>> monday on "the communicators," will hurt, chairman of the information technology subcommittee, talked about cyber security and federal government agencies and the report card they released in may on the management information. he is joined by politico cyber security reporter tim sparks. >> there are almost 11,000 data centers. facebook, one of the biggest companies in the world, has four. there is no reason the federal government should have 11,000.

, forgh the scorecards agencies have realized $2 billion with the savings over the last two years by moving to the cloud. >> watch "the communicators" monday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span two. >> tonight on c-span, a look at the 20 16th presence of election and impact -- 2016 present election and the impact technology is having on the race. we will show you one conference from santa monica, california, and another from the george bush presidential center in dallas. later, a conversation with facebook's chief operating officer sheryl sandberg. an all-female panel of digital media correspondents, producers, and executives discussed the 2016 present election and how podcast, live ists, and other technology being used to target millennials.

this is from the ideas los angeles conference in santa monica. this is 40 minutes. it is all women. [laughter] [applause] hi, guys. thank you, everybody, for coming this afternoon. was thea mentioned, i editor on the digital side and i worked on the election strategy could i jus. i just started with my husband and the cofounder of twitter on a new company where we are a content creative shop working with creators with distinctive voices on awesome storytelling across platforms -- podcast, video series, etc.. we are here to talk about politics, which is not so much my daily life. >> lucky you.

hillary: it is still part of my daily life. when fusion asked me to put together this panel, it was an opportunity to bring together some of my favorite people who work in political coverage and it really differently. i will introduce them. you are not sitting in my card order. let me rearrange quickly just to make sure i do not miss any key points here. liz planck, thank you for coming. liz is an amazing voice, especially in the video space. she is at vox.com where she is a correspondent and has a series called 20 16ish following this election. she was at mic.com, where she created flip the script, and award-winning series covering social issues. she has been part of explosive

digital properties online and a big voice that has helped drive those brands to be very prominent during the season. .hank you for being here caitlin thompson is a director of content at a swedish podcasting company that does basically everything for podcast from editorial oversight to cms to add serving to .verything else coul >> global domination. hillary: she also ran political coverage in 2012 at wnyc and covered 2006 and 2008 for "the washington post" and also "time." you are a firm a doctor to podcasts. i'm testing my own knowledge based on our many conversations.

both bring to the conversation a great depth of knowledge about political coverage and this new space of podcasting, which we know everybody is super excited to get into. catherine is actually the chief matterng officer of studios because i just hired her a few weeks ago. [applause] we know each other from politico where she was previously starting an editorial but moving and to operations for politico and also working on the politico state expansion where she was vp of operations for politico state. she took politico into six new markets around the country and especially in new york and worked on the integration of capital new york with politico, which was a big deal and our new york bubble world. fusionsenendez, superstar anchor and

correspondent and just amazing article brain. we work together a lot at fusion , especially on the forum where she just brought her super death of knowledge about the issues and the candidates and everything that they have said for the last 12 years is just encyclopedic knowledge of issues and positions to that event and to everything that she does every day. mention that io think -- alicia: don't do it. hillary: i can't call you broadcast journalism's new gladiator? "elle" magazine said that. embarrassing tidbits for everyone. let's start talking. obviously a crazy

election year. it is really different than we thought it would be a your ago when we were working at fusion, trying to figure out how we were going to do 2016. i do not think any of us foresaw the trump force coming our way and thought it would be something to do with early on in the election and probably less so. we get down to the issues that sort of drive the conversation more ourselves and having it drippin driven for us in many ways. i think there has been some adjusting we had to do. one thing that i think we have all been working on is how you differentiate yourself in the space. you think political coverage and it's just like this rash of headlines day in and day out on the campaign trail. ,e all want to be more creative help drive the conversations we want to have, but it's hard when you're faced with this just onslaught of headlines and news breaks coming ou at you driven

by the spacing your campaign. i think at the same time though -- in this panel was arranged to help address these new technologies and new opportunities that we are seeing. we are seeing innovation in video and innovation in the digital space and changes in the way that broadcast is doing things, too. i just sort of want to get at those questions with you guys and your respective areas of where you have been and talk about what you have seen this year in 2016 that has been different than for years ago and maybe a little farther in the past. caitlin, i wanted to start with you because you are in a super new space this year, working in podcasts. what from your perspective has been -- have you seen happening in podcasting that has felt different than what you see in day-to-day political coverage? caitlin: it's a good question

