>> funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part bb hhllco partners, texas government affairs consultancy and its global health care consulting business unit, hillco health. and by the mattson mchale public television. and also by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. and also by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation thank you. >> i'm evan smith. he recently stepped down as the executive editor of the "new york times" after more thaa eight years in that highest of all high impact which time the paper won 18 pull it's certify prizes. he seems to be falling into fine as an op ed columnist, a blogger and a tweeter. he's bill keller.

this is overheard. >> smith: bill keller, welcome. nice to be here. >> smith: very nice to see you. may, may we start broad and talk about the newspaper business? >> keller: you starr wherever you want. >> smith: okay, good. so circulation across the industry is down. revenues are down. competition is greater than ever. would you just end the suspense for all of us and tell uu how thissmovie ends? i think we're all, we're all a little worried about what we're seeing and we hope it's going to be better than it is now. >> keller: well, i mean, i should preface this is, by saying i'm a chronic optimist and, and, and .

>> smith: that's no fun. >> keller: i know. i know. and i'm particularly an optimist about my own paper. i mean, the one statistic you didn't recite is thaa readership is phenomenally up if you count the online accesssto news. >> smith: right3 >> keller: i mean the times at its peak sold nnarly two million sunday paaers, and a million and a half during the week. it's well down from that. >> smith: right. >> keller: but we have upwards of forty millionn3 unique visitors every month for the website so we're available everywhere on the planet. if you've got an internet service provider. >> smith: right. >> keller: so. >> smith: and on a number of different devices. &-course any way you waat to get it you can get it. >> keller: any way you want to get it, you can get it and you know -- and one of the things that i'm proudest of and happiest about that's happened to the times of the last ten years is we have embraced that technology both as a way of gathering news, as a way of telling stories and so on. so you know, the real question is, my god, i hate the wwrd monetize, but the

question is how do you monetize thoseeforty million or whatever viewers. we think we're getting there. we are now, as you know, a carefully balanced,tal carefully designed approach to a pay model nd it seems to be working so far. >> smith: well, you projected, this is the so-called metered model. i want to talk about that in a second. and you had said after announcing it, you had hoped that youud have 300,000 people signed up to pay via this metered model after a year. and in fact after the first couple of months, you had more than 200,000 people signed up. - mean, you are well on your way to achieving that goal,3 but, the metered model is nnt exactty a pay model in the sense that i go to the website and immediateey i'm obligated to pay. it's sort of rather like aú drug dealer. you know, they, they.. >> keller: exactly. >> smith: .they they give you a taste for free. >> keller: give you a taste that's right. smith: get you hooked and then they make you pay. i'm sure you have had that conversation internally about how you appear. >> keller: absolutely. >> smith: it's the drug

dealer model. >> keller: it's the gateway drug model... >> smith: it is, of journalism. >> keller: .of journalism. >> smith: but the reality is it, it has enticed people. a lot of times you hit a pay wall. you and i just consumers f webbites, would say this, you hit the pay wall and you kind of go, oh, o i really have to pay for this, but here, you et a certain number of free ones and you probably do get used to the rhythm of consuming the news via the website. basketball -> keller: i think that's what so far the numbers seem to bear that out. >> smith: right. >> keller: now that's, you know, nnt gonna work for everybody. different papers are trying different pay models. you know, some papers have gone out of business. more papers will go out of business..3 i don't mean to gloss over the downside of all of these. >> smith: you acknowledge that the downside is not being exaggerated by me or by others? it's. >> keller: no, it's not. the only thing i would say that is, you know, when people say the internet is killing newspapers, i say,,3 well, hold your horses. the, the internet has yet to kill as many newspapers as newspaper publishers have killed. >> smith: have killed. the reverse is true that the internet hasn't killed newspapers, it's actually saved newspapers in the sense that, as you point out, readership of newspapers is wildlyyup. people are accessing content

and in some ways it's become the way that you save that relationship not kill it. >> keller: at the very least, i think it's, it will save journalism. >> smith: well, let's talk about what, what does that mean? what, how do you make that distinction? >> keller: well, i mean, you know, i use newsppper generically to refer to the newspapers whether they're online or in prrnt. a lot oo people don't make that distinction, but by virtueeof the scale, by virtue of your ability to tell stories n a much more engaging way and connect with readers. by the way, online advertising is no small thing either. so i think online is a usiness model that holds a lot of promise ú&r the salvation of journalism. the texas tribune is probably something you could make a case study of on that score. >> smith: i think the circulation numbers though for the times are better than a lot of other straight. as i read the ú&mbers over the years that

