, not just for the region but for international security more broadly. please join >> later today, chris christie holding a town hall meeting in new boston, new hampshire. that is live on c-span at 7:00 p.m. eastern. the latest national polling showed him losing ground. he returns to new hampshire. he will join a half dozen other

hopefuls flocking to the primary state for town hall meetings and an education summit. he will spend several days in new hampshire after a survey but place.3%, a 11th you can see that town hall at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. tourllow the c-span cities to communities across america. thehe idea is to take programming for american history tv and book tv out on the road to produce pieces more visual, cities a window into the that the would not normally go to that have rich history's and a literary scene. new york, los angeles, chicago, but what about the smaller ones?

what is the history of them. >> we have been to over 75 cities. >> most of our programming is even coverage. pieces thatorter take you someplace, a home, a historic site. partner with our cable affiliates to explore the history and literary culture of various cities. >> the cable operator contacts the city, and they bring us there. >> were looking for great characters. you want your viewer to identify with these people. >> it is an experience to take a program where we take people to places to touch and see things and learn about -- it's not just a local history, because a lot of local history plays into the national story.

>> it should be enticing enough that they can get the idea of the story, but also this is in our backyard. let's go see it. viewers to get a sense that they know that place from watching one of our pieces. >> the c-span mission believes -- leads into what we do on the road. be able to to communicate the message about this network to do this job. it has done the one thing that we wanted it to do, build relationships with the city and cable partners. tour see ourcities schedule at c-span.org/citiestour. on domestic and

international news coverage with editors from the new york times and washington post. it is one hour and 50 minutes. [applause] i have two admit that this is a special treat for me today. in addition to being a news junkie, i am a former newspaper reporter and i truly value great journalism. in this age of disruptive isital communication, it gratifying to note that we still have some fascinating, fabulous newspapers like the washington post, the new york times, the valley news, among others. [applause] [laughter] so i am honored to introduce our first speaker. miami andn grew up in

high.ted from lehie he has worked at the miami herald, the newark times, the 2012, heobe, and since has been executive editor of the washington post. as editor of some of these newspapers, particularly the miami herald and the boston globe and the washington post, his team at these newspapers pulitzerby my count 10 prizes for excellent and journalism. the most recent 1 -- [applause] one was at the washington post when they won for the secret service lapses in the president of the

united states, a great series of stories. journalist.ine he also has a keen interest in ,rt, art museums, collects art and altogether i am very proud to present one of the best newspaper editors in the nation, marty baron. [applause] marty: thank you very much, tom, for that kind introduction. i am delighted to be able to speak with you all here today. i'm especially pleased to be able to share the stage today with elizabeth. we started our careers together in the late 1970's as reporters at the miami herald, so it is wonderful to be with her here today.

the subject of want to discuss is the freedom of expression. , andase was made long ago among the most eloquent proponents was john milton and that have set the course for our own principles today. he wrote this, give me the liberty to know, to alter, and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties. today in much of the world, that liberty is either nonexistent or in jeopardy. let me start by telling you about two recent encounters of mine. of last year, i spoke with a leading figure in the governance of the internet. we talked about surveillance by the national security agency and how the agency had cap to so

voraciously into international data networks. tapped into -- so voraciously into international data networks. in what thisted official was hearing as he traveled the world in the aftermath of the disclosures that originated with edward snowden. of highlye league classified documents had revealed some of this nation's most sensitive national security secrets. much of the worldwide reaction and tell that point had fallen ,nto the category of outrage rights activists and government officials's had deprived the u.s. governments aggression intrusion into the privacy of citizens of other countries. foreign governments protested that even the privacy of presidents and prime ministers and countries that were our allies had been breached.

on theirad listened in phone conversations. as this internet official traveled asia, outrage was not what he heard. what did he here? told him thaters we have excellent computer scientists. why haven't we been able to do this? they aspire to monitor their own citizens as skillfully as the u.s. government have. so that is story number one. now story number two. early this summer, i was by theg in washington owners, editors, and legal counsel of a leading newspaper and ecuador. they sought to bring attention to the ways in which the government of ecuador was strangling the press, dictating what it prints, threatening crippling fines, pressuring media outlets in hopes that they

would become docile, differential, compliant. june, the newspaper was fined $350,000 by the government on the grounds that it failed to satisfied all requirements for publishing a response by the government to one of its stories . a to your old communication law that provides -- a two-year-old communication law that provides that they have the right to respond. in this case, the newspaper had published a story about ecuador's health care system under the headline, $1.7 billion in federal debt impairs health care system. the paper had sought to interview health system officials tried to publication, even sending a list of questions. the request went unanswered. when the story was published, it was sharply criticized by ecuador's president.

he even question the statistics, statistics that as it turned out came directly from the health care system itself. then the secretary of communications ordered the newspaper to publish a rebuttal, which it did. but the rebuttal did not carry a summary, also written by the secretary of communications, and it did not carry a headline crafted by the secretary that accompanied its rebuttal. the secretariat ordered it summary published, and it ordered its headline published, and the newspaper then complied. so the headline in red, the health care system has made progress and will improve even more in the coming years. [laughter] the newspaper now had to pay a fine for allegedly compliance with the law regarding rebuttals, a fine equivalent to 10% of its average

,evenue in the previous quarter so the fine totaled $350,000. with each recurrence of a particular offense, i find is doubled. it can continue doubling without limit. -- fines and pressure are having the intended effect. in 2014, 4 media outlets close, largely as a result of this so-called organic comedic haitians law. organic -- communications law. in short, the government will break it. the newspapers legal maneuvers, creeping appropriation, and rightly so. the two stories i told show something about free expression. it can be threaten from many directions, and that is what is happening. not long ago, the world's hoped for better. we seem to be entering a new era

of free expression brought about by the internet, social media, and smartphones. that citizens communications would flourish in a way previously unimagined, and that government, even the most autocratic, would be denied the tight control the cap them in power. root -- thatk firm kept them in power. root in 2010k firm with the tunisian revolution and then spread throughout the world. with protest in egypt against the machine -- regime, the world marveled at the impact of social media, how it could be used to facilitate free expression, how it might overcome repression. it was a hopeful time for those who believed in the liberating power of technology over the traditional too often tyrannical powers of government. truth moves faster than lies and

propaganda becomes flammable wrote paul mason in 2011. not only is the network more powerful than the hierarchy, but the ad hoc network is become easier to form. in a book entitled democracy's fourth wave, digital media and the arab spring, a professor at the university of washington and a doctoral student noted, social media alone did not cause the butle in north africa, information technologies, including mobile phones and the internet, ultra the capacity of citizens and civil society altered the capacity of citizens and civil society actors. the authors of those commentaries also know that he gave governments the power to monitor citizens and extinguish voices and movements.