and i think a good 2 -- first of all, how many people here listen to podcasts? are podcast and enthusiasts. i love giving recommendations for people to listen to. for what has happened in podcast that i'm so enthused about is that there has been a real non-success of punditry. people not try to do it, but punditry has sort of failed in the podcast space. there are a lot of reasons to talk about why -- tech reasons, discovery reasons. there is the fact that most people do not listen in the same day that something is produced like a lot of other mediums. what has thrived in its place is so heartening to me. .it is context . it is explanation. it is narrative. it is gone to the far path of binaries of who is winning the

horse race today, who has got the media cycle now, and what's tomorrow going to bring. this part of that world that's really interesting, but for me, the narrative context that "the washington post" is doing with their series where they talk about each and every one of the president's and their challenges and their stories. mic is doing a show called special relationship, which has a political reporter from the u.k. talking to one in the u.s. if anyone has tried to travel overseas recently and try to have a conversation with someone not american, you'll know exactly how interesting that can be and the show gets at that. i could talk at this for hours, but in my mind, what of the best political changes that happened this entire year happened on the podcast "another round." hosted by twohow women of color. they got secretary hillary clinton to come and be on the show. it was the only podcast that she participated in this election

cycle. they push her farther than anybody else i'd seen in any medium. talk about her husband's mandatory minimum sentencing law in a way that nobody else had been able to come close because they do not catch it in politics. they bluntly asked her a question and got to an incredibly real, hartman place. to me that was encouraging because these things are catching on like wildfire and the audience is younger, browner, more female, and really engage. are choosing to engage in context and not punditry. hillary: i want to go to liz. and one of the early about whatns we had we wanted to talk about today, we talked about some of the opportunities that covering trump presents and sort of how the -- even with some of really tough statements he has

made about immigrants and other groups, that presents an opportunity to discuss these issues, too. can you talk a little bit about how you been getting into? that? liz: it has been a hard election to cover for all the reasons we have laid out. i try to keep myself motivated. maybe it is my glass half-full approach that i have with the world. him is not a problem and an opportunity to have conversations about the things that he is talking about. trump -- we were talking about this earlier. he's not just like -- i don't think he is the problem. i think he is a symptom of the problem. a lot saying things of people are feeling and thinking and he is saying them out loud. that has offered a really great opportunity to talk about how we feel about immigration, how we feel about all these things, how we feel about muslims, and why

some of those assumptions and stereotypes are wrong and are actually bigotry. 2016ish,y to do with the show i host, is to take the camera off the candidates and turn it on the people and issues. the perfect example was actually last night. the senate democrats did this amazing filibuster -- a 13 or 14 hours filibuster until 2:00 a.m. around gun violence and just wanted to push very common sense gun security reform. that this amazing filibuster and i turn on cnn and they have four people talking about what trump said. i'm trying to find this filibuster and i'm like, why can't i find this filibuster? we use this program called slack at vox like many other media companies. it is a chat system and it is

not :00 or 10:00 p.m. on the east coast and we are like we need to get this up. we put this on facebook live. we created a facebook live of the filibuster and we reached 3.70 people. it was our biggest facebook live ever. some of the people were like, thank you for showing this. people were tuning in and commenting and we kept going because there were some of people watching. actually think it broke down because there were too many people watching. yeah, i is to say that think digital media generally is offering a different and position on all these issues and conversations that we knew really need to happen. icia, fusion has been experiencing a lot with facebook live and it is taking broadcasts into a new form. it feels different, but we are wrestling with a lot of the same

desires to show and to get inside and tell stories visually and not just in terms of text and other things. this year, what are you seeing that is different with broadcasts? producinghink about broadcast journalism, what are you thinking about, especially going into conventions? i'm sure you're having conversations about how you do that in this space. alicia: i'm in a unique space because we're trying to broadcast to millennials, the generation that is cord cutting. what a challenge there. going into the election, there was a lot of concern that following the two elections of president obama that there was an to be a drop off in the interest of young people. that could not have been less true. inasmuch that we do not think we were prepared for donald trump, we were not prepared for bernie

