programment we begin this evening by looking at the financial markets through the eyes of financial bloggers. we talked to joe wes thought, josh brown, felix sale must not and megan murphy. >> how do you get people to care about what you think if you don't have the "new york times," "the washington post." and i think some of us have been more successful of doing that than others. but that to me is the challenge but that's, you asked what vaits the good from the great. getting people to actually care what you have to say when you start at zero is a really really big challenge. >> rose: finally then bob ryan from the boston globe. his book is called scribe, my life in sports. >> my colleagues and contemporaries, they will give you an elaborate disclaimer of did he tachment that they're not

emotional about. and that they are only interested in the store read. they don't care who wins and loses. i'm talking about people who cover teams not national stuff. i write about people. just remember one thing the people come and together. the cast of characters in professional life and the cast and characters change in collegiate life. but they are bond by one thing, the games, the games have kept me motivated. >> rose: financial bloggers and the life of a sports writer when we continue.

>> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: digital journalism is changing the way we consume news, information, social media has given life to innocent analysis and punditry. that landscape has an impact in our daily lives including investment divisions. talking about the new terrain is josh brown. he's with rithoitz assess management. joe wes thought at bloomberg news. felix salmon is the financial writer for reuters and megan murphy is at fast ft.

she will become washington bureau chief for the financial times in january. i'm pleased to have all of them here. let me begin. tell me what is it exactly you do. give me a sense of your day. >> well literally started at bloomberg a week ago. i have no idea what my day is.w, reporting on the news in real time. bringing to bring financial journalism both to the speed of the internet and also take advantage of the news out lets we have of social media getting that financial news through the proper channels. >> rose: with global markets the way they are, what would you get up and read. >> i would get up at 4:00 in the morning when i first started in the'í business, there was the eo zone crises and all the financial crises going on. there was so much to catch up on.

if i had gotten to the office at a normal hour i would have fell impossibly behind. basically since i started my first read in the morning was twitter. and following financial experts all around the world, waking up saying what did i miss and usually people would tell me what happened when i was sleeping this market and this and the acb did this. that would be my first snapshot of the day. >> rose: megan. >> well actually very similar. as i said i'm switching jobs to washington but i would get up at 4:30 in the morning. we launched about two years ago a 24 hour market breaking news service at the f2. which was a huge change financially. a new way to break news but what we're trying to do is respond to what we could seereader welsewhe weren't breaking news in real time. because there were so many other

outlets out there that were doing it. what we didn't want to happen is for people to go elsewhere to get newspapers we felt would deliver fast. but it's definitely>> rose: yon the more than. >> always twitter. no question. always twitter because you can see exactly what's happened over night, whether it's in japan, whether it's in asia. obviously in europe as well. >> one important thing for twitter for editors you can see what stories are breaking through and people are continuing to talk b lots of events happen but not everything continue to get talked about throughout the rest of the day the those are usually topic that you want to be on top of and twitter's great for that. >> you're not concerned about velocity as much as they are, are you. >> no. i'm slow velocity. i like to take a couple minutes to think about things before saying something. and i'm also concerned about keeping people on my website. i'm very happy to start linking to megan or anyone if they have

the good stuff and i don't have any need to replicate that stuff. and just be smart and aggregate and plan to tell the stories in a way that can be more broadly understood rather than just aiming stuff at various traders who want to be able to move quickly and care about markets and don't care about anything else. >> rose: just talking about style. do you, everybody says, have a perfect kind of style for a blog? >> well, i really, you know, i really like creating2consuming d content that's very well suited to social media these days. i think one of the, the cool thing about media these days is there are a range of story forms. you can have the long article, the medium article. my favorite thing is a chart and a sentence and hopefully that tells the entire story. i think this financial market a lot, that's all you need.