professor howards noted in one interview that authoritarian regimes have come to value digital media to. syria,, saudi arabia, they observed how democracy advocates were using social media and developed counter insurgency strategies that allow them to mislead and entrap protesters. does the other week, we published a series on threats -- it just to the other week, we published a series on threats to press freedom. sophisticatedit surveillance technology to suppress dissent. egypt is implementing a social network thatedia allows full analysis of all time, media sites at any

a minimum of 30 analysts will monitor streams of data in both classical and colloquial arabic according to a proposal he did to the egyptian media. the question now is this, it is a big one, who will prevail in a competition that has each side deploying technology as tool and weapon? will it be ordinary citizen and andvists to circumvent undermine and outwit autocratic governments? usthe governments that has at the capacity to monitor communications as never before? in their outstanding book, the new digital age, the authors lean towards optimism. authoritarian governments will find their newly connected populations more difficult to control, repressed, and influence, while democratic states will be forced to include

many more voices, individuals, organizations, and companies in their affairs. and yet, they noted how often authoritarian governments will have proper weapons of their own derived from their position as gatekeeper in a world of connectivity. states have an enormous amount of power over the mechanics of the internet in their own countries because states have power over the physical infrastructure connectivity required, the transmission towers, the routers, the controlling the entry, exit, and waypoints for data. they can limit content, control what hardware people are allowed to use, and even create separate internets. regimes may compromise devices , ande they are ever sold individuals who use in christian software to avoid censorship or surveillance -- encryption

software to avoid censorship or surveillance will become objects of suspicion. authoritarian governments can apply in homeless rusher. they noted that states will be able to set up random checkpoints or rates to search people's devices for the the encryption and proxy software, or spots on ame, government database of offenders. everyone who has downloaded a circumvention measure will find life more difficult. raised the prospect that countries will create their own domain name system. no government has yet achieved an alternative system, but if a government succeeded in doing so , it would effect only unplug its population from the global internet and instead offer only a close national intranet. way jailsch by the

more journalist than any other country, already blocks and filters information in sites with gusto. turkey has blocked thousands of sites, and it's prime minister once ordered twitter shut down. youtube has been blocked in pakistan, and the government there has demanded many hundreds of times that facebook remove content. google ideas, i company unit that exist to support free expression, government attempts internet falls into three categories. one, server side censorship, consisting of distributive denial of service attacks to knock inconvenient voices off-line. number two, censorship on the wire, primarily consisting of national firewalls that block access to undesirable form content. this can also include states

leveraging their control of domain name system servers and internet service providers that tried to hide content. relatively few countries are doing this right now. censorship.t side this increasingly includes attacks to monitor independent journalists and activists. this is becoming a very popular technique for national governments. at the core of the battle over the internet is a philosophical and legal dispute over who has dominion over the internet, and those who should govern it and how. earlier this year, a visiting law professor at ucla laid out the issue in the georgetown law journal. two competing visions of cyberspace have emerged in far, he wrote, russia and china advocate a sovereignty based model of cyber governments that ,rioritizes state-controlled

while the united states, united kingdom, and their allies argue that cyberspace should be governed by states alone. in the early days of the -- shouldits creators not be governed by states alone, i should say. in the early days of the internet, its creators, advocates, and users argued with no small measure of her bottle that the internet had superseded governments -- no small measure of bravado that the internet had superseded governments and governments had no role. in 1996, cofounder of the electronic freedom foundation issued a so-called declaration of the independence of .yberspace governments of the industrial world, he proclaims, you weary giants of flesh and steel, i come from cyberspace, the new

home of mind, and on behalf of the future, i ask you of the past to leave us alone. you are not welcome on monica's -- welcome among us for you have no sovereignty where we gather. the vision collided with some inconvenient physical facts. legalas noted by some book who, in the controls the internet, the illusions of a borderless world. they took on the notion of the internet as a place all its own. the internet after all relies on some fairly monday and things. underneath it all, they wrote, is an ugly physical transport infrastructure, copper wires, , and-optic cables specialized routers and switches that direct information from place to place. governments to regulate the internet, and we

are now faced with the question of how far they will go in asserting control. -- they will go in asserting control. should he remain outside national boundaries, a high seas outerspace antarctica? should the internet be regarded one subject to internationally agreed-upon norms? should it be view like every nation's own airspace? that would put the internet under each nations individual total control. nation's individual total control. in the absence, some questions are not waiting for one good russia and china are leaders in treating the internet more as an intranet, and internal system that is theirs to rule. -- an internal system that is theirs to rule. that has become freedom expression in those countries.

if there was a spark of freedom, and there was that, it is now being snuffed out. russians get their information from state-controlled broadcasters disseminating propaganda, conspiracy, jingoism in ways big and small. after the shoot down of the malaysian airliner in ukraine, intelligence pointed to rebel troops as the source of the missile that took the lives of 290 people. -- 298 people. in russia, alternative expeditions proliferated, each one more far-fetched than the next. russian media claimed that ukrainians shut down the plane, claimed the cia provided help, asserted that the plane might have been mistaken for vladimir putin's, making it a target. they claimed bodies on the ground were planted there.

at the time, the editor in chief of russia 24 said this, our mission is to support the interests of the state. -- are for ourns programs and our channel. while state control and manipulation of television and newspapers is one thing, but the internet and russia had long been uncensored. that is no longer the case. year, russian authorities were given the power to block websites without any official explanation. almost immediately, for russian opposition websites -- four russian websites -- opposition websites were blocked. speech was constrained further. new rules required anyone with a daily online audience of more than 3000 people to register with russia's internet oversight agency.

names and contact details were to be provided, and bloggers would be held liable for anything deemed misinformation. that included an comments from numbers of the public. late last year, a new russian law required that russian users and their data be stored on servers within the country. that way russia would have easy access to information about the use of facebook, twitter, google, and other services. alreadyian government had an arsenal of laws that it could use against those speaking freely. the new rules created additional likelybloggers were more to muzzle themselves for fear of fines and prosecution. many of the rules are incident vague and confusing, but ambiguity is often a weapon in the hands of government, and that is the case in russia today.

the newan wrote in yorker, vladimir putin has been masterful at creating an atmosphere in which there are no clear rules so the intellectuals and artists stifle themselves in order to not run afoul of vague laws and vague or social pressure -- more vague social pressure. i have only talked about official suppression of free speech and a free press, but the threats are broader, more menacing than that. nonstate actors can be an even greater danger. two images last year cannot be forgotten, those of james foley and steven sotloff, independent journalists executed by isis. their fate was made terrifyingly clear, the risks that journalists face in telling the world what they see. islamic terrorist

slaughtered staffers at a paris satirical weekly in reaction to caricatures of mohammed. there is what happens behind walls, unseen, deliberately hid it from public view, and i think now of the washington post correspondent in tehran held in the worst prison, suffering physically and emotionally for more than a year. with phony targeted charges of espionage and other supposedly fences for which there has been no evidence. the shamd to endure trial, where evidence and fairness and the basic principles of due process clearly do not matter. these are just the publicized incidents, the committee to protect journalists notes that while most coverage of attacks against the press is focused on well-connected journalists, nine

of 10 killed our local reporters covering local stories. in the past three years, violence against journalists has soared to record levels. an average of more than one journalist is killed every week. , reportingike mexico on drug cartels, crime syndicates, and corruption is a deadly business. just the week of june 28 this year, three journalists were killed there. rarely are killers found and prosecuted, and much of the world, rarely are they actively pursued. all of this imposes an obligation on journalists for news organizations's in the organizations-- in the united states. we enjoy freedoms unimagined in the rest of the world. we are able to write what our

professional colleagues in other countries can not. the lives and those of their families -- their lives and those of their families would be at risk. a longtime china correspondent for the new yorker put it well recently. in concluding, i will quote him. as correspondence who enjoy the freedom to write what we know -- s who enjoy the freedom to write what we know, we have a responsibility to do reporters who do not enjoy the same privileges. thank you very much. [applause] tom: thank you very much, margie. that was wonderful. the next speaker is also a distinguished journalist.