sanders and to the extent that this generation is going to feel the bern. there was a lot of attention and enthusiasm and many more candidates doing press events than anticipated. normally you have a lot of debates at town halls, but every night there was like a new debate or town hall. that allowed a lot of networks to experiment with different formats. we have the opportunity to have hillary clinton and bernie sanders and martin o'malley when he was in the race one-on-one in iowa talking about issues to the hispanic and african-american community and there are other topics that we never get to get to because you would assume that there were other opportunities and we need to get on the "ace line issues." there some much interest that there is this reality now that people are consuming so and it's other news

not enough to just report on the news and do this punditry. you have to do a deep dive on issues and stories and a have to be character driven, which is wonderful for someone as a storyteller, but you have to be aware always that you are producing a for television to take up the time that you have promised the cable networks that you will deliver them, but also to think as you are telling that story how you're going to tell it online. when of the mistakes that people made in the early days of that was assuming that i could do a seven minute television package and then just cut that down two minutes and put it on facebook. that is never going to work. it has to be uniquely composed for the platform you are going to deliver it to. i think that there's a lot of learning going on in real time. there are certainly exceptions to that. i'm sure you saw anderson cooper on cnn have this exchange with pam bondi in florida that has gone viral. example of

a telogen clip cut down and that is unprompted live television. if you are producing something storytelling come a has to be told different on every medium. the final thing that i would say is that you see innovation in part because of donald trump's habit of calling out the press and refuting statements that he has made. who has tobc and cnn do 20 47 coverage doing fact as thein real-time interview donald trump because it is the only way that they can keep up with the interview and keep the viewers informed. that is something we've never seen before. hillary: used to be like fact checking was like a nonprofit enterprise. it would happen three days after a debate or something. maybe if you get around to it, you will see what is true what is not. it is part of our daily diet of understanding now. catherine, you are at political for seven years during the explosion of that brand and its

domination and it's really setting the bar for what doing real-time news on the political space looks like. i also worked there and learned a lot about that kind of pac e, very challenging to keep up with. inexpressibly linked to the brand, they really change the way that news would become disseminated around politics. i think of it that no scoop was too small. you started seeing as other platforms and other companies an fusion, weic are tried to get into that space a little bit. you saw the new york times start to get faster and faster. everybody is trying to be fast all the time and i think politicao started that, especially in politics. what has the company done to go beyond that? obviously cannot just stay same.

you cannot just sustain on that. what are some of the things that politico has been reaching into that continue to grow and innovate around this clinical space? space?itical katherine: politico started in 2007, which was a unique opportunity because people could start the 24-hour news cycle and could be reached on devices. pretty quickly, other news organizations cut up. the best lessons that the learned and saw this shift in the industry coming is that they taught us that your worst enemy is complacency, both as an organization, an individual. they knew that even though politico does generate revenue from its daily print edition. it basically serves as a capitol

hill and congressional audience as well as a magazine. they set into place pretty early on things that have been hateful for this current election. i just want to talk about a few of those platforms because the have been successful and were really smart about always innovating, always experiment ing. some of the experiments i would not say failed, but there are a lot of lessons learned from that. the first was in 2011. it was primarily online advertising. and print advertising. we started politico pro, which is our policy arm. it is behind a pay wall, subscription-based, and it is a really must use tool for policy professionals, not just in washington now but through our state expansion of people who need intel in real-time about

these niche policy areas, ranging from health to energy to financial services, you name it. help offer another revenue stream. another thing that we have seen that a lot of other media companies have started to utilize as well is live events. in 2012, we created an event team that is now 15 people. they are able to produce 150 events a year, which is pretty impressive. most of them are sponsored. we are very proud that we did not adopt the pay to play, meaning the sponsor does not have a seat on the panel. [laughter] katherine: they can do opening remarks. those are just some of the examples. in the current day, we have been

talking about in terms of podcasting, i think politico's biggest asset is people. the personalities, the brands, is thatck to that event it is a live extension of our journalism. a very well respected white house correspondent launched a podcast that has been hugely successful not just in terms of audience and downloads, but also in the type of guests he has been able to secure, one of which was president obama in the oval office. part of 2016 coverage, they launched the politico caucus, which is kind of a weekly insider survey of more than 300 people around the united states ,ho are really plugged in whether they are politicians themselves or consultants or