i really like looking at everything that's going on. here's the story at the moment. japanese gdp, one cepttance and i moved on. liking and ag gating people@pptd different thoughts but i like the high speed high velocity stuff. >> rose: what are the hottest subjects today. >> japan. >> rose: this particular day it's japan. >> yes. absolutely. whether or not which is probably the world's most fascinating experiment in monetary policy right now takes off. it looks, you know, today was not a great day for economics and we'll see what happens going forward. it's a great issue. i think oil is obviously going to be a huge issue. i think u.s. energy. >> rose: josh, what are you looking at that interests you? and how are you treating it and talking about it. >> to me the most interesting thing that happens always but now especially are these dichotomies between what the newspapers is and how the

markets interpret it. and i think that's kind of what my specialty is, try to figure out. people are doing this even though the news is that and what is everyone missing. it's not that i always have the answer but that's the question that i find the most fascinating and that might be the most profitable question anyonekq wod ask. the example of japan your point is very well taken. it is fascinating and yet japanese stocks printed seven year high on friday we find out the country's in recession. the reaction is down 3%. the yen is down one and-a-half. >> rose: is thous with that economy as well. not where it's expected to be but the mush is awe heed of where the economy is. >> i think what a market is, right, it's a discounting mechanism. it should be somewhat ahead. and maybe during this recovery

it's gotten way ahead. but you talk about a dichotomy most of the participants in the market especially the people who move it by virtue of how much money they have, for them the recovery is unbelievable and for people with no financial assets, there's been a hugeás difference between their perception of the recovery and that obviously leads to endless fodder for columnists, for bloggers. >> there's just a lot of anger towards this market right now. market makes new highs. what about wages and inflation. there's an angry group of investors, traders they hate the whole thing, they think everything's a bubble blown by the fed. it's by this dichotomy and i think successful investing putting aside one's own biases, they hate everything and just actually trying to figure out what moves the market up and down. >> and also from my perspective, i really don't care about markets that much actually. i think these guys care about markets much more than i do. i think one of the reasons, this is one of the reasons why there

are markets that are important. the fed can from time to time loads of money and sthoks can go up and bonds go up and rich people become richer and they become happier but it doesn't affect the economy or normal people or real people very much. and i think the way that much of the news media keeps on coming backs to markets is civilly. it's just a barometer how rich people. >> rose: is the rest office really the story. >> yes. >> the midterm elections were in a sense the only poll the most accurate out of anyone predicting who would win because they gave market segments to certain wins and certain races. whether it's 1%, there's no question the market is a(pañ leg indicator what's going to happen recently in geo political events whether it's ukrainexd or russi.

>> i think there is a real world effect from people on the market. they just don't know it or can't necessarily see it or maybe it's a little bit too obtruse the way it's manifested. but when you see stocks outperforming the and ones doing the best are the ones where they're buying back shares as opposed to hiring people. that's a negative incentive to hire people. and you see that kind of thing propagate itself and it ends up in the real world like the way that that's transmitted is less people get jobs as a result. so i think it's there. it's just not necessarily black and white all the time. >> i also think regarding what felix was saying, specifically the u.s. stock market is a reflection of rich people but oil markets are markets and that huge geo political ramifications in saudi arabia and the u.s. and russia. if you look at the broader rank of markets besides just u.s. equities, there are a lot of examples you can point to where what's happening in market have

some sort of -- >> the news city is obsessed with the one day news cycle. and what happens to the oil price in one day or what happens to the stock market over the course of one day. and that story is 100% noise. there's absolutely nothing in that story that has any kind of relevance in 99% of the population. yes, oil prices and other prices match it. but what we're looking at levels which ultimately don't change that much whether it's up or down a lot then there's a story there. most market commentary and most market journalism is about what is way too small. day coverage i see it as more like being the narrator or being the commenter of the sports game. any given basket in a basketball game doesn't matter too much. but you're narrating that game and putting it into a bigger

story. >> rose: i don't want to make this as big as a revolution but how are financial blogs changing the market. >> it's absolutely, it's changed radically. then one year too you look at the time is so compressedc-beco immediate and good information and quick information and nuance for people who sat on the market. just never had this kind of, people say it'sm3ipa a golden af journalism. it's ama gold age of content. just get raw data feed. the access and people being allowed to filter to what they want. and they don't have to go to certain places, they can go everywhere and have a smorgasbord. >> rose: what's your ambition. >> to tell what's going on in the economy but try to do it in a more visual way and digital

way and more interactive way than simply writing down words. i'm trying to come up with ways reinventing storytelling. >> rose: what's the compensation for that. >> the compensation for that if you get to communicate much more directly with a generation who frankly doesn't have the attention span to read large long text pieces. an excellent example of what i'm trying to do, i just want to make it a little bit more interactive. >> rose: you also see a whole range of people have been at this table have left the "new york times," have left "the washington post." to lead big institutions. you're staying at a big institution. why did you stay rather than go out on your own? what was the choice for you. >> did you have a choice? >> look, i believe very passionately in the ft as a brand and it means and what it