she was born in denmark, grew up in cincinnati, northwestern school of journalism, and then went on to a long career as a journalist. she has been a reporter and a correspondent for the washington tokyo,as in new delhi, ,oin the new york times in 1995 and she has had many different assignments there covering the white house during the time after 9/11, also covering the pentagon. editorame the washington of the new york times in february of this year, where she organizes and directs coverage from maybe 30 or so reporters in the washington bureau of the times.

while doing all of this, she has also managed to write some books . in india, for example, she wrote a best-selling story about women s -- the title escapes me now. in tokyo, she managed to write a book about family life in japan while being the mother of a four year old and an infant, and that was real juggling on her part. her book about condoleezza rice, the biography, is available in the rear of pure, and elizabeth and elizabethe, will be available to sign copies during the break. so please join me in welcoming her. [applause]

thank you, tom.beth the title is may you be the mother of 100 sons. because ofonic title the expectations placed on women in india. thank you. it is wonderful to be here. it is a beautiful place to spend a day or two. it is great to share the stage with marty. we first met at the miami herald. we cross paths of the new york times. you can see how small the sorority and fraternity of journalists is in this country. we all know each other. anyway, thank you. , little more than 30 years ago can i read this without my glasses, i think i can -- [laughter]

-- i was a reporter for the washington post and my husband had just finished five years as a white house correspondent. i was 28 years old and have been no farther from the united states than europe. i still remember stepping out of and being assaulted by the dense fog and overpowering smoky sweet smell of burning fires. , i wrote my stories for the washington post on a manual typewriter not even a selectric or the computer i was used to because of all the power failures. i took my copy to the local reuters office where it was sent back to washington. there was no internet, not even

see in an. to find out what was going on, we would read the local newspapers and listen to the bbc world service. there was one television station in india which ran documentaries on fertilizer plants, and i can assure you it was completely unwatchable. the new york times arise by mail 10 days late. was not these days economic powerhouse it is now. a lot of people in the united states, india was an afterthought. were a lot of americans as newspaper correspondence covering it. the times and the washington post and wall street journal and los angeles times and baltimore sun, and the philadelphia wererer, and time magazine there. we wrote about the new prime culture, politics,

poverty, economics. today, the situation is quite different. india has emerged as a major player as a rival to china and the bigger story than it ever was. theyet, time magazine, baltimore sun, the philadelphia inquirer, and for much of the last two years los angeles times are all gone. if you lookicture at traditional newspapers and foreign policy coverage is worse. in 2003, the american journalism review reported that 10 newspapers and one is for chain employed 307 full-time foreign correspondence. in 2010, the last time a to the survey, that number had fallen to 234 full-time correspondent s. theirspapers have cut bureaus oversees entirely. it is a grim situation? not exactly, not if you look

more closely. coverage is now concentrated in the hands of big papers, but the vast reach of the internet, 60 million unique visitors each ensuresr the times, that overseas coverage is seen by far more people than we ever imagined in the 1980's to the associated press has grown working in 116 countries, many local hires. bloomberg news has a global staff of more than 2300 and 101 foreign bureaus and 72 countries. npr has really grown, 17 overseas bureaus. the new york times has an more overseas bureaus, 30, than it did when i was in india. depending on how you count it,

about 80 full-time correspondents all over the world. on top of that, there have been new entries to the scene, global for. james foley worked won a2, global post peabody award for its videos on india, mexico's drug wars, an epidemic of kidnapping in shanghai. then there is device, the hottest new entry on the scene. every young person wants to work for vice. , theen there is vice hottest new entry on the scene. they take their video cameras to some of the world's most dangerous places. they done highly praised reporting in ukraine, and they have a five-part series on isis, which they spent a lot of time in iraq and syria, very dangerous. the huffington post has also begun to do foreign coverage. to my mind, the reports of the

death of foreign news have been exaggerated. it comes in a different form. not in front of you in your daily newspaper as much. it is available and that in richness and in less quantities if you know where to look for it, which is on the internet. let's look at these news organizations that do cover the world, specifically how they cover america's rejection of power around the culture -- world, and whether that feeds the narrative of an america in decline. i don't expect you did all the readings. it's ok if you didn't. i will talk about it. of first on your list confront and conceal, obama's secret wars. smart look at a the review process that obama

went through in late 2009 ahead of the afghan surge to send 30,000 additional american troops to afghanistan. that marchady sensed ,hat the first batch of troops and he was loath to escalate the war, but felt pressure from his military commanders. the white house had come to the realization that the war was being lost. , think the title says it all how his afghan policy came to be known, afghan good enough. mcchrystal, the top american mechanic -- commander, had far more troops, 80,000. there was no projection of american power here, especially since obama set the withdrawal date when he

announced the surge. the idea was the afghans would be better trained and they would have to learn how to defend their country on their own. i had my own small part in the surge and saw firsthand in 2010 the potential and great limits of american power in the world. 2010, spring and fall of i embedded with female marines in southern afghanistan, taliban stronghold. women were not allowed in combat in the marines, but an experiment that year, the marines sent small groups of women, no more than 2-3 at a into remote and dangerous pockets of the region. the united states was still engaged in the counterinsurgency strategy, trying to win over the local population by protecting them, building schools and clinics and

roads, meeting with village elders. if you had some women on the female marines, they ,ould engage with afghan women half of the population, which was off-limits to american men. may and for two weeks in september, i was with the marines as we sat over onless cups of tea and went a lot of dangers for patrols and talked about what the marines could do for various villages. a school, a well, health care center, jobs -- it was the ultimate projection of american soft power and it was well-meaning. some afghan that women were left with good feelings, but it was a drop in the bucket. bringing the population and the afghan government over to the

united states was going to take a long time, decades that obama did not have. chapter in my book about con the said, this is what she said after she noticed that the news crawl across the television's green said, in wake of hamas -- acrossalestinian the television screen said, in the wake of the hamas victory, palestinian -- resigns. she recalled what happens next. she said, i asked the state department what happened to the palestinian elections. they said, hamas won. i thought, oh, my goodness, hamas won. she said that she was going

to continue exercising because it was a long day. as a symbol of the new stirrings of democracy, they had not expected the wrong party to win. later, when rice found herself dealing with big problems in the middle east, she talked about that election and how it reflected a certain limitation of american power. i think there are plenty of things they have done to head off hamas, but not every problem is amenable to a u.s. solution. that is one of the first things you have to realize, that everything that goes wrong is america's fault, which brings me to some of the new york times stories. eric schmidt and michael gordon in a story about saudi arabia's airstrikes in yemen, airstrikes killing hundreds of civilians,

showing the limitations of american strategy. in other words, the obama administration has chosen to work with and help allies from west africa and the middle east rather than put large numbers of american troops on the ground. most americans would say that is a very good idea, but when one of your allies, saudi arabia, don't havethat you control over them. in the same way, look about how american strategy in iraq increasingly relies on iran. the lead says it all. at a time when president obama is under political pressure from congressional republicans over negotiations to rein in two runs nuclear ambitions, a startling paradox has emerged. mr. obama is becoming increasingly dependent on iranian fighters as he tries to contain ice is in iraq and syria without committing american ground troops. a former special adviser to president obama put it, the only

way in which the obama administration can credibly fix with a strategy is by implicitly assuming that the iranians will carry most of the weight and win battles on the ground. i know this has been a long series about whether american , americas inendent decline, i cite these examples americanidence of an retreat, but for purposes of journalism. people often ask me if i think the press is biased. i reply that the press does has a bias, a bias towards conflict in trouble. we focus on what is wrong and what needs fixing. that is our responsibility, job, and, to expose problems. this year alone, you read in the new york times about the exploitation of nail salon workers in new york, the lack of oversight for each seal team six, the shocking lawlessness on the high seas.