activists. and so with all these different platforms in terms of experimenting, the one mission that they all have is to break news. another one we were talking about in terms of real-time is -- ino have, and as soon addition to these local bureaus, we have politico europe. to have a big vote on the 23rd about the eu referendum. that launched an app that has live results with polling and feedback. they goes to that founding principle of not being complacent. i think it's went to be interesting past the selection. politico has famously been banned from several trump events. hillary: welcome to the club. [laughter] has anyone else here can have banned? jorge ramoia: my colleague,

s. katherine: as hillary mentioned, i've just recently moved on to our quick matter studios. politico rooting for and i'm really excited to see what they're going to create next just because it has been such a variety of experiments that i am very proud of. hillary: sticking with what you were talking about with rush and his voice, i want to talk about people in this election who are covering and how we have seen the pool of reporters and voices expand this year. ran the coverage for yahoo! news four years ago. i've done that like people on charters and all that. we made the decision not to do that at fusion and sort of look

for new voices to elevate as part of our coverage. caitlin, you mentioned the podcasting space being really receptive to people of color and maybe other voices we are not heard before. i would just like to sort of see what you guys think about what you have seen in terms of new voices. opportunitiesed for more voices we are not heard before? i still think of politics as being a pretty white man dominated space. i assembled this panel, so obviously there is hope for the future. [laughter] [applause] caitlin, do you want to talk about that for a second? caitlin: i would answer that two ways. digital media is much more inclusive. i think all of us, at least one part or another, has either interned or step foot in and put

in blood, sweat, and tears in legacy media organizations. legacy media organizations do not do the greatest job traditionally of being representative. that is something the digital world does instantly because everyone is on the internet. the barrier to access has dropped significantly. in my space, when you talk about the kinds of values and success stories that i was enumerating , storytelling. you are talking about getting involved in people's personal narratives instead of just covering a bloviating politician. does or stories that women, in particular, i daresay are better at telling. in myrrier to entry podcast landscape has dropped so significantly. -- cantake and involved get involved in a conversation that they cannot have the last election cycle. because the internet represents america much more than legacy media organizations represent inclusioniversity and

and most importantly the two things together represent representation show an audience. if you have an audience, they will do whatever it takes to get an audience. some of the organizations are realizing that. as a result, there are 11 people who are good at telling those kinds of stories and recommending opportunities and are part of the push towards being more representative of the kind of stories and people who should be more involved in the clinical conversation. i think that is every part of us. hillary: and more representative of the electorate that is now going to be making decisions. alicia: even as we stand here on an all-female panel, i'm hispanic, but we are still missing voices. as we get better, we still have to get better. working in a newsroom, you think diversity in terms of what you are a lot ofthere conversations that happen behind the scenes that i think are really important about which

issues are important to cover, how you tell certain stories. not just reporters, but opinion makers. whose opinion gets to be out there? what constitutes the news? inasmuch as i think whose name is in the byline in who gets to show up on screen, it's also about the production team that is making really court decisions. how many rounds did you and i go over whether or not we should ask a question about reparations during our platform because it seemed radical? there was a question of how much space. how and a hierarchy of issues do you place an issue that this not often get spoken about? the fact that you have a more diverse the people making those decisions is really just good business. hillary: can he also just talk about the focus groups you have worked on the season? i think that was also a big effort to hear voices that you often do not get to hear in the space.

we did a focus group in new hampshire and iowa about republicans. it was crazy because it was a week out and they told me who would be number one. we have done them with young latinos in vegas and all over. when you talk about the most diverse generation in american history, we want to payment as a monolith. it's like millennials are all this. it is like every other generation -- where you live, your ethnic group, your sister economic status, your education really fine-tunes the issues that your interest ied in. ec political fluidity in this generation. i do a panel what never hillary democrats would never trump republicans. i've young republicans were going to vote for hillary clinton. i've young democrats who will never vote for hillary clinton.

this is so wild and yet predictable in the sense that this is a generation that has a skewed political party does not want to be identified with labels and has a very complex set of beliefs about policy and the direction america should be going in. not which candidate is cool, which is how they report on it, but living in the reality of student debt intertwined about homeownership, marriage, employment come a entitlement, security. so i mean, this -- what happens to this generation is going to happen to america. and the sooner we can come to terms with that, the sooner we can begin building policy and politics that really supports the generation. hillary: what are you hearing when you're out talking to people? what do they want to talk about the most? >> i think they want to talk about issues. just like everybody else.