can deliver. and i believe that being part of institutional change at that organization is exciting. we are trying to adapt. there's many people who say we've done a better job than some people in adapting to a digital first media strategy, we have a very successful pay wall and keepl6 adding subscriptions. i think there is real appetite for change there and people want to be still the preeminent provider of the world market and financial news. now it is a massive challenge. it's a massive challenge every day. some days it feels like pushing up hill every day in terms of what we're trying to do in scale of the change in front of you. you still have legacy newspaper issues you have to do with in terms of advertising decline, in terms of filling space. we can't be as nimble as smaller digital organizations. but we still have jillian and people that people want to come and get their opinion every day. i want to be a part of changing that organization to remaining

that way for the next decade. it may be a pipe dream. >> the organization stays the same. >> rose: so the mandate at ft is to make it more- >> to present content in a different way, in a more interactive way. to give much wider, much more relevant condensed in some ways, be able to still present the same sort of, you know, thought leading decision-making journalism that we have. >> rose: did you get into a thing with martin wolf. >> i did get into a little thing with martin wolf.lw í03k4,h[economic commentators ie world. >> rose: on television. >> and he's been on television. when he writes his book, you've read his columns. they are not always the columns to read. when he writes a book, his books are not always the easiest books to read and that was basically what my night was with martin was that i'm a big believer that

journalism is only good insofar as people understandhp it and i want to be able to express myself as clearly as possible in as many different ways as possible. without making it stupid, absolutely, without being false. whereas martin i felt especially in his book was making no confessions to making it easy to read or easy to understand. >> rose: what is your mandate at bloomberg? >> well bloomberg is this incredible organization that has resources that basically just overwhelmed everyone else. but traditionally bloomberg had not focused on the web. it's the core of the business is the bloomberg terminal, which is amazing information mortal. that's only available basically to financial professionals. but there's so much amazing data, there's so much amazing reporting that's being done within the bloomberg organization and there's even a fraction of that can get to the web in a way that makes sense. it's not that it's not going to

theíb web but it's not, the strategy here hasn't been(pañ focused towards really making it sing on the internet. >> rose: how do you do that? >> i think it's a range of thing. part of it is actually just having people who will be web first. part of it is figuring out how to take the reporting and repackage it in some way that's great for the web that probably needs to be much more visual than it is. lotsgr more charts.maybe changing thef things. pulling out certain chunks. taking all the data. i mean there's this big obsession in journalism right now about data driven journalism. i think that comes from you know desire to like see the evidence, show the work basically. well bloomberg has more data than anyone in the terminal so just extracting that data and showing it people is a huge opportunity. >> and this show in particular we can say getting rid of the black background. step number one. >> rose: you don't like my

background. >> it's a great view charlie. on>> rose: everybody says to me in fact about the web they like almost a clear background is the best possible thing. is that right? >> yes. >> rose: why is that? >> because you want to concentrate attention on the thing that you want to concentrate attention on and you don't want distractions. this is why you have nothing going on behind that. >> rose: because you focus on who you are and what you're saying. >> we want a pink background. >> rose: does it make a difference that you are an investor as well as a pundit as well as a blogger. >> i think it does. so it's funny because most of the people that i read are journalists. and i'm friendly with a lot of journalists and i think what they do is indispensable but it's proven there's room thousand for someone who is not a journalist but who reads all

of the journalism and forms a @eclly strong opinion which is important and which isn't and almost acts more as a curator. i don't do reporting. i have an investment management job but what i do is i consume a lot of this stuff in the market as well. and at the end of the day when i sit down and i think hey it turns out everyone was focused on this but it really didn't matter that much. or, this should have gotten more attention and i like the point to the journalist who uncovered it or to the journalists who swarmed on something and i want to say to my readers this is something valuable to consume. >> that said not only do journalists do journalism and one of the biggest scoops in recent sets. >> rose: and how to you get it. >> and how do you get it. >> rose: you're not giving up sources are you. >> i'm in the investment business and i have to live in the business and you know. >> the scoop was that last year,