you were the editor, in about '09, there was enough of a decline that it was said the times was below a million daily readers for the first time since the '80's. you were attabout 928 or so 928,000 readees per day. two years ago, you were down to about 917 now. not an enormous decline over the last two years and still relatively speaking, you're the third highest circulation, i believe behind the wall street journal and the usa today, right? >> eller: right. and still. >> smith: highest circulation daily. >> keller: although they don't break down the numbers that tth company reveals by, you know, business uuit. i think i can get away with saying the print newspaper just as a priit newspaper is a healthy business. >> smith: righh. >> keller: still >> kellerr it won't be forever but it. >> smith: and sunday's circulation is stilllthe highest of any newspaper. &-down from a miilion four two years ago, but still pretty significant circulation. >> keller: and one curiosity of this whole move to a pay model is thht it's actually boosted print circulation. there was some fear that the minute we introduced -- you

know, if you pay less money, you can trade down to an online subscription. yyu don't need that piece oo paper delivered to your doorstep.ú in fact a lot of people said, hey, i buy the sunday paper and i get the internet access for free, and so it's actually had a healthy impact on print circulation. >> smith: has it been particularly challenging for you? and again, i'm thinking about the period of time in which you were editor. you've only been not editor for about a month as we sit here. was it particularly challenging for you to manage this transition to the digital sphere? of the internet, there were so many challenges of running a big newspaper like the times anyway, but i have to -- i have to believe that the, most of your focus over these number of years has been how do we transition from what we did before to what we're doing now? >> keller: right. it waa. there were really two things and obviously, you know, i -ake a great deal of pride in this, but i didn't do it alone. >> smith: yeah >> keller: i had a lot of help. one of them was, avoiding the temptation to just cut the bejesus out of the ews gathering operation. >> smith: yeah >> eller: .which a lot of papers dii, to their -- and contributed to

>> smith: doing today still. >> keller: and sttll are still doing it and i think that's aakind of death wish. you cannnt claim to be the new york times, and not have a robust foreign core of correspondents for example or cover national news and so on. so it was partly making the case that what we had was a thing of value not to be cut and cut elsewhere or sacrifice elsewhere, but not there. digital in every sense of the word. really integrating what was for a long time, two very separate, physically separate newsrooms. we had a little rump web newsroom and then the big traditional newsroom. to make them oneefunctioning entity so that the same journalists were producing what goes up on the website and thinking about it, as we're providing the print paper, was wrenching and i mean the. >> smith: well, ffr a long time journalists who werr traditionally journalists resisted. >> keller: they did. >> smith: being integrated into the web operation, right? >> keller: they did. i mean, people say, you

know, were there, was there a consensus? were people unanimously behind this? and i say sorry, these are journalists. there's never a consensus on anything. >> smith: they're not behind anything. >> keller: there is there is what i refer to as an ambient level of discontent. [ laughher ] that kind of defines a newsroom. so the transition in some ways the kind of psychological and cultural transition was more ú&fficult than the, you know, organizational and financial one becauss there's this sort of existential question, can you feed a medium that wants to know everything right now? file for me now. now file aaain. you have a ddadline every second. is that compatible with what we have always prided ourselves on selling, which is depth, which takes time to report, which takes reflection? >> smith: right. >> keller: can you do both of them?3 the way. >> keller::and accuracy >> smith: which occasionally takes time too. you know, tte rush to publish, to be the first, often means that you're not necesssrily doing it accurately. >> keller: it does. >> smith: you can see the obstacles that the internet would present in that

managed to get around that and in fact your successor as the editor of the paper, jill abramson, had purview over the web news operation for at least a little while, didn't she? >> keller: she did a, a kind of six-month sabbatical, i guess. or detour, a specializaaion, where she basically immersed herself in all things digital. >> smith: but helpful for sooeone who now runs a big paper to have that background >> keller: very helpful. very helpful. >> smith: almost impossible to do if you don't fully appreciate it or embrace the.. >> keller: yeah. >> smith: .embrace the web. >> keller: yeah. momentous for the paper in ways other than the digital space. >> keller: i hope so.3 >> smith: well, i mentioned in the intro that you had presided over the, the paper at a time when it won a greet number of pulitzers anddin fact at this time has still won the most pulitzers i believe than any newspaper publissed, you had a, very sadly, you had a reporter, at least one reporter, i'm aware of, famously, kidnapped on assignment. you had reporters, i'' aware of two, killed while covering the wars in iraq and afghanistan.