they are sick of what they are hearing on television. i go on cable news all the time. and i talk about my opinion. and i am very sorry that listen to me talk about it that long. but unfortunately, that is what drives, still, a lot of mainstream coverage. and i think the fact that we have so many more women now working in media and being yourters, i mean i think have an all-female campaign trail, they call them gladiators, i believe. [laughter] liz: and i think it is amazing. i think that really changes the narrative. i mean, i went to my first trump press conference a couple of weeks ago. texas had dropped out. all of these people were asking questions about that. right? what do you think about vp, ted cruz? about him think

saying every clinton was using the women card -- hillary clinton was using the woman card. sim internal covering that. i was like -- so many people covering that. i was like, hold on a minute. his response was very intense. like, i was actually speechless by the pure amount of vitriol against her. saying she has it easier because she is a woman. anyway, that led to a few weeks of that dominating the news cycle. and being the conversation. and us talking about the fact the way donald trump talks about women. it absolutely changes the way we tell stories. it is important to remind -- part are not this niche of the population. we are a majority of the population, the electorate. we cast votes.

andknow, news stories like we have an all-female ticket around hillary clinton perhaps thinking elizabeth warren as her vp, it is just a weird new story. it is just weird. most voters are female. most women do not have a problem with women in leadership positions, because a lot of us are in leadership positions. ofi think, that is a part social media. and i think the revolution. >> what you guys just said, i should've said this earlier, from covering these past three elections, it is so simple, but who has the power to say this is the story, this is not a story, has radically shifted. the stories we are telling has radically shifted. not everyone has caught up because they're not consuming them the way we are making them. that is the big issue to me. it is so simple, but it is so simply and powerful when you

are told by a male editor or some with a different perspective that is not a new story. do you let it die or fight for it? liz: and people on twitter or facebook, if something is trending, mainstream cable news have to cover it. of filibuster, just a couple days ago, but the wendy davis this 12 hourhe did filibuster about this abortion bill in texas. and again, i believe cable news was talking about muffins. aboutly a talk on cnn the calorie count. all of twitter was watching this filibuster on c-span, whatever lifestream was available. in the next day, wendy davis, who was before than nobody in terms of mainstream coverage, became this -- it was appropriated by every mainstream newspaper. there is a lot of paper. and a lot of power. >> the white house is having a

correspondents dinner, and i cannot find it on tv. front, weial media only have a couple of minutes left. but i was curious, we obviously have a huge change how the campaigns are using social, too. sort of watching, i mean we know how donald trump is using it. it is like his statements are coming up on twitter constantly. great also have this moment last week with hillary clinton responding to donald trump with her now infamous delete your account tree. tweet.te your account i guess i'm curious from you guys, like what have been the moments in the cycle that felt like these epic social moments coming from the campaign. it really feels to me like they have empowered some people on their staff, at least on hillary's staff, i feel like

trump is doing -- it feels like he is actually doing it. but seeing the campaigns try to sort of catch up on these platforms, like do you think it is going well? we have also seen some pretty bad moments, too. what was the worst moment for this campaign on social? >> i think it was hillary. it was actually a snap -- remember, join with hillary? does anyone know what i'm talking about? it was worse than snapchat. she looks like what my mom would look like if you try to use snapchat for the first time. you know, i love my mother. but she is definitely not familiar with the popcorn. [laughter] liz: so she was just so bad. i think she had this moment when she told trump to delete his inside jokech is an on twitter. when someone says something around us, people say delete -- say something horrendous, people

say delete your account. and one note is to say that social media is the only department in the media where there are more women than men, right now, and it is the fastest-growing you know portion of media. i don't know who is on hillary's social media or donald trump's, but the fact that it is female dominated on staff is significant. hillary: a lot of funky stuff going on. i don't know how many of you follow the candidates on facebook, but the number of times i will see -- i will name hillary clinton or ted cruz -- calling them amazing. and the link is to tedcruz.com. and it really is a way of feeding supporters, but i do think that as voters and consumers we do need to keep a more skeptical eye on the source we are getting our information from. since a lot of it is now self generated by the campaign.