i think our foreign-policy coverage and overseas coverage is much the same. to be sure, we do write about the big successes, a six column banner headline and multiple stories the day the a rand deal dealnnounced -- the iran was announced. on page one today we focused on the resistance the deal is meeting with congress and how obama is fighting hard to win democrats to decide. in the last reading i gave to you, every failure of the united states to get its way in the thed tends to reinforce impression of a nation in decline, arabs and it israelis refused to make these, isis is on the rise. into the office of personnel and management and gets information on millions of workers. the u.s. is still the richest

economy in the world and has unmatched military strength. this year's pentagon budget is $600 billion, more than that of all the other great powers combined. to be sure, china's economy is on the rise and could overtake the u.s. in the next two decades, but the idea that we now have less power in the world has been around for decades. look at the fear in the united states of arising -- of a rising soviet union. the rise of opec, the iran hostage crisis. the economic boom in japan which was going to take over the world at the expense of the united states, remember? in tokyo when george h.w. bush came over with three american automakers to try to convince the japanese to buy american cars. instead, he ended up getting sick in the lap of the japanese

prime minister. terrible metaphor as the japanese made fun of our cars and told me that americans are lazy. that was her problem. we did not work as hard as the japanese. every foreign correspondent in and days ofys page-one stories out of that trip. in conclusion, the media and new media has -- does a very good day-to-dayring the setbacks, crises, and conflicts that reflects america's power overseas. often it is dangerous awe-inspiring work. look atntioned -- dexter's work in iraq, john correspondence all face astonishing dangers. job on we do a less good the deeper stories that show

long-term systemic change, that indirectly reflects american boys and american influence, but we do in fact of those stories. look at how much coverage there has been regarding the improvement of women's status. look at the pulitzer prize-winning coverage of ebola and africa and the obama's administration response to it. some of those stories were written by helene cooper who won -- was part of the fillets are prize-winning team this year. she has my old job. did some very brave, greatest work in liberia, but also have the stress of going back to her own country and having to see it through americanizing away. look at our coverage of kosovo

in the late 1990's. i was there myself as well. kosovo qualifies as an american success story. look at the bigger picture. you can say that the rise of the asian economies means that smaller relative peace of the economic pie. i'm sure this has come up in previous lectures. 19%,, the u.s. economy is compared to 25% 25 years ago, the rise of the asian economies and latin america is that millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. it is not enough, but it is a lot of people. i don't see how that does not benefit the united states. and yet, it is not a store you read about quite so often, because it is harder to get a handle on and cover than the war you are right in the middle love. to conclude, i think it is

important for us to step back andgo beyond our imperative put all the conflict and revolution and context in a way that reflects as much as is possible in real time america's larger place in the world. thank you. [applause] tom: thanks. that was wonderful. we will take an early break. don't forget to submit your questions. when you return, we will sit on these chairs and start the process. what happened there? looks like russian hacking. [laughter] enjoy the break. we will see you soon. the book is onat

sale in the atrium for signing. tom: ok, i think we are ready to start. i propose to ask each of the speakers a question. we have so many questions that it will take us until 3:00 to finish. i will ask each one of them a question, and maybe some of the questions they both can respond to. sabeth.st one to eli is therue that the obama most secretive administration and the most manipulative of the press? [laughter] elisabeth: our previous executive editor said it was the most secretive in history. she is no longer with us.

[applause] we have a problem with sound. there is a bit of a not go. elisabeth: is that ok? todd, over to you. yes, and she quoted jill abramson, the former editor of the new york times. elisabeth: is this better? say that the obama administration presents a lot of challenges, certainly if you -- is this better? ok, let's get rid of this thing. the nsaook at

-- if you look at , increasedrogram drone strikes. -- drone strikes in pakistan [indiscernible] -- a story about drone strikes and made the decision to name the senior officers who were running the cia drone program. there was a great deal of

controversy and criticism of the times for that, but the editor felt strongly that since the pentagon program is public and the officers who run it are public, and since this was a huge part of american power and foreign policy, that the officers should be named. the cia was very angry. great deal of secrecy with this administration that is a challenge to cover. we have four white house correspondents, but they will tell you how difficult it is. it is the problem i had in the bush administration. i've outlined the secrecy for you in one way, but the other problem is getting access to debate inside the white house about policy decisions. that is really hard to get out in real time.

ofsed to have a problem trying to get into see somebody, and then you would just get talking points. you had -- there was no real conversation about why they were debating certain points, because they don't want to have you write it as conflict, right? access is really important. it is getting easier now in the st 18 months. they are loosening up. they see the end in sight. the president himself is certainly much more open about his thinking, but that is the saying yes, there are serious challenges of covering any white house, including this one. tom: marty, do you have any observations? marty: i think she has covered it. tom: you have been editor of many important newspapers, marty

-- -- the new owner of the washington post. marty: sure. [laughter] marty: we were purchased more than a year and a half ago. it was an unusual buyer for eight news organization. it was fully unexpected. nobody knew he had any interest in our field. nobody expected that they would sell the washington post, which it had owned for such a long time. it has actually been a good experience. jeff brings to the post some things that we need. he brings questions about the way we do things and a different way of thinking about it. there were certainly some hard

questions about how we approach our work. number two, he brings ideas for new things that we could do, and openness to our own ideas, but also bringing his own ideas, and we need fresh ideas in our field. we need people from outside the industry who understand particularly technology and the way information is communicated and shared. thirdly, and importantly, he brings capital. he is one of the wealthiest people in the world. he has been willing to invest. that has been great, because we are in a. time where we have to make this transition to a digital mobile society. we need to find experiments. he has been willing to find all sorts -- find all sorts of experiments for us. he calls it providing a runway, sort of a time when we can try things before we actually take off.

we are not supposed to land, only take off on this runway. been a very good experience and we are growing rapidly. from that standpoint, it has been terrific. tom: can you give an example of an experiment that has worked and one that has failed? martin: i don't like to talk about failure, especially since this is televised. [laughter] but i will talk about successes. we've had a number of successes. we have an overnight crew. they do something called morning mix. of 10:00 at hours night until 6:00 in the morning. they look all over the world, all over the internet for stories that can be done. they develop the stories in our own distinct way. they get posted at 5:00 in the

morning or earlier. there is a lot of fresh content in the morning, in a way that is particularly suited to the west. it is different from the way you would write for a newspaper. -- suited for the web. writers toutside write for us. typically a lot of ordinary individuals running back thrown personal experiences -- those have been hugely popular pieces. wasably our most popular the headline, "what happened when i drove my mercedes down to pick up my food stamps." [laughter] a very popular piece. people were of different minds about this individual. but it was widely shared. this is a question for both

of you, starting with elisabeth. how do you explain the success of fox news? [laughter] related to that, what is your opinion about the future of print journalism? elisabeth: i think foxnews appeals to a committed audience, people who -- i am on television much ofwho believe in the fox news point of view. it's not a surprise. lively, it is engaging. it has a very strong point of view. it confirms to a lot of people's political beliefs who watch it. it's not a surprise. cnn is doing something very to beent, which is trying a straight news organization. what was the rest of the question?