you had a phooographer, lose llmbs after stepping on a land mine or being, something exploded and i mean it's horrible traaedies that we take for grant... oh this just happens, but of you had, you were hauled into the white house over the wireless, wireless wire tapping story. you had the judith miller issue. of the previous judith miller issue. >> keller: you're giving me flashbacks. [ laughter ] >> smith: well, there's a little bit of ptsd iivolved here. >> keller: a little, but yeah. >> smith: you probably, but the point is a lot happened in addition tt all the great journalism and in addition to this revolution in the way that tte paper was published. it, it must be something as you say to flash back on this and think all this happened in the time that that i ran the paper. >> keller: that's, that's true. >> smith: yeah. >> keller: i mean a lot oo it they don't -- ou know, in the mythical editors school, they don't teach you that there's a kind of in loco parentus role, you have -- yes, you have this organization of people who have jobs, but it's also a community of people whh have

lives and their kids get sick and as you say, they get kidnapped. we've had several kidnaapings. one, you know, the case of david roweeand his two afghan com compatriots were held for seven months by the haqqani networr. >> smith: there's no journalism school that teaches you how toodeal with that as editor. >> keller: no. no. you just deal with it. >> smith: yeah, how did you deal with it though? let's talk about that. i mean, i know that during the time that he was kidnapped you -ll took the position that we're just going to go quiet on this whole thing. not talk about it. we don't want to affect the situation. you've talked a little more -fter the fact about it. >> keller: right. >> smith: how did you deal with that? >> keller: i mean the radio silence part was one of the trickier aspects just because it goes against every graan in our instinct is. >> smith: right. >> keller: .there's a story here. we should tell the story. >> keller: but we had, yous. know, good reason to believe that publicizing his kidnapping -- we were -- the first thing we did was, we callee up every other

news organizatioo we were aaare of that had people kidnapped in afghanistan and asked them what they've learned rom it. >> smith: right. >> keller: we -- you know, we were dealing with his wife and his brother and his mother. we were dealinggwith the fbi, which was investigating. we were dealing off and onn3 with the kidnappers or people purporting to represent the kidnappers. we were dealing with our own staff including tte other reporters in afghanistan who were, needless to say, distractedd they wanted o be heard on how we should handle this. i meen, there's -- i mean, the whole uestion of a ransom comes up and of course, -idnappers demand ransom..3 >> smith: right. >> keller: we have a policy of not paying ransom because it puts a price tag on every other reporter aa well. reporter is at risk thhn, right. >> keller: every other reporter is at risk, but in the course of a conversation -ith theekidnapperss you don't sort of immediately get on your high horse and say categorically we're not going to give you anything. you know, you try to keep the connersation going. >> smith: did you actually have to --

-ou didn't find yourself in negotiations?these in theory somebody was negotiating on behalf of the family or of the..3 >> keller: initially people in the, in the.what we were, were talking to the people who were, epresented the kidnappers, ultimately re hired somebody, essentially a hootage negotiator. smith: wow, this is such an amazing story. an incredible one and happily he -- it ended well for him. luckily. i mean, he escaped. >> smith: it could have gone the other way. >> keller: he climbed ddwn a rope and -- >> keller: and it turned out he was in akiitan and found a pakistani army base. >> smith: he couldn't make it up and be as dramatic as it turned out. >> keller: no. >> smith: the ireless, warrantlessswiretapping. i keep stumbling over that phrase that i alluded to did get you in fact hauued into the white house and told by your government hattyou're doing may be ultimately undermininggof our ability to do the wwrr that we feel like we need to do, and yet you criticized by some for maybe not andling it the way they would've handled it, but ultimately the paper