>> we have like two minutes left. there are questions. cool, we will take them. and im a puerto rican, just founded the diversity matters field. i'm so glad to have the moderators on stage. i am going to philadelphia, too. so, i like to talk to you after the event. but my first question is, when you first started, because i just got started, what was the most difficult obstacle to really get your voice across in a meaningful way? >> for me? will you repeat the question? >> i think you need to be miced. >> ok, my question is when you started, what was the biggest ty, in a meaningful

way to get political points that are worthy and meaningful? >> my first campaign was in 2004. i just got hired as a 24-year-old to work in the washington post. i got to go to a lot of the debates in the room, so i had access. sounds like you are going to philadelphia, which is wonderful, because being there is a lot of it. for me, for never being intimidated and feeling i'm not iite shy, but i remember, oh, need to improve my job. and i did through hard work and all that stuff. but that is actually when i got into podcasting, creating multimedia, working on news coverage. i gravitated towards the stuff that personally people were not doing, because they all wanted to be in the print edition of the newspaper on a1. i thought to myself this is a crowded field. everyone is entire

washington post building that has existed beyond my lifetime is trying to do that. i will ask questions about this over here, video, podcasts, reddit. my particular experience is that when other people are dragging, because you can find some space for you to do experimentation and innovation, especially in the campaign space, you know, those moments are rare. look for them and sees them, i guess. them, i guess. >> i agree. i was my biggest problem. i still am i biggest problem. i think that especially with political coverage, like covering the election, i looked at what other people were doing. i was trying to be as good as other people, so i started thinking about what different thing i could offer or bring to the table. it may be the way that we have doing it, reporting politics on this time, it could be improved

by difference of perspective. so following that i think is important. oh, i'm sorry. we are all done. i am getting the signal. [laughter] hillary: thank you so much your time. [applause] hillary: thank you. great, back to you. announcer: c-span's washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. last week, england voted to leave the european union. coming up sunday morning, the international economics reporter for the wall street journal will discuss how the brexit vote will affect u.s. and global markets and the local reaction from washington and presidential candidates. regina thompson, cofounder of free the delegates 2016, talks

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there is no reason the government should have 11,000. we realize, through the report card, that four agencies have realized $2 billion worth of savings over the last few years i moving into the cloud. announcer: watch monday night on c-span2. on july 1, 1976, the smithsonian national air and space museum open to the public with gerald ford on hand for the celebration. friday march the 40th anniversary, like cover startek 6 p.m. eastern on c-span3. we will tour the museum and see the one-of-a-kind artifacts, and putting the spirit of st. louis and the apollo lunar module, and live events and the front of the museum. learn more as we talk about the director, jack daly, the museum curator, and chair of the space history department. you can join the department

conversation, we will be taking your phone calls, e-mails, tweets. the 40th anniversary, live friday evening beginning at six quite eastern on c-span3's american history tv. >> now, look at coverage of the presidency and politics in the digital age. this discussion includes journalists, editors, and a spokesman from hillary clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. from the george w. bush president will center in dallas, this is an hour. [applause] marty: thank you, kevin. welcome everybody. a privilege to be here revisiting the dallas morning news, and to introduce our first panel. introduce folks as they come to the stage. editor ofng executive georgetown university's institute of politics and public service.

a former community is director of the democratic national committee, he is a veteran of four presidential campaigns, including serving as senior spokesman in 2008 for hillary clinton. the chief washington correspondent for yahoo! news, covering the white house, politics, and foreign policy since 2012. for that, he was on the front press for 20 years. as senior advisor for external affairs, kevin sullivan leads to medication and marketing across all areas of the bush center. he was appointed by president george w. bush as assistant to the president for communications 2006. since 2002, kathleen carroll has been the senior vice president of the associated press, the world's largest independent news agency. wonournalists have on

numerous awards, and putting the pulitzer for public service, and polk award. she is a texas native. and we like to point that out when we are here. our moderator for the discussion is marty baron, executive editor of the washington post since 2013. marty has been part of 10 pulitzer prizes at the post, the boston globe, the new york times, and the miami herald. but he may be best known for his uncanny impersonation of the actor liev schreiber. hope you enjoy the panel. [laughter] [applause] thank you, michael. i will continue with the impersonation. and thank you all for coming, thank you to the panel for participating. so, the title of this panel is "the presidency: coverage in the digital age"