they made $520 million. >> rose: probably both of them each made $520 would have been my impression. had we known everything we need to know about why they split? we probably know more than -- >> i'll tell that's interesting. he has a quote where he says whoever is winning now will look to be invincible. so that's a great example of a firm with the most assets under management on the planet. and even when thing are as good as they can be is you're never invincible in this industry and we learn that every year. >> what's wrong there? >> too much money, too much, too many big personalities and then too high of an expectation on the part of the investor

community. no one ever got fired allocating to pill co- it became automatic but nobody's results are automatic if they're an investor. they move in streaks. is best performer could be the worst next year. when that realization comes out and then internally an organization is forced to deal with it, thing get ugly. people point to each other which is human, nobody's above that in the whole world. >> i do think that going back just a little bit, the presence of people like josh and barry and other financial professionals is one of the huge aspects of this whole media revolution that deserves to get a lot of attention. on twitter i follow people who are professional traders, professional investors who in the past would never be just freely sharing their insight but are actually doing so all daycos basically to become important sources on stories. and that's phenomenal. i really enjoy it. i love the fact that i can just

hear directly from people all day and see their reactions to news but it is a major sort of -- >> the job fact interestingly which no one picks up on4dhrt t the time. has three investment managers, hedge fund managers, to be much more open about their views on the internet and on twitter. and this is fantastic because journalists really don't know anything. all we do is phone people up and try to find out what the people who do know things know. now we did me ate -- mediate the journalists. >> rose: what's the good from the great. >> waking up at 4:00 in the morning, 4:30 starts. the amount of tomb to be really good because we said all during this discussion you need to read so much, you need to talk to so many people and there's so much information out there you really need to whittle it down.

it's people every day. absolutely hard work is first and foremost. >> rose: hard work will helppl to be able to say something smart, that is smart in content as well as expressed well. >> i think this is kind of corollary to hard work but it's enthusiasm. >> i agree with that. >> really like wanting to sell it. that is not just doing well, isn't just about filing your p's and then being done for the day. but genuinely being really excited about this stuff you care about. i think i've done really well by taking say obscure topics and things that people didn't pay much attention to and enthusiastically making the case to the public that these are stories that really merit your attention. >> there's no one who can explain liquidity with more enthusiasm. i have even more obscure enthusiasm when you're talking about clauses. >> this is what caused it to

default a few months ago. they had this clause in there, a contract that was read in a certain way, kind of a stupid way by a judge in mork and as w york and as a result of that the -- >> rose: are they winning that battle. >> he's won the battle but is losing the war still. >> rose: i know what you mean. >> enthusiasm certainly. and i think just absolutely wanting to take on these obscure topics andreaders and flag treno one else is seeing which i think is the hardest. >> the obscurity part. so if your job is every day to create contentinteresting, the t because you already have 500 people writing about what the job numbers was that morning. right. i mean it'si'already been done o definite but then i think there's another category probably something more akin to what i'm doing where you say well, maybe there's room for a

really strong opinion that's in the by all this news. but i don't have the perch of bloomberg view or the opaat fin. i really want people to read what i have to say so a lot of that is personality driven. like how can you get people to care about what you think if you don't have the imprimteur of the "new york times" or washington post. that to me is the challenge. but you asked what separates te good from the great. getting people interested in what you have to say is a really really big challenge. >> rose: and the velocity you're getting. >> the double edged swore is -- sword and you are living over the top -- >> guilty.

>> rose: did you notify. >> there's no notification of a heart broken realization at midnight. no, i think there's a line between how promotional you are. and if you're like tweeting the heck out of your own links and people land on the major and say well i didn't get anything out of that for the third time. you can find yourself becoming irrelevant pretty quickly. >> a great platform for curators at least as far as i'm concerned, i don't like to be self promoted. i want someone else to point t0c josh. if someone else points to josh then i have reason to believe this is something worth reading. if josh points to josh then i have no idea whether it's world reading or not. >> rose: how many at business insider would you write per day would you say. >> well it's lower over time -- >> rose: became more of an editor. >> and we rebuilt our news room. when i started business insider there were basically five people in the news room. five people in the news room and