did pretty remarkable reporting onnthis subject. >> keller: we did. >> i mean tharvetion my only -- i think it was the onlyytime i had been in the oval office, actually, so it's a little seared on my mind, you know, you are sort of looking around, trying to remember the details. the plants on the mantel and stuff so in case you ever have tt recreate this moment so you're a little hovering above yourself while you're having this conversation, with the president who's telling you hat you're -oing tt have blood on your hands if there's another terrorist attack. >> smith: and then specifically, the president telling you. >> keller: specifically, the prrsident. president bush. >> smith: telling you that you're gonna to have blood on your hands if you do this. ú& keller: yeah. i 'm paraphrasing itt terrorist attack, when wet have to go up and testify before congress about why we let down our guard, you should e sitting beside us, so it was basically the way he put it. it will be your responsibility. >> smith: did you have any hesitation at that point? did you think, well, maybe i ú&ed to do, do right for my country as opposed to my profession or my paper? >> keller: i don't, i think &-i mean, i look -- it was more than a year from the

time that i initially learned about this program to the time thht we published. we, you know, very famously chhse not to publish before we chose. >> smith: right. criticized from one side and criticized from the other side. right. >> keller: so, yes, it's fair to say i agonized over what this would mean, whether it would put lives at risk. in the end, what it kind of came down to for me was this is not really a story about whether or not the united states eavesdrops on our enemies. of course it does. and our enemies know that. the quesston as, were we doing it according to tte law? the law says, let's set up a special court and make it very easy to go in and get a warrant in a terrorist case. were we going and getting the warrant? we were not, and a lot of people innthe administration were quite uncomfortable with ttat. &-amazing journalism thats quite honestly i ish i read in other places. as you know, the times doesn't always get the big story. other papers break big stories all tte ttme. but it occurs to me thaa the big papers and the ones that

have maybe the resources, human and financial, to do this, seem to be the ones that do the big impactful journalism. why do we see such a gulf between what theebbg papers3 do and what everybody else of reporting? >> keller: resources. mostly. i mean, it takes time and people and, youuknow, every once in a while sooebody like wikileaks comes along and dumps this huge gift of inforrationnon us, but most of the storiessof the kind we're talking about, tte big important ones, take months and months of talking, persuading and then vetting and double checking and making sure that getting -ocuments, iffyou can get them. it is incredibly painstaking work. ú&d yyu know, most papers can't afford to free up person or a team of people for months or even a year. >> ssith: ight. >> keller: you know, when robert thompson took over the wallstreet journal he had, which had a

long-standing culture of investigative reporting, very -- in fact, jill abramson comes out of that culture, he made a speech to staff in which he said, i don't want more of these stories that have the gestation period of a llama. a gestation period of a llama, i had to look it up, issaayear. >> smith: i'm guessing it's long. [ laughter ] >> keller: is a, is a year ann my response was, gee we're just publishing this great david baastow seriess3 that was a llama and a half. [ laughter ] >> smith: i'll show you what3 we should be doing right, yeah. well, that's interesting and i mean, obbiiusly the time, time is, but nn of the many resources that ou all have that maybe other peoole don't have quite as much of. you mention the wikileaks thing, i want to ask you if3 you have any regrets about that. you played a lead role in getting juliin assange on the national consciousness and in getting the material that wikileaks put out there in front of all of us. >> keller: my only regret is that the price you pay for getting on the wrong side of julian assange is that you're condemmed to an eternity of appearing on

panel discussions about the significance of wikileaks. >> smith: is that right? &-onnten of different paneln discussions about how &-transform life as we know it. >> smith: so what's the short answer? >> keller: it didn't really transform. it certaanly made our lives very interesting over the course of a year or so. in fact, to this day, because julian's unauthorized biography has come out where a few other choice things. >> smith: well, you've been called worse though. >> keller: that's true and by more credible sources. [ laughter ] you know, wikileaks as a piece of journalism as a body of information, it's fascinating. and i don't mean to minimize it as an event, but all of, as faa as i know, all of the information that we've repooted on that3 state department cables, the

wwr logs from afghanistan and iraq, all came from one immense leak; allegedly from &-private.ntled army >> smith: purr loined, though. i mean, the reality -- >> keller::yes, yes, yes. so. >> smith: do you feel any culpability in benefitting from that? saying,,she was dead when i got here. criticized for essentially saying what we were not responsible for or acquiring this ill-gotten stuff therefore, e're not responsible for the offense. we're simply benefitting from the byproduct of the >> keller: you know, if we drew the line at dealing with information that was not handed to us through official channels, newspaaers would be press releases. >> ssith: it would be a small paper. >> keller: that's thee3 reality. the pentagon documents too, but i ddn't think too many people think they were not a momentous contribution to the national conversation. i think the wikileaks documents have done, done that too, not only in the united states, but in a lot