for the future of print journalism -- yes, okay. that we i can tell you see print in a new york times coming out for the foreseeable future. i cannot predict how many years, or if that will go away, but certainly right now in the print edition of the new york times, the daily circulation is something less than a 700,000. are digital only subscribers are close to one million now. you can see what is happening. that is the pay wall. people are paying for those digital only subscriptions. right now, most of the revenue comes from a print advertising. an increase in digital advertising revenue, but he doesn't caught up yet with print. -- but it hasn't caught up yet with print.

our huge amount of focus is on the web, especially mobile. that is where the readership is really going. the seniors editors of the times like to say, we don't care how you get your news every morning, you can get any number of ways, we just want you to get it. marty can talk about this too, there is a huge push in the newsroom to get our stories out in front of people. all sorts of audience growth editors out our stories, so that they can get to the right people. there is a lot of energy, a lot of optimism in the newsroom. print, i do not know. tom: marty? martin: the future of journalism, broadly, i think a lot of things that we can do now

in terms of storytelling that we couldn't do before. we are reaching people all over the world, first of all. they can get information instantaneously that they could not before. we can provide original documents, video they would want to see at that moment, you name it. there are a lot of things we can do. it will be challenging. it is economically challenging. as far as print is concerned, and i have said this publicly in speeches, we have to move beyond the idea that print is going to be a big part of what we do for a long time -- it won't. i don't know what the endgame is. be a bighink it will part of the news organizations like ours for much longer. it is a digital world that we live in, whether we like it or not. it's actually more than a digital world, it is a mobile world. so many people are getting information on smartphones.

that is a huge demographic for the new york times, and many news organizations as well. facebook and other social media venues. you have a huge younger, millennial audience in particular, they are reading their news via facebook then linking out to a story that might come from the new york times, the post, any other organization. a different way of getting your news. expectation that what you are in should magically appear in front of you. or that their friends will share it with them. there is not an expectation that they should go to a destination where they would find information of interest to them. tom: i want to follow up with that on a question related to

economics. what is the revenue screen for that kind of journalism? if facebook is the primary window, where does the washington post get revenue from that kind of business model? martin: we can provide the answer to that. -- can't provided the answer to that. we have two sources of digital andnue advertising subscription. the same model that we had before. the problem with the advertising side is that the rates are significantly lower than they were before. we used to think that we were in a competitive news town, with 2-3 newspapers. that we are competing with everybody, with all sorts of sites. we compete with cnn, fox, blogs, buzzfeed, huffington post -- not only that, for advertising, we

compete with google. we compete with facebook, twitter, these behemoths. they are much larger than we are, these organizations. the rates -- the amount of inventory online can be infinite. the more paige views you to have, the lower the advertising rate. it is a huge, challenging environment for that. we are trying to figure out a sustainable economic model. for the times, subtractions has been a big factor. -- subscriptions have been a big factor. over one million's obstructions, and that is great. -- one million some scriptures, in that is great. that has leveled out. you need to find a way to generate growth if you are subscription models have plateaued. elisabeth: it is not finished,

but a big push to see how many english speakers we can get overseas to grow the international audience. there is also a chinese language edition, which is blocked in china, but a lot of experiments going on with translated versions. there are a lot of english speakers all over the world. the times likes to think of them as potential readers and subscribers. elizabeth, this is a question about the times coverage of hillary clinton. in the sunday edition, the public editor took the time to task for its coverage of the alleged terminal action by hillary -- alleged criminal action by hillary in her e-mails. got morethis post attention than anything she has ever written.

do you have any views about how the times has covered mrs. clinton on the issue of these e-mails? the post ran up hillary clinton's story on e-mails, so you might want to ask marty. [laughter] i'm not going to go beyond what the executive editor-- -- what are executive editor said in margaret o'sullivan's long column about this. just that this is a difficult question for me to answer. the sourcing on that story, we had high level sources across multiple layers of government.

they told us the wrong thing. they were still telling us the wrong thing the next morning. you could say, well, we should have held the story. will, they told us the next -- they told us the wrong thing the next morning. it has been a difficult thing for the times. we did break the story originally, michael schmidt broke the original story. the clinton administration -- campaign, has held back very strongly. marty could talk about their you know stories this morning, which broke some ground. -- their email stories this morning. margaret sullivan is our public editor, not an editor at the new york times. although she is in the newsroom, she is an outside person hired to pass judgment on what the editors and reporters of the new york times do.

it's not an internal criticism, she is an outside source. people sometimes get that confused, understandably. if she criticizes a reporter, this is not the case with margaret sullivan. she is an outside person hired specifically to critique the new york times every day. tom: thank you. a couple of questions for marty relating to the washington post journalism in iran. first, should the u.s. pay ransom to free captured a journalists? and should that issue have been much more an explicit condition for the recently negotiated iran nuclear treaty? martin: the administration hasn't asked to be paying ransom.

that issue has come up with respect to other hostages, whether they be journalists or other people. or whether the family themselves should pay ransom or whether the u.s. should prohibit them from paying ransom, as it has done in the past. that policy has been loosened. i will not take position on that. i am responsible for the news coverage of the post. i make sure that we approach things in an objective way. i don't take a position on all of the issues in front of people, including on what should have been the terms of the nuclear deal that the demonstration arrived at. -- that's the administration arrived it. we believe that he did absolutely nothing wrong, whether part of a nuclear deal were not, the reality is that he did not engage in espionage. there is no evidence of that. there is no evidence that he

committed any other offense. there is no reason for him to have been arrested in the first place and the reason for him to have been in an iranian prison, the worst prison in iran, for more than a year. that is independent of the nuclear agreement. tom: turning to this country, what threats do you two see to the reporting of journalism in the u.s.? i think freedom of journalism reporting -- well, financial. the financial difficulties have hit a lot of medium-sized newspapers really hard. they have cut way back on staff and overseas reporting. they have cut back on local

reporting, statehouse reporting. all kinds of stories you used to see about corruption in the statehouse. there is less and less of that in the country. i don't see any kind of repression. may be marty can come up with something. washington, it's the usual problem of background sources. it's hard to name sources with national security reporting in particular. i don't see any repression in this country in terms of the government. the obama administration will strenuously object to some stories, but no one orders us to stop publishing. martin: i think the concern in slowngton is around responses to the freedom of information act requests, nonresponse to freedom of

information act class -- information act requests. and when they are finally released, heavily redacted, that you waited years for -- those kinds of things. the new york times has been central to that, with a reporter that faced prison with not disclosing his source. those types of investigations and the persistence of that approach, and a number of them has left a number of people in government to feel that they shouldn't speak to the press. they fear that they would become objects of suspicion, because it's evidence that they communicated with a journalist. why give information, if you think that that particular might access classified information and bending you would become an object of suspicion and subject to investigation, have to hire a lawyer and have your entire career of ended? -- upended?