the world was collapsing every day. so there was nobody to write lots of stuff going on so i'm sure i had days when i wrote over 20 pieces probably hundreds ofby the end i basically stopped writing because i mostly have been doing evidence tinge. but yes, i mean there's kind of a range. >> rose: is this one going away? >> it's funny you bring that up to me because i tried to ban it from fast ft for a period just becausetopic. >> today in this very building i'm having a debate with barry who is the great bits pro propot and he's saying yes it's world and i'm saying -- >> rose: what about like mark. >> he has invested in too big bitcoin companies. one of them is coins basic which is an interesting company. one is just a bit, all he's doing is mining bit coins. this is the most pointless thing

you can possibly do. it might make money but it's not going to change the world. >> rose: let me read josh ten things we believe on wall street. i like this list. falling gas and meeting prices is a bad thing. >> yes. when i say we i mean the royal we but we really believe that. stock market will fall sometimes when oil inventories are high or prices drop. when in reality half the country lives check to check. literally 47 percent pr of the country makes less than $50,000 and 20% of their income goes to energy costs. how we can burden of proof that a falling gasoline price as negative is totally beyond any stretch of the imagine race to me. and yet we do. >> rose: number two. late off the great news, the more the better. that's a myth. >> that's when they mention a

huge amount of layoffs people will sale they're getting serious. >> we've now reached the point where labor and capital are opposed. they used to be for many decades in the post war# boon area they used to be linked to each other. the employees do better than the corporations did and now it's become much more of a zero sum game. >> rose: that's personifiedby . >> and henry ford would double the wages. >> rose: billionaires from greenwich connecticut can understand the k-marts and sears. >> so you have a guy worth $15 million and rarely leases enclave of the upper east side or greenwich and takes a huge stake in a discount retailer, dollar stores or whatever. it's not that they can't make money by doing that but when

they start to run them in thcase of sears and k mutter, a total disconnect, jcpenney for an correct. >> hyper inflation in the hamptons. the numbers are wrong. >> rose: a company is plagued by the fact it holds over 100 billion in cash. >> this is apple's huge problem about 300 point per share ago where apple has too much cash and it will force them not to innovate or it's like this thing that's plaguing and weighing on the stock. what are they going to do with 150 billion in cash. they'll never figure out the right way to invest es. the stocks sold eight times are earning versus 16 times. so half the valuation ofpo other stocks because of their cash. >> rose: some companies earn a specific profit to the penny

every quarter but others should dare even think about profit. >> yes much that's amazon. >> rose: yes, amazon. >> it's actually really bad news. >> rose: because they're not investing it. >> right. they'll say oh they lost their edge. whereas another company, if, you guys see if another company misses earnings by a penny -- >> that wasn't even the number. >> ever going to make a quarterly profit. >> i hope not. >> rose: then it's going to drop. >> sell. >> i don't think they will so don't worry about it. >> you know it's interesting a friend of mine who is an investor and has something similar to twitter was neverv.m÷ able to raise a lot of money and somebody finally told him, somebody in the angel community told him why.] the problem is you earn money and when you earn money we can actually sign a valuation to that. we can say ten times for this.

if you earn nothing it's a mystery and people can dream big. so it's the worst thing you can do at an early stain. >> rose: wars, weather fashion trends and elections can be reliably predicted. >> that's the whole senator levesque -- complex that people can build on. >> rose: five to ten percent, that's insane. >> they own commercial real estate. you know the value is fluctuate bug there's no app on their phone that says your building lost a million dollars in value today. so they treat that differently but their market investments, you know, every five or ten percent. >> what the market does is take probability distributions and reduces them to a single point. and it is impossible to know the value of a company like apple or goldman sachs to within half a percent either way. but that's what you wind up doing when you look at the stock prices. oh, it went up a percent or down a percent.

all that is is pure noise. it's in the distribution of roughly more or less where we think it should be. no one looks at a stock like that al they show they should. >> in the last four weeks apple added billion of dollars to its market cap which is equivalent to the market value of home depot which is a company that 12k-8 0 billion a year. >> rose: because of the sales of iphone six. >> it's the probability distribution. >>2g it's somewhere around ther. >> apple didn't change that. >> it's sentiments surrounding apple and so people take that to the next step and they say oh the value of the business. >> rose: was it the fact that people said oh my god we didn't think apple had any products, wince steve was gone there's no products coming down the pipeline then you had the watch -- these are new things and where we can rest apple is in good hands. >> what you're doing charlie is

your expost putting a narrative on the job. you're searching around for reasons why the stock -- >> about a month and-a-half ago the market tumbled and kind of tanked. and ebola and isis. then everyone is like some people came up with all these stories right away like ebola was effecting the market. ebola hasn't gone away but you just don't hear any connection with ebola. you do this a lot with geo politics and it's kind of a running joker that market's down or market's higher on size of ukraine. market is down. it doesn't matter. >> rose: you talk to a trader who said i sold -- >> you basically work backwards. >> the word amid was made.