." what i want to do is start with a question about what really is fundamentally different about covering the president in the digital age? so maybe olivier, kick it off. olivier: western covering the white house in december of 2000, everything was on paper. we would get statements on paper. we would get announcements on paper. it was -- the wire services had to move quickly -- but everybody else had a more leisurely pace. over time as the white house embraced the digital age and e-mail, and especially under this president embraced social media, announcements have come from a variety -- via a variety of sources. everybody is a wire service now. we are all constantly on deadline. that is when the biggest changes for the last 15 years or so. marty: do you change qualitatively the kind of work we are doing?

olivier: a little bit. one of the changes is that we are now trying to reach audiences that are consuming the information from a variety of sources and platforms. we are all competing for these guys, in a way that we were not when i started the job. now, for wire services, this has not changed all that month. uch. without the work constantly on deadline. one thing we have learned in the digital age is that the expectations of new products are different. in an old school video, you could build suspense and introduce characters and the rest of it. but with the digital age, if the headline of your video is bear falls out of tree on the trampoline, you need to show that bear on the traveling within the first 15 seconds, or people tune it out. that is the difference how we package the news. everyone is looking for the

magic, the magic wand that would turn everything, every file, every story, into gold. weak spirit was shorter and longer stories, more graphics and fewer graphics, but i don't know if we settled yet on a way of a solution, a formula for making this work. marty: kathleen, if we are becoming more like wire services, has nothing changed for the wire services themselves? kathleen: they have change for us, too. in the way we described, but everything is faster, particularly more for presidential campaigns but white house announcements, the need to get balance in context and some other way to think about the story out, at the same time you are reporting on what is happening, is greater than ever. that really taxes and organization, unless you make it a group effort. you do not to stick the white house on the assignment by himself. storyeed back up, so the

-- the expectation is a story will be more complete within a few minutes of the event occurring, instead of having hours to do it, even a couple of hours for the ap. but i think the biggest change is the one we have all talked about a lot, that this white house covers it. marty: what do you mean? kathleen: we have a competitor in the white house. they use social media effectively to use photos shot by the official photographer, talk about things they're doing, completely skip over the press, which sounds whiny and i don't mean for it to -- marty: why is it not whiny? maybe it is. why should we be concerned? kathleen: more and more, this particular president draws the acts of his presidency behind closed doors. none of us are whining about we are not in the residence

watching him put his socks on in the morning, but we do want to watch them signed bills, asking questions on behalf of the public, right? you do not get to do that. we're in a privileged position. instead we get is a very shiny, view of andept administration that is filtered only by the people whose job it is to promote that administration. i think it is dangerous for the republic. marty: moe and sully, you have seen this from the other end. does that sound like whining? does that concern you at all? what the president should do -- >> i would say empowerment is the biggest change, whether it be our teenage kids, can be like an international journalist because the power of what is in your hand in your smartphone. in terms of, you know, working communication to the white house your job is to get the message out in the most persuasive and memorable way you can to extend the reach as far as you can.

with the teamude at the white house working for president bush was, it was sort of like going to the restaurant and ordering from each column. there would be an event, maybe a speech, a meeting with local or committee leaders, and we would ask the president to allow one reporter to sit in the meeting. it was the energy at the wall street journal with john, writing about energy during that cycle, let us allow john to sit in. even though we did not have twitter yet, we had a major web operation even then. you can get the right audience. you do not get the whole picture if you only did it yourself. i think that is still today, even as technology has advanced, it is a speech, maybe an interview, maybe it is a sit down, a quick thing, letting the reporters in the room. it is certainly letting the photographer and. we saw one of people when the white house was issuing so many

images, keeping reporters out. it is all of the above. we can walk and chew gum at the same time. to use the empowerment you have as the institution, but also work with the news media. we are the only country where the media that covers the president is right down the hall. and you have to have -- president bush left and called a symbiotic relationship. there is a transaction. you neededeeded you, me. that is important today, even in the face of all of this great new technology that empowers all of us to put out our own content. >> i think technology is fundamentally changing. i want to take a step back and remember what this is all about. the relationship and the role of the press in a democracy is so important, it was cemented in the first amendment to the united states constitution. that is important. in the very first amendment in the u.s. constitution.