that is a serious concern in washington. some just respond, don't e-mail me. they send you back an e-mail and say, don't e-mail me, don't contact me ever again,. the press contact -- here is the press contact. i think it is a serious at the state and local level as well. you are seeing a strong resistance on the parts of local and state governments to release information they are required to under law. the greatest threat to the press in the u.s. comes from the press itself. that is sometimes just a lack of courage to publish things. people are concerned about being accused of bias, what the impact might be on their financial circumstances of the organization. that is something we ourselves have to deal with and overcome.

we have show the courage to publish what the facts are. tom: this is a question about in-depth coverage. a daily best buy newspaper, versus something like the london economist? -- are they provided best by a daily newspaper? elisabeth: as i mentioned in my talk, the nail salon a story, seal team six, a four-part series on violence and lawlessness, shocking events on the high seas -- those were all 8, 9, 11,000 words. people read them on their smartphones, believe it or not. there is a real place for that kind of coverage.

stories -- there is much more available with them when you look on the web. i don't think we would all be treat from that. the new york times never has. a huge amount of commitment to a multipart series, a huge amount of resources in reporters, and editors, travel, graphic designers. we too are very committed to that. you can find that kind of in-depth reporting in all the major news organizations today. ofspent an enormous amount resources understanding of the refugee crisis, the waves of refugees landing in europe. isis,e looked in-depth at what it's all about, its recruiting practices.

we have been in the midst of a major series looking at why the internet is so vulnerable. how it became that way, how it has been that way since the very beginning. that is an enormous expenditure of resources, looking back on the history of the internet and who created it, even if they thought about a security. the only security they thought about was a nuclear bomb. they didn't think about any other security. we embarked on a major series on the threats to freedom of expression around the world. we have many others as well, but we do it all the time. tom: does the citizens united impede freedomor of expression for most americans? who wants to take a crack at that? elisabeth: one of the issues with these questions -- i will speak for marty, we don't want

to voice opinions here. obviously, with the stories we ran over the weekend with the amount of money poured into these campaigns from a small number of extremely rich people, it's not what legislators had in mind years ago with campaign finance reform. we are looking at that closely. you guys can tell us what you think about a handful of extremely rich individuals financing many of these campaigns, particularly republican campaigns. ted cruz has a handful of people supporting his campaign. c partly what it has done, creating a field of 17 republican candidates. if you get a handful of money from people, you are on that stage tomorrow night. that is my answer. martin: i agree with elisabeth.

i don't want to express a point of view on a supreme court decision. that is an opinion people can come to a conclusion on their own without my counsel. tom: what is your view about the donald trump phenomenon? [laughter] frank rudy in the new york times on sunday suggested that the media is largely to blame for this phenomenon. perversionled "the of politics by vacuous stagecraft." [laughter] elisabeth: he has opinions. look, i can't imagine not covering donald trump right now. he is ahead in the polls. i will tell you what you have read everywhere, which is right now, the certainly reaching into a very disaffected group of

angry americans who are tired of washington, tired of the program talking points from politicians. that in hisazing income disclosures, he said he which is unheard of in politics. people think that you have more money than you do. he is breaking all the rules. it's really early. severely been tested in a serious policy debate. we shall see. of summer it's a sort before the campaign. he does appeal to a certain part of the united states. there are polls, even from this morning, that shows a wider range of people. he has certainly made the clinton campaign very happy.

i think you made the jeb bush campaign very happy. martin: on frank's column, which i haven't read, but for a while now i've been tempted to start calledag on twitter blame the media. anytime we are blamed for some perceived problem, it must be the media's fault. if we just went away, everything would be fine. i take that to be a little bit silly. concerned,rump is the only other lesson we should draw is to be skeptical of political pundits early on. --ecially the to specialists especially data specialist, saying who is a serious candidate or not. necessarily protect who is going to be a serious candidate. -- we shouldn't protect

necessarily who is going to be a serious candidate. that don'tthat always know what they are talking about. they can't predict who is going to be serious candidate. no one did protect, as far as i know. and look what has happened. tom: this? relates to your comments -- this question relates to your comments. how will researchers on freedom likely to affect america's influence in power? elisabeth: the problems that the new york times is facing in china are real. the website has been blocked

from most of the chinese, although they get around it. we've also had problems with getting correspondence into beijing. that is a big problem. there is a policy of attrition against new york times correspondent in china. is a difficult problem. do you want to go on? [laughter] i think that the blocking of access to information -- the u.s. has always maintained a free flow of information that will accrue to its benefit. people will see how other people are living, they can see how it functions. accurate information will make its way into the information

ecosystem. to the extent that countries can control their internet and block access, that theory begins to fall apart. these countries have even greater control over what their citizens see. it should probably make it more difficult for the u.s. to exercise its will in the world, if people think that's a good thing for us to do. for american journalists in these countries, it's extremely difficult to do their jobs. they can be arrested. they can be harassed. they can be prohibited, as the new york times has been, to go into china. some have existing pieces in visas inexisting

china, but they have been denied because the government has been upset about some kind of reporting. that is true in other countries as well. there are questions about the fine line between reporting the news and shaping. when it comes to covering incidents related to american for a broad, fox news and msnbc cast different stories. they seem to be trying to shape people's's perceptions. is this right? elisabeth: it's not whether it is right or wrong, it is what they see as their audience. and this on bc on the right -- msnbc on the left, and fox news on the right. you can see it through rachel maddow and all of the host in the evening have a very liberal bent.

msnbc feels like that works for them, especially in political campaigns. works as you go into a political campaign. to watch programs that reinforce your beliefs and make you feel good. cnn is right in the middle. sometimes it struggles with an audience, although it is doing much better now. it presents itself as straight on reporting. the senior people at both of those networks have made decisions about appealing to a particular segment of the audience. whether it is right or wrong, it is what works for them. martin: many people, if not most people, are drawn to news

organizations that confirm their pre-existing points of view. they feel more comfortable with it. their views are validated. deeply that others are just wrong. -- they believe that others it's not our business model or the organizations we represent. [no audio] >> about prominent journalists invited to go on to talk shows. on one hand, that helps the "the washington post" and "the new york times. on the other hand, you get into a broadcast where there is a lot of opinion be informed, do you whatany ground rules about you tell a reporter or someone like yourself, going into these

situations? how do you tread that line between reporting and opinion when your byline appears in these newspapers? >> i used to go on television a lot when i was covering the white house. the rules are you do not express opinions, and you do not protect. .- predict we were also kind of boring, like today. you are on those shows because of your suppose and expertise.

you don't say -- i mean, marty and i have both said things that were taken out of -- you know, were just taken and people ran with them. so, you are very careful. it is an issue. you are on the shows because of your suppose it -- supposed expertise. i would say this is what my reporting has told me, and yes on the one hand, democrats say this, but of course, republicans say that. i try to be measured. it's an issue when you're on those shows and you have people like george well, opinion people, expressing strong views and you were sitting there in the middle of this fight and you do not want to take sides, but, you know -- it is an issue. i would think, no, i'm not going to do that. it's too hard. i'm going to tell them no. we have a reporter go on "meet the press" all the time and is very careful. you are never as fiery or provocative or interesting as the opinion people on the shows. tom: marty? marty: just to keep it brief, our approach is the same. basically do not say anything on the shows you would not say in the paper or on our website. those are the standards we use.

