life? >> i am not someone who watches cable news. there are a lot of people who get their news from jon stewart or colbert.

people might not necessarily be getting the entire facts, but they're getting somewhat involved. >> here is jon stewart. i want you to see a clip of his. explain what he does differently than the news people. >> i do not think any image associated with campaign finance is quite as sad as this one. it is the president of the united states sitting alone with his laptop in a room where teddy roosevelt sat or lincoln sat or taft sat -- we all know taft ate with his hands.

what was our president doing? donating to his own presidential campaign. >> i want to make sure folks know i am not just talking the talk, i am walking the talk. the united states of america and my occupation is president. [laughter] birthplace -- 1>> i think he is someone who built his own niche of putting satire to politics.

i know a lot of times my youtube videos will be on "the daily show." i think that is incredible. if they are on cnn or fox, they're going to one audience, but when they're on his show, it is at least getting out there to a completely different audience. >> what is the longest time you ever spent looking for clips? >> i do not know. there was a clip of newt gingrich supporting an individual mandate with hillary clinton. i knew when i started out, i knew he had supported one. i spent a long time looking for that clip. maybe a few hours. i stumble upon clips.

i will look for them and find them in 15 minutes sometimes. that was a clip i went looking for because i knew it was out there. >> we have some more clips. here is one from c-span in 1991 at the press club. this is jay leno. >> when you met with president bush, did he show you the socks he bought to stimulate the economy? >> they are on tour, i did not see those. so many americans want to see them. that made me laugh. he bought socks for his grandchildren for christmas. he thinks he is unpopular right now, wait for christmas morning. gaddafi is giving his kids nintendo.

>> how do you decide what you think people will be interested in? >> for that clip, that came from a larger post that i did -- 25 c-span moments from the 1990's. inearched c-span's archives the 1990's. a search for seinfeld, there was one clip talking about the defense department asking for $50 million for viagara. >> how does somebody see them? where can somebody go to find it? >> it is on buzzfeed.com. if you scroll down on my unique page, they're on there.

we have this obsession with george bush's socks at buzzfeed. he has amazing socks. >> what gets people's attention? >> stuff that really impacts -- if there is a clip of paul ryan talking about romney-care. the clip we showed earlier was him talking about medicare. they're cutting the medicare growth rate by $500 billion.

you have paul ryan in 1995 saying, that is not a cut. clips like joe biden talking about how an individual mandate could be seen as socialism, those are all things that will have an impact because they affect the political debate. >> here is one of your picks where mitt romney is talking about the president and his business experience. >> i was speaking with one of these business owners who owns a couple of restaurants in town. i would like to change the constitution, i am not sure i can do that, but i would like to have a provision that in addition to the age of the president and the citizenship and the birthplace, i would like also to say, the president has to spend at least three

years working in business before i become president of the united states. [applause] >> talk about the goal, do you think this will change somebody's mind? >> no, but people on twitter will find it interesting. people find it interesting that mitt romney said that every president should have three years business experience and then picks somebody who has spent his life in government as his running mate. they will not completely change the debate, but for a few hours, people find them pretty interesting. >> on the other side of the fence, here is president obama. >> would you give congress the date to reform social security and medicare within two years after take office? everyone agrees that is the big ticking time bomb, even more

the mortgage crisis. >> we're going to have to take on entitlements and i think we have to do it quickly. we will have a lot of work to do so i cannot guarantee that we will do it in the next two years, but i would like to do in my first term. >> i think it is important. i think when we are talking about medicare and entitlements, it is important for people to know the president promised he would take this on in his first term. you have the president saying in his debate with john mccain that he thought he would take it on. >> there is a view of young people that the young people do not read the books. twitter is 140 characters. what would you say to that?

do you read anything, very long articles? >> i get most of my news from twitter. i read books. the last book i read was "too big to fail" on the financial crisis. i read "the real romney." there are things you can only get through books. i can understand why someone would think that people my age are only getting their news and information through things that are two sentences long. >> how long were you at ohio university? >> i was there for two years and then i left.

i interned for the republican national committee. after i moved to d.c., i got more obsessed with politics. i was 20 when i first started. >> how long have you been in st. john's? >> almost a year. >> how many hours do you have to go before you get a degree? is the degree important to you? >> it is definitely important to me. i would not know how many hours i had spent because sometimes you are taking one class or two classes. >> when do you graduate? >> 2013? >> some people talk about no more need for a college

education where you can do this online. how do you relate online education with having a professor in front of you? >> it is different. there is more of an idea of individualism. there is certainly more reading involved. with young people today, you do not necessarily need a college degree. if you have your dream job, there is this myth of a college education for people. >> when do you find yourself learning the most? >> when i'm reading books. these are not textbooks, these are things for people to understand with a better idea

about these people or events. >> how do you read books? online or ipod or whatever? >> i do both. a lot of times, i will buy a hard copy of the book and i will download it to my iphone. >> how about newspapers? >> no. i do not think i will ever read a physical newspaper unless i do not have an internet connection. >> what newspapers do read on the internet? >> if you want to call "politico," "the new york times," "wall street journal."