>> rose: persons who leads the company is worth 400 times american the average -- more than the average?works there. >> versus the average employee in the company in the united states and that's an extreme that i think it was 10 to one in the 60's and 70's. that's an extreme that only seems to go in one direction, and it just doesn't, to me i can't find a way where that makes sense but there are no laws against it and all the competitionm3ipa consultants coe from the same schools, work in the same companies and ostensibly everyone competing for the same ceo. >> the ceo is never the most single valuable employee in the country. >> rose: who is the most valuable person in the company? new product development. >> every company is different but i am very suspicious of any

company where the ceo -- >> rose: another company selling/l 40,000 cars a year is worth 30 billion because it's growing farther. >> gm versus -- >> rose: right. >> actually this is the ultimate question of what kind of investor you are. gm is selling at a depressed valuation, they have negative headlines in the news almost every day but they're telling 10 million cars a year that's provide steady. >> rose: is that a huge market share. >> huge market share the. they have a huge market share in china. they beat china almost a decade. >> rose: that's because of buick. >> either way they're there and doing very well each month they break out that number finishing this year with 40,000 cars sold but that's growing at more than 100% a year. people are willing to say that's worth almost as much as gm inlka public market 30 billion versus

50. that's a really big difficult thing for investors to get their minds around. i still haven't. >> rose: i remember when the market cap of ge was $10 billion. was it? >> yes. >> it was a bank and they couldn't roll over their net. >> rose: 50% of their revenue was financially tied. >> any kois well over its definite is interrupt. so you have to be worried. >> that is kind of hopeful in one sense. getting back to why gm is in the headlines every day for negative news is dogged journalism over the years of people exposing issues of recall etcetera. and that is the story that actually designates so much with people about saying how did this happen at this company, how did this go unnoticed. how is ittq either covered up or not enough. and i like where we can have

those. i think people still believe in long term journalism, it's a really compelling story they will sit there and read those 1500 words. but you have to really get those opportunities, seize them and write them. >> rose: people are doing that. >> some of them are fantastic. some are pictures of cat and janet yellen. and i think that i'm glad we have both. i'm glad i get to quiz her about the super hero. there's some content that takes advantage of the access. and some is basketball of journalism and i don't think no one has it quite right yet and we'll see. >> rose: how do you decide on the investments you make. >> i don't make investments. the only way to do it, no one's that smart unless you do it full time. >> totally blind. >> rose: we know you've got a company.

>> yes. it's funny because like felix says the only hope you ever have is if you do it full time. i cover markets full time but that's still not the same time of actually covering full time. >> you have restrictions too. >> i think the manual was a tweet. you have to follow the account. >> rose: thank you all, great fun to have you all. >> rose: bob ryan is here, he is one of america's most esteemed sports wiert over four decades for the boston globe. during 198 0's he captured that was led by larry bird. he writes much moreth scribe, my life in sports. i'm pleased to have him here at this table. welcome. >> thank you charlie.

>> rose: you say in a sense covering sports is first and foremost about the game and never forget it's about the game. >> that's really not the thought process of many!ñ of my colleags and contemporaries. they will give you an elaborate disclaimer that of detachment that they're not emotional about this and they're only interested in the store read. they don't care who wins and loses. i'm talking about people who actually cover teens not people who do national stuff to which i say i just read about people. just remember one thing people come and go. the cast of characters changes in professional life, the cast of characters changes in collegiate life but they're all bonded by one thing. the competition, the actual games. i happen to like the games and that's what's motivated to keep me interested or induced all these years. >> rose: they say that certainly critics and people who write theatre reviews and film reviews and all kind of critical reviews that those who have done it best, those who have loved the game.