of course it's a difficult environment in which to operate. it is like locker room conversation. so it gets tricky with the risk of getting carried away. tom: just to flip this a bit -- should the press be more biased by not giving people -- equal time to climate change deniers, it anti-evolutionists, etc.? elisabeth: i want to answer that question. one of the people i edit, davenport, the great environmental writer -- you know, and margaret sullivan, our public editor is big into this notion of fault equivalency. to be an unbiased reporter you have to say one hand, a vast majority of scientists think that there is clearly i'm a change caused by humans. on the other hand, these other people say, we do not know for sure. we don't do that anymore on climate change. it's 99% or whatever. we basically say because of the established science, humans

caused climate change. we don't do that. other issues we do -- that is one where we have moved beyond what i would call the fault equivalency. marty: we treat climate change as real and serious. that is where, as she said, where the vast majority of the scientists almost unanimously view the science rests. so, we treat science seriously and respectfully. and that is how we write about it. now recently we ran a piece from someone who had an alternative

point of view, but that is their job. to be open to all points of view. tom: should the u.n. be open to global agreements, and how can the united states inspire such a global agreement? elisabeth: you are going to answer that one. marty: what was that? tom: should the internet be governed by global agreements? marty: there is a lot of him discussion, i gather, about whether -- as i said -- there should be standard rules of behavior for the internet, the way that we deal with space, international laws, the high seas, things like that. that would probably be -- certainly a better system than having authoritarian regimes close off the internet, have their own rules for each of these individual states. and we see what the consequences of that are. that is a brutal repression of free speech in those countries.

it denies citizens of those countries access to information that is available to millions and billions of people around the world. it is certainly better than a country by country internet. tom: 24 hour news channels. do they do more harm than good? too polarizing? elisabeth: well, you talked about msnbc and fox. i think they are repetitive. you can't watch for more than -- i mean, they chew over the same developments over day -- every day over and over again. marty: brain damage. elisabeth: right. yeah. so, you could go berserk watching them for that long. i don't think they are harmful. they're just really hard to watch. especially sometimes cnn in the middle of the day -- breaking news.

they are really shifting the standards for breaking news. developing now is really not. we keep it on in the washington bureau and the newsroom in new york and we keep an eye on it. you can see the absinthe flows. if -- you can see the ebbs and flows. if they find a plain part, it's a very big deal. [laughter] oh, they found a plane part. you have to watch for a while. tom: ok, marty, this is for you. as expressed by the budget, please compare what was spent by the post in 2015 by decade earlier. come on, mcnamara. marty: i have no idea. i'm sure it is less. we have about 30 people overseas

and 15 euros. not as much as the "new york times," but substantial. a decade ago, we were covering some wars, so it was probably substantially more expensive to cover the wars in afghanistan and iraq, and it was a huge investment of resources of every type. so, you know, it's less, but still substantial. tom: ok, this question is for both of you. and that relates to the coverage of the presidential election for 2016. the coverage of the kennedy election in 1960 was revealed through teddy white's book "the making of a president," a classic, and another, "the boys in the bus," about how the press handled that. i wonder how you view the

coverage of this current cycle from your two perspectives, and what are the challenges the newspapers face when dealing with this? elisabeth: i am not responsible for the presidential campaign coverage, but i will talk about the question. you look at teddy white's book and "the boys in the bus" -- first of all "the boys in the bus," that changed. i was on the mccain campaign in 2008, and things have changed drastically even since '08. first of all, there are girls on the bus. there are a thousand things that are different.

back in those days, yeah, there was a lot of middle-aged guys covering these campaigns, and they would file one story a day at 5:00 or 6:00 at night. i think they were filing on typewriters -- i guess they must have dictated by phone? they dictated. there was a dictation room at the "new york times" and "the washington post." you would read your copy -- i actually did that -- that was how you got your stories in. but the main difference was the resort storage a m1 deadline. now these campaigns are brutal. -- the main difference was there was one story a day and one deadline.

now these campaigns are brutal. the mccain campaign -- tweeting constantly, feeding the web, feeding the first draft, which is our early morning newsletter, but it is also received all day long as items from the campaign. there's also 17 candidates. i look at how these reporters work now. you are filing all day long. you are tweeting, filing, posting. at the end of the day, after all of this, you have to come up with an intelligent, thoughtful "new york times" story for later additions -- for the web and for later editions of the paper. it never stops. you was getting to me on the mccain campaign. it is hard to find time to think, i think. in this kind of process. to step back and to write bigger stories about what it all means. i mean, reporters do it. the demands on them are way beyond what it ever was on "the boys on the bus." marty: i actually like the direction of some of the reporting. not the day-to-day, minute to minute reporting we all do now that we did not have to do in the past.

by the way, "the times" had a dictation room. they were the last to eliminate it. i find news organizations like ours have decided a lot of our resources should not be dedicated to following the candidates as they move around, but should stand back and pursue the kinds of stories that should be pursued. there's a lot more investigative reporting. i -- we go deep into their backgrounds. we go deep into their financial connections. we go deep into their donors in a way that we should.

and we do what we call enterprise reporting. where we are not just the daily reporting. we are actually being enterprising about it and finding deeper stories that require more time and actually break news. not news that the candidate happened to say this or there was this malapropism on the part of this candidate or whatever it might be, but actually much deeper stories than we have had in the past, and i'm pleased with that on average. tom: there were a couple questions about radio. is radio still strong, vital, and global? there used to be the voice of america, which reported america's stories and values abroad. does this exist anymore? elisabeth: well, yes. mvr is bigger than ever and has a much stronger resins overseas. it's also big here in the united states. i am sure that many of you listen to npr. there is a constant debate in congress about what its mission should be. obviously the voice of america journalists want to keep it completely separate, objective

news organization, and there is a move in congress to make it more -- as the united states is coming under siege from all of this ice is propaganda, there is a move in congress to try and make it more reflective of american values and american foreign-policy issues. obviously the journalists at voa are totally opposed to that. but i think npr is a really strong presence here and overseas and has continued to grow and flourish. marty: npr is a very large organization. they have a difficult relationship with their affiliates all over the country about who should be covering what and how big npr itself should become, which some affiliates feel may be at their expense. they are working through that situation right now, but they are a very substantial news organization.

and i would point out they are very dependent on other news organizations like ours. if you listen to npr, and i guess a lot of you listen, you will hear as guests, reporters from "the washington post," from "the wall street journal." as large as they are, they do not have a staff as substantial as hours to do the reporting that we do. they do good work and they do a fair amount of original reporting as well. but they are highly dependent on others, and we are part of that ecosystem. tom: yeah. this question relates to elisabeth's comments about "the baltimore sun" closing its foreign bureau and other newspapers doing the same. it is about the second tier newspapers, not the post and the wall street journal.

do you have views about these -- chicago, milwaukee him of these kinds of things? elisabeth: like all newspapers, they are struggling with their print editions and trying to make their digital editions profitable. they have been hit harder and they have cut back the newsrooms quite a bit. "the times" has an advantage because of its size and reach around the country. they are moving -- my hometown paper, when i was growing up, we had two cartons that said "post," and now it's just this little tiny tabloid with what looks like an advertiser. you know, they have all shrunk.