>> if you were with a bunch of 22-year-olds in a room, what would the conversation be like and how many in that room would be hard copy newspaper readers, television news watchers? what would your conversation be about? >> there is a disinterest among people our age about politics. i did not think people my age are obsessed with the news the way journalists are. the people i hang out with our journalists, so the conversation is going to be about news or related to the news or politics. i do not have a good answer for you. >> how would you define the journalist today? what is journalism? >> it is a search for truth,

while reporting the news. >> is it opinionated? >> i would like to think it is not. i despise the partisan media, on the left or the right. many of them are really good people and they're very smart, but i hate the idea that you are looking at the news from a perspective. when you could be looking at it -- you do not care as much about truth, i feel like, when you are reporting it from one side or the other. >> go back to your group of 22- year-olds. buzzfeed is a small part of what it does. if you are in that group, what is the subject?

>> if you are with everybody, you are talking about politics, but you're also talking about cat pictures. which i love, by the way. at the same time, it is a conversation that relates to both politics and the internet. >> one night i was at a concert and there were three women sitting in front. they had their iphones. during the whole concert, they were taking pictures of themselves instead of paying attention to the entertainment. and you look around and you see that all the time. how would you explain that? >> i kind of hate it, actually. i hate it that you go out to dinner and you look at another table and you have 12 of them on their iphones when they could be talking to each other.

>> what do you think the impact of this new communications will be on the country and on politics and on government? >> in 5 or 10 years, you'll see a lot of these big newspapers are only going to be online. for a lot of them, it might mean smaller staff, but it is the way the conversation is going. it is going from print to exclusively online. whether it is apple or microsoft who build the devices where you can flip to the channels on your computer, one that really catches on, people

will flip from channel to channel. >> what would you feel bad about if it went out of business? if we lost the "washington post" or c-span, would that matter? >> i do not think it will go away. news organizations have this incredible way of adapting to how things change. going from print to online to twitter, i do not think these places will go out of business. >> you are a history major. what will this do to history? there is this fear among historians that history is not

taught in schools anymore. >> i do not think it will change history in the sense that people -- i think we're starting to look back at the bush administration from a historical perspective. in 5 or 10 years, people will be able to look back and realize that it was inevitable. >> your boss, ben smith, talked to us on camera about you a couple of weeks ago. >> he is one of these self-made geniuses from the internet. he is great at finding things

and great at researching. his real talent is his amazing news judgment. he knows what to look for. he has a great understanding of politics. >> self-made genius. >> that was very nice of him to say. >> does anybody else to the same kind of things that you do? >> there is a group of people i know online who do research. there is a certain subset of people who do the same thing i do, but i am one of the few people who do it at a news organization. >> let's pretend, for a moment, that you are with your parents.

they say to you, tell us how to be like you. what would you tell them to do? i am talking about the whole information. what do you do when you get up? >> i check my e-mail. when i wake up, i have 25 e- mails from all of these groups. if i want to find out my news, i will just check twitter. the conversation for the whole day is already happening on twitter at 9:00. >> do you listen to the radio? >> not really. >> talk radio? >> no. >> do you know anybody who does? >> people i know who are on the

right who listen to talk radio. the left in this country had their moment where they tried to start progressive talk radio and it did not work out. >> i say, tell me how to be you. how do i live your life? >> twitter. you read twitter. >> what is twitter? >> it is almost like a news wire. it is something where you can see -- i follow 2000 journalists. i give you 2000 people to follow on twitter. you know exactly the political conversation that is happening.

i started following 800 people. you see people talking to one another. >> people are a little confused. you go to twitter.com, do you sign up? >> you make an account. >> again, how do give them who to follow? is there a list somewhere? >> there are lists on twitter. the best thing to do is find a journalist who follows 2000 people. looking at their list. >> i have another clip of yours, this is from 1999.

>> teletubbies -- we saw one leading religious leaders saying that should be taken off the air because he objected to one of the teletubbies. that is what i read in the paper. >> why did that get your attention? >> that was also in my post. i thought it was hilarious. i picked him because he is someone who was obsessed with pop culture.

he has been in three batman movies. he is a senator who gets pop culture. >> this is 18 seconds. >> i can see us after school, blank, blank. i paint a picture ain't nothing but a gangster party. >> that jumps over a whole different generation. >> there was this time in the late 1990's where people were obsessed with song lyrics. they said song lyrics were the cause of the downgrading of american culture and for all the school shootings that happened.

when people look back today and they see that we were talking about tupac on the senate floor -- >> we are running out of time. the old people involved in the old journalism think that young people are taking the old people's product and reselling it. >> it is adapting. we are building on what is already there. >> you do not feel that you take a product that somebody else has produced? people think the same thing about drudge. >> we do not try to do aggregation. we try to do almost all original reporting. president obama at the white

house correspondents' dinner, he made a huffington post joke. that is a joke from 2006. journalism is changing and people are slowly adapting. >> what do your parents think of what you have done? >> they love it. they do not quite understand it, but they love it. they are slowly adapting to online journalism. >> andrew kaczynski of buzzfeed, thank you for joining us. >> for a dvd copy, call 1-877- 662-7726. for free transcripts or to give us your comments, visit us at

qanda.org. programs are also available as podcasts. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> in less than three weeks, the first of the presidential debates, live on c-span, c-span radio, and c-span.org. watch and engaged. next, your calls and comments next on "washington journal. then at 12:30 p.m. --

[video clip] >> i think the fourth amendment can be construed to be a privacy amendments. search and seizure in your home. due process. i strongly think that the privacy protections that our founders took for granted on the internet and telecommunication, you cannot take for granted. you have a legislature to make it happen. i just feel very strongly that the information about yourself is yours unless there's a law enforcement reason or public reason to go around the privacy screening. >> congressman joe barton tonight at 8:00 eastern on c- span 2. span 2.