>> i would think so. i can't imagine being, did not -- love movies, did not -- love the theatres. >> rose: yes. >> well, not to flatter myself but i wrote basketball game stories with the eye of a critic to try to explain to someone who was not there what he or she missed. and whether it was a good and valuable experience or just another night in this case just. >> rose: you also say that i strongly suspect my last words will be -- >> yes. that's a probably possibility. i'm still enthralled by%f the a of the competition and the games and that's what i think attracted to me back from toddler hood. >> rose: you said a sports writer is a two part word and my entire life has been devoted to both aspects sports and writer. >> the sports knowledge was inbread. my father was heavily involved in sports in trenton, new jersey and i think i have a genetic

predisposition. but that doesn't account for the writing part. the righting mar was imbedded in me and so much so when he would take me to high school basketball game forty evening i couldn't wait until saturday morning to read about the game and not valued in my seven year old mind was not validated and i can't explain it. >> rose: it was said you are the quinton sent annual writer. >> i think it comes back to the enthusiasm thing and just a breadth of interest. for example in the olympics when i started out that was not something i was thinking about him. >> scottie, the great "new york times" editor, reporter and columnist once said sports

writing was a great way to start. you can say1b finish as well. but he thought people who wrote about sports gained something in the writing game that will serve them well for the rest of their live. >> all i can say is we have more inherent freedom to write. a lot of times i'll(pañ read a political columnist and highest complement i can pay that person is you write like as a sports writer you have a freedom of writing. we don't have to worry as much about being, whatever passes for pc at the time. we don't have to worry about that so much, we don't have to worry about a lot of things about that and we have a more inherent freedom of writing. i'm just guessing now because i'm well aware he said that that's what he was thinking about. >> rose: were you good at ports. >> one sport i could play into prep school and that was basketball. i played it through and i got that far and then i went out foñ

fromman basketball at bostonf college and was cut. but i made the first cut. >> rose: pax ball -- basketball is stale the favorite. >> baseball is my favorite. as i state very clear i think it's quote, i'm quoting myself, how shameless the greatest game ever to spring from the mind of mortal man i think is baseball. >> rose: why do you say. >> i think it has the most intriguing and interesting possibility. for example what other game so reward an inept act such as a little dribbler down the baseline.truly doesn't reward ar actor, a fly ball to the outer reaches of the ballpark that doesn't go out of the ballpark. there are so many circumstances in baseball. there's more conversational fodder in baseball than base basketball football and hawksy put together. >> rose: you can think about, analyze and see the choices tht are made.

>> that's true. just the subtle changes, the difference between two outs and the basis loaded in a three-two count and nobody out in the bases loaded in a three two count which is enormous in you know baseball. >> rose: what i always wanted to do and i've done it before in a inning or two is sit next to a great manager who happened the luxury of paying attention to me. and have him talk about the game and watch the game in motion. what are the choices here, what are the people thinking about here, what are the options here, you know. it gave us a sense which is the more you know about in my experience the more you know about anything the more interesting it becomes. and the more you want to know. >> we're at an age where information is value and wasn't available to those of us growing up 30-40 years ago. i think there's a saturation point where you go no mas because every commentator has to

talk incessant lever after every pitch. >> rose: there's those who love college basketball and don't like the nba. that's not you. >> that's not me but i say this to those who like college basketball and don't love the nba. college basketball i've been involved with since i was six is the best hamburger but nba is the best steak and there's the difference. a quality difference. here's what i say about the nba. every single season without fail in the nba there are a minimum of a hundred games, maybe 150 games. it doesn't have to be the top teams. but there are 150 games that are played that if that game had been%& placed in a college arena with the band and the cheerleaders and the tradition behind the two respective schools people would walk out of the arena and say that's the greatest game and that happened 150 times a year in the nba. >> rose: what's the greatest game you ever saw in your life. >> the greatest game for me was,

covering of this was the 1976 the celtics and phoenix triple overtime game, game five of the finals which had all kinds of enormous drama and interesting little subplots in which totally unexpected because you're supposed to walk all over phoenix in the whole series and they couldn't get rid of them and the epitome was game five and richey powers in the middle of it all. >> rose: what does larry bird represent for you. >> he represents the apex of my basketball education enthusiasm. he came along in 1979. i had been covering the nba for ten years and i love basketball. i thought i covered the best player i was ever going to cover in john havecheck. now in 1979 here come birds and it's likened to having sienldz up for an art course and in walks the new teacher, michaelangelo. he forced me in my mind to rise to his level. i honestly think some of the