having said that, there is no more sacred relationship in our democracy than between elected official and voter. that is what it is really about. for generations, you all were the conduit. you are the ones that connected that. you are not needed as much in that relationship these days. and i'm not saying you are not needed, right? but what i'm saying is because of technology, both sides of that relationship can actually socumvent, to some extent, when you see a white house or political campaign on either side of the aisle do that sort of thing, i think right now we're still kind of experiencing, figuring out what is the appropriate use? i do not think cutting the press out is appropriate. but there is a way to directly engage, directly take a message -- i understand why people pursue that. willhaving said that, i

also say that there are challenges on the other side of this equation. but the reporter who said, as a few that i have heard say, the notion you have to go to the white house to actually cover the white house is no longer true. and necessary. that bothers me, a little bit. the notion that because of the internet and because people's views are so -- the digital age is actually making us less connected, and it is creating a whole new perspective, hold the reality for so many people. because anybody is a journalist, anyone with an opinion and set up their own corner, and we are gravitating to people who have like minds. so they are now conservative media outlets where voters can go, there are now progressive digital media outlets that do the same. what is happening in the middle, the true objective truth

seekers, are struggling, because people are sort of retreating to their corners in this digital universe. do? you know, what do you how do you discern what is true, real, what is not? kathleen: i take your point on all of this. but the thing that is missing in this discuss it of messaging, is the one way communication. the president of the u.s., whatever party, is answerable to the public who elected him, or whom he or she serves. what is missing is the opportunity for anybody to ask a question. journalists have the opportunity. the message is not being replaced by town halls or forums, where anybody can ask a question. it is a very select friendly audience, the questions are screened in advance, still part of the one-way communication. i don't think it is good for any administration to not be questioned by people, and not

just by people who are shopping on the internet, but to be able to answer questions. that is a door that is slamming. mo: i don't know if i would agree it is slamming. i think people are trying to figure out the equilibrium, right? i don't think the white house -- i hear the particular criticisms of this white house, shutting the press out, but it is not entirely shut out. the president still does media interviews. he still does news conferences with his new staff, daily briefing. and i think you are right, i do not think it is ok to exclude the press. but what is the right equilibrium in the digital age? i do think anybody has figured out. >> when you say trying out other tools, it sounds very antiseptic. but we talking about a white house that excludes news photographers from a newsworthy event, excludes us from event and then releases, its own propaganda.

the job of the photographer, whose material is being released, is to make the president look good. i am not a paranoid person, but i cannot vouch for the accuracy of the photo, in that i don't know if it was posed, the postelection handshake between romney and obama, don't know how many times it did to get right. [laughter] >> what is fascinating about that particular photo, the white house editorialized it in the caption. it was somewhat neither man wanted to be there, but they felt they need to be. it was amazing moment in the caption beard when i pointed this out in one of my pieces, they went back and deleted that. so they had this incredible control over the images and words. and no one is saying they cannot use twitter or facebook or reddit or whatever. our objection is -- we have many obviously -- but it is that they exclude us. they say it was a private meeting. and there are 10 minutes shot by

the white house the aquifer that goes on -- white house videographer that goes on. what is really annoying is that the first draft of history is increasingly not a skeptical reporter, you know kicking the tires looking under the hood. whether it is video or photo, that really bothers us. marty: the state department had a question excise, the video released by the state department, ultimately pointed out that this question was somehow missing from the video. and they acknowledged that someone had deliberately, we do not know who, had deliberately remove them. they have to put it back in again. >> people have a sense, they know the difference, consumers of news know the difference between something that they can -- the numbers even the media popularity has declined, you are still above congress.

marty: hanging on, barely. [laughter] i don't like being compared to congress. [laughter] >> pew was out last week with a report that said 62% of u.s. adults get news from social media. and we are predominantly talking about facebook, while adweek a couple of weeks ago at a fascinating story that if facebook were a tv show, and would have been 27th in that week's nielsen viewership numbers. youtube i think was 49th. ortagram was 156th something. this is what i mean by all of the above. you have to reach people. you have to hit them in multiple places. but as much as people, -- 80% of people using facebook, i think the number was 12% have high confidence in the news. we know from one of their friends -- but they do not have confidence in the material that is there, are you really getting