what has changed locally -- and i don't know about this in great detail -- but there have been a lot of local websites that have really sprung up, sort of hyper local coverage of the cities around the country. but i don't -- -- what paper was it? i was at a seminar this past fall, and one of the papers, a lot of the people who were there -- the reporters were doing, they were self editing. they had no editing staff. and i thought, oh, my god. [laughter] that is what is happening at some of these places as they cut staff. reporters are editing themselves. as a reporter, i cannot imagine that. as an editor, i can't imagine it either. tom: that goes to a question someone had about the vetting. traditional newspapers like "the times" and "the post" have good sub editors to check the facts. is there any vetting on the web,

the news outlets that people read these days online that you know about? marty: when you talk about the web, that is a very big space. different people have different policies. you know, we have a stated policy of trying to read everything, have at least one other person read something before it is hosted. i am sure that "the times" has something similar. rings happen at such a speed -- i'm sure it is not reviewed as closely as it was in the past. -- things happen at such a speed. they do not get the same level of editing as you had in the past. with a once a day newspaper or twice a day newspaper.

now you'll are talking about things being posted 24 hours a day, including at night, all the time, evan days a week. at -- seven days a week. if you are not the first with the story, there's a good chance you will not get the traffic. elisabeth: for our editing, the question about writing for the web and posting it online -- we have a system. i am sure "the post" is the same where you have -- you have 223 editors look at it, edit -- 2 to 3 editors look at it, edit it before he goes out.

then there is a copy editor who looks at it, and there might be another editor if it is a particular important story. there's a lot of pressure to get things up quickly. huge amounts of pressure. so, there is constant tension between we have got to get this out, but we've got to make sure it is right. you know, it can be nerve-racking. the way that we did that in washington sometimes, it's a really big deal story and it has to go right away, but if it's very competitive, we will have to get editors read it simultaneously. you can have another editor read over his shoulder. but it is still, you know -- the later versions of this story is the day unfolds, developments happen, these tory can change a lot -- the story can change a lot. there's a lot more scrutiny given to the story at the end of the day as it goes into print. marty: can i go back to the previous question about regional papers, if i might?

because my career was involved with regional papers. i was the editor of "the boston globe," "the miami herald." i feel very strongly. they do face enormous pressures. i eliminated foreign coverage at "the boston globe" in 2007 or so when we were going through the great recession. anyone with in a management role, you do what you have to do. you have to make tough decisions. are we going to cover our local region? the answer for an institution like "the boston globe" was we are going to cover our local region. there are other places that will cover the world. nobody was happy with that. i was not happy with that. sharply criticized. free much all of the people overseas at that moment left "the boston globe" to do other things. but i think those institutions -- there are still many good newspapers out there. "the boston globe" still does a great job. "the l.a. times" does a great job.

and it's critically important that they succeed. so, at "the boston globe" we launched an investigation of the catholic church that exposed the sex abuse scandal the church is dealing with even today. tom: you got a pulitzer for it. marty: and if we had not done that, that story would not have been done. these newspapers have to be the eyes and ears. we cannot be everywhere. regardless of our size. even if we were double the size, we would not be able to do that. i think it is absolutely critical that they succeed. their financial challenges are greater than ours. there is no question about it. we have the capacity to create national products or international products, as she

was talking about before, how the "new york times" is trying to get international subscribers. for regional newspapers, that is much were difficult and they face the same competition with google and others for advertising. they just do tremendous work under very difficult circumstances and very often write very important stories that all of us learn from. tom: well said. thank you. i'm going to ask one more question before we close. we are getting to the end. before i do, i want to ask both of you if there was something you thought was going to be asked, but wasn't? or should have been. the final question has to do with the future. i wonder if you both can talk

about the recruiting of the young journalists in the digital age. what are you looking for. how excited are young people about doing the kinds of things that you do that are so essential for american democracy? elisabeth: i've got to tell you. you know, given how tough the business is right now, we still get an amazing applicants. we had this fantastic intern this summer in the washington bureau -- he is 22 years old. he graduated from harvard. he just wants to be a journalist. he does not want to go to wall street or finance. he was to be a journalist and he is a great writer. what i find about the young people we do hire, first of all, we hire journalists. the main thing is you hire

journalists. some may have more experience than others, some may have more potential. what i find interesting, of all of the efforts we have on the web and the iphone and audience development and graphics and video, and that is really cool and there are all of these young people running around the newsroom now pushing our stories out to everybody, and they are young and they are cap -- so many of them just want to be reporters and write stories. that is what gives me a lot of hope. i think, well, if you are so cool and we are this legacy media. all of these old content providers, right? they just want to be "new york times" reporter's and write stories. that is their dream. just to do the old-fashioned going out and interviewing people and writing a story.

you so, we get a huge number of applicants. i have a lot of hope for the future. marty: i would say the single most encouraging thing in our profession today is the caliber and of talent. and the single most important thing to our profession is the caliber of talent in our profession. i am amazed at the quality of people we have. the interns we have in the summer. the people we end up hiring. some who work with us for several years. it is amazing. they have multiple degrees. they speak many different languages. they are a lot smarter than i was or am. they are good writers. and they enter the profession for all the right reasons.

they are not looking for bank. they are not looking to be a celebrity. they just think we serve a useful purpose in society and in the world and they want to be part of it. and they do that knowing the profession is at a very challenging moment. they face all sorts of risks, and they do it anyway. all of us entered the profession when it was doing pretty much just fine. whatever problems they had, they paled at the problems we face today. i have huge admiration for the people entering our profession now and am very grateful they have chosen journalism as the race for themselves. tom: bravo. thank you very much. [applause] really, really wonderful. thank you. and >> will have more road to the white house coverage today. the republican presidential candidate chris christie is live on c-span at 7:00 p.m. eastern.

>> follow the c-span city store as we travel outside the washington belt way to communities across america. >> the idea is to take the programming for american history television and book tv out on the road beyond the beltway to produce pieces that are a little bit more visual that provide, again, a window into these cities that viewers would not normally go to that also have truly rich histories and a rich literary scene as well. >> a lot of people have heard the history of the city like new york, l.a., chicago, but what about the smaller ones like albany, new york? what is the history of them? >> we than to over 75 cities. we will have hit 95 cities in april 2016. >> most of our programming is event coverage. these are not even coverage pieces. they are shorter. they take you some place. they take you to a home. >> we partner with our cable affiliates to explore the

history and literary culture of various cities. >> the key entry of a city is the cable operator. it's the cable industry bringing us there. looking forally great characters. you want your viewers to be able to identify with these people that we are talking about. >> it is an experience type of program where we are taking people on the road to places where they can touch things, see things, and learn about -- you know, it's not just local history because a lot of local history plays into the national story. >> it should be enticing enough that they can get the idea of feel thatbut also this is just in their backyard and go to see it. >> we want viewers to get the sense of knowing a place just from watching one of our pieces. >> as we do with all of our coverage, our

it has done one thing we wanted it to do, which is a build relationships with our cable partners. announcer: watch the cities to her on the c-span network to see where we are going next, see our schedule at the sun -- c-span.org\cities tour. announcer: the c-span cities tour visits sites across the nation to hear from authors, and civic leaders. ons month the congress summer recess, the two are is on c-span each day at 6:00 p.m. eastern. marching