best writing if not the best writing pure writing i ever did was writing about bird. >> rose: what is it about bird? >> it's a combination of well he embodied everything i like about the game the patting the shooting the thinking, the rebounding. he connected with the fans in a way that was just special will to win, determination. all those intangible things and then getting to know him and see him blossom as a human being and break out oozes an intellectual chain. >> rose: how about the patriots. >> they are once again a threat to win. they're a threat to get to the super bowl. we had them halfway six feet under, we had them about four feet under after the fourth game of the year when they were two and two. and brady stepped up. the offensive line. brady now can throw the ball with some comfort and they still have the smartest kid in the class coaching them, mr. belichick. >> rose: why is he the

smartest. >> he just is. he has the complete command what it is to coach. he has morethan anybody. i truly believe that. he has the broadest knowledge about every nuance and every position and he's just, he just sees things i think that not everybody sees. >> rose: pure student of the game. >> herp is. he's a prodigy. he went down at ages 11 and 12 and started breaking down film. there's no question he's a high superior intaw collect. he could be whatever, yeo, general manager i don't know. his enthusiasm for football is boundless. he may have the best private collection of football books in the world. anything that comes, he gets it. he knows more about paul brown than his son mike brown does, i can promise you that right now. >> rose: who is better? i hate to do this to you but

it's in my blood. lebron or michael? >> in the final analysis michael. thee both reached the peak of their profession in different times in history but michael's ruthlessness and competitively the idea of cutting your heart out and serve it back to you with a nice glass of key up tee is michael. that's not lebron. lebron is inherently sweet tempered human being he's a nicer guy in that regard. he doesn't have that element of ruthlessness. the person who comes closest to michael combining the skill is kolby bryant. the way michael was raised and lebron was raised he was a celebrity at age 14 whereas we never hard of michael. >> rose: he hardly made theqv

team. >> he didn't. we didn't know about him until he started in north carolina as a freshman because he had no profile outside the state. michael marginnity, michael did not learn how to win until he learned how to share and lebron didn't until he was able to accept the responsibility of being the best player on the court and acting accordingly. >> rose: did you know john wooden. >> i met john wooden on a couple occasions and my friend took me to his apartment in 1999 when he was 89 and among the things we did and i think i have the cassette tape charlie is he rattled up the starting line up of the high school baseball game he coached in indiana in the early 30's. all tongue twisting polish names and this is the batting order. it was a very enthralling two hours. >> rose: he had an extraordinary amount of poetry. >> excellent biography. >> rose: he would sit here at

the table and i got bill russell to kim in at the same time who didn't play for him obviously but the rhetoric russell had for him was unbelievable. >> that's great. he played against him at some point out there in the west coast. it was a remarkable story. do you know what he was making when he got to ucla which was by the way 40 years ago this year. $32,000. and didn't care. >> rose: of all the players that you've seen as baseball, who happened the most skill. first as hitters. >> i'm a willie mays guy. that's my era and that's my team. he was my god. well you talk about the five tools, right.y hitting for average, hitting for power, running, throwing and defense, okay. classic five tool guy. a great fielder. they didn't want, he would have stolen, in today's game or the subsequent years he would have

stolen 50, 60 bases. they didn't run but he could steal a base. he had 660 home runs. he obviously played that would have made him a star, not just an efficient player. he had a star power to him. i'm partial to him, but ken griefy, jr. was the wonderful player. >> rose: do you like golf and tennis. >> i like golf very much and tennis. i didn't have a chance to cover much. we had the greatest american tennis writer ever and so there was no need for any superfluous coverage from any ryan fellow as long asgolf i enjoyed very muchi mentioned in here actually my favorite sport to cover because of the logistics. it's the last sport i dare say television cannot mess you by making us play at night. strictly a personalized writer point of view i grant you. >> rose: you prefer baseball during the day.

>> i prefer baseball during the day. >> rose: this book is called scribe, my life in sports, been there, done it and he knows the games he covers. >> thank you for having me. >> rose: thank you for joining us. for more of this program and early episodes visit us on-line at pbd.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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