of countries wheee the &-tangible.been perhaps more >> smith: right.3 >> keller: tunisia, for example. so no, i -- you know, e are in a business that agonizzs over our ethics, rightty ss, on every occasion. anddwe've talked about it a lot in this case, but i don't -- i don't feel a sense that we did something wrong. >> smith: another thing that happened -- we have a ew minutes left and i want to ask you about ttis, that happened in yourrtenure is you created the public editor's osiiion, which is basically a proctological exammnation of the times' processes and ultimately, it's like the most extraordinary self examination. about that? i read those columns occasionally and i wince on3 your behalf and on the &-wish i had actually never done this, but in a year of better to do this torobably yourself than to have other should say at the outset,

that i only emi-volunteered for the idea of aving a public editor. it came out of a period of scandal, the newsroom, you kkow, was seriously concerned about our credibility in the world >> smith: post jason blair. >> keller: post jason blair, right. and a committee headed by al segal, who was an assistant managing editor, prescribed a for the times to have a public editor. the times, a lot of ooher papers have ombudsmen. the times had already said, the readers' representative. we shouldn't have to hire an ouusider to dd that, but under the other extreme assault on our credibility, it just seemed like a reasonable measure. you know, there's -- all you have to do is say the words, utter the phrase, public editor in the newsroom and people will gather around and, and you'll, it'll be like gathered around a pit bull fight or somethingg it's still a ontroversial and unpleasant thing.

and particularly now that the internet has given us an endless supply of critics, the idea that we would pay somebody ggod money and give them space to do it in our own paper and sometimes call. >> smith: and have them essentially unanswerable and unaccountable right? they operate as totally independent actor within the paper. >> keller: that's correct. >> smith: yeah. >> keller: you know, there, i've certainly had -- the last time we were on our fourth public eeitor, i was much more ambivalent about having a fourth than i was about having a third. as time goes oo, i find myself wondering whether this issreally necessary. i think on balance it's a good thing. >> smith: he optics at a minimum are good because it shows thattyou can handle criticism leveled at you from within the walls off he castle, right? >> keller: right. you know, even proctology serves a kind of purpose. >> smith: right. [ laughter ] that, by the waa, will be the quote we'll useein the promo. [ laughter ] totally out of context. weehave about two minutes left.

let me shift abruptly to advice that you would have for young people. there are some young people with us in the audience today; there'll be some who will be watching this program. this is not a period of great optimism for -ournalist, journalism students or for students generally who think this is &-go into.on i might want to what words of hope can you offer people who are thinking about this business or conveesely, are you gonna to tell people stay away, go becomee nvestment bankers? >> kelllr: no, no, no, i would tell them without hesitation, do it. do it. learn the craft. yes, itts also useful to learn, you know, the new technology; to learn how to operate the internet; but learn the craft. i get asked this occasionally at ú&urnalism schools and you know, my feeling is, if i'm wrong - i do think there's a future of journalismm it's a kind of hybrid of survivors like theetimes i -ope and start upp like the texas tribune, i hope.3 there is a future in ú&urnalism, but if i'm wrong and there's not, if you've mastered those skills, the

ability to acquure information, including information that's hard to ú&t, to vet it, trrth test it, organize it in a way that you can interpret it and make sense of it and thhn present it in a comprehensible, accessible way, those are skills you can apply to law, to teaching, to anything. i mean, there are a lot of very, verr smart, well-educated, wwll-paid journalist can. >> smith: yeah. and the, ann the reality is ww need journalism. >> keller: we absolutely -eed journalism. >> smith: .to illuminate the issues that affect all of us and the more we get away from what we used to do, the worse off we're gonna be as &->> smith: yeah. okay, well, good since we're in agrrement, we should probably end right there. bill keller, hank you very much. enjoy the column and i hope much fun as your old life. >> thank you. >> bill keller, thanks a lot. [ applause ]

funding for overheard with evan smith is provided texas government affairs consultancy and its global health care consulting business unit, hillco health. foundation in support ofe public television. and also by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. and also by the alicc kleberg reynolds foundation3 and viewers like you. thank you.