>> this program is brought to you by a grant from the... >> watergate, monica lewinsky, abu gharib--investigative journalists have uncovered some of the biggest stories in our history, but in the future, who's going to hold the powerful accountable? since 2001, nearly 14,000 ofessional journalists have lost their jobs in the united states. that's a drop of 25%. so as newsrooms shrink, is investigative journalism in crisis? >> the next 10 or 15 years in this country are going to be a halcyon era for state and local political corruption. it is gonna be one of the great times to be a corrupt politician. >> [laughter] >> is it really that bad? we'll

find out. investigative journalism in the digital age--that's our topic today on "the future of news." >> a government without a tough and vibrant media of all sorts is not an option for the united states of america. >> the real fundamental role of the press is this accountability journalism. >> i know the government too well, and if there's really something good and juicy and incriminating, they're gonna find an excuse not to give it to you. >> from the newseum in washington, d.c., this is "the future of news." welcome to the knight studio and our conversation about media and news in the digital age. i'm frank sesno. our guests today are two giants in e world of inveigative journalism. bob woodward of the "washington post" is perhaps the preeminent investigative journalist of our time, as well as a prolific best-selling author and editor. it was his reporting of the watergate scandal with carl bernstein that led to the resignation of president

richard nixon in 1974, reporting that inspired a generation of american journalists. bill buzenberg is executive director of the center for public integrity, one of the most respected nonprofit investigative organizations in the nation. bill was formally at npr and american public media. so welce to you bh. >> thanks. >> let's start with the question at hand. just how serious is the crisis afflicting investigative journalism? bob? >> we're in a convulsion because the newspaper business specifically, but all media, i mean, to be candid, they aren't making money, and so the business model is dying or dead, and if we can't make money, no one's gonna pay our salary, no one is gonna have the courage to actually broadcast or report what we find out. we can write letters, or we can go on the internet, but as this kind of collective in-depth

investigative work that the "new york times" or the "washington post" or npr or some of the networks are doing, there won't be money to support it. >> bill, he uses the world "convulsion." that's a big word. >> investigative reporting is risky, it's time-consuming, it takes a lot of resources to do it and to do it really well and then stand behind it in case you get sued, et cetera. i think it is in crisis, and i think the real reason is how many thousands of fewer journalists are doing this work, are being able to do this work. so i would say this is a very serious period. there is still some great investigative work being done, believe me. lots of it is still being done, but i think in general and particularly regional, local levels, i think that's where we see less of this. >> in your investigative reporting, bob, and in what you've done, how much has the "post's" infrastructure been helpful, that is to say lawyers and others, in helping you resist the pressure, weather the storm. >> theawye help, but i'll te you, the real answer is in

the publisher, and you go back to watergate, katharine graham. we were denounced daily about the watergate stories from the white house, from the republican national committee, from nixon's reelection committee. as we later learned, one of the strategies was to get people to attack the fcc licenses for television stations that the "post" company owned, and that took the stock really on the rim of the toilet at a time when it had st--the coany d just gone public and so forth, and katharine graham, i remember a lunch i had with her in which she held her ground, and then she asked, "when are we gonna learn the full story of watergate?" this was early in 1973, and carl bernstein and i said, "you know, there--it's a criminal conspiracy, they compartmentalize the information, they scare people, they're paying people for their

silence. my answer is never." and she had this pained, stricken look on her face, and she said, "never? don't tell me never." i left the lunch a motivated employee, but the "never? don't tell me never" was not a threat. it was a statement of purpose. she knew what the job of the newspaper was, and what she said is, "use all your resources, use everything this paper has to get to the bottom of it. that isur duty." >> bill, across the country, we know newspapers and broadcasters have been laying people off left and right, very deeply in some cases, but let me just show you how they're trying to hold the line in some of these areas. the "arizona republic," their editor there says that "the number one thing readers tell us they want is watchdog reporting," and while they've laid off 75 reporters out of 400, they've held the

line on their accountability or investigative reporting. "cleveland plain dealer," they're down 70 reporters, but they've held--they've tried to hold and actually increase inveigate reporting. so there's a sense here that this is the stuff that really matters. does it pay? >> uh, no, it's, again, the most expensive, most difficult thing that a newspaper or a broadcast station or anybody can do because you have to devote resources over many months often for the really tough work, sometimes a year, sometimes more. so it's--again, if you're cutting back and you have fewer reporters, it's the hardest thing to keep a team going and doing an investigation. that's the danger. it's good to hear these papers are doing that. it's important, a i tnk it's the real fundamental role of the press is this accountability journalism. the online model is what's coming, and there's a new ecosystem actually being built with--investigative centers are popping up in boston and dallas and denver.

>> what does that mean, investigative centers? >> these are often journalists who have been let go from the newspapers, who say, "i still believe in this investigative work. we're gonna form our own little center like a center for public integrity." >> where does the money come from? >> well, locally, sometimes nationally, foundations. these are nonprofit centers. >> the reporters are out there on thetreewith their tin cups. >> it's--it's-- >> playing a bad guitar. >> yes, right. >> it's a new model. i don't think we've figured out how to pay for it yet, but we know the old model, the newspaper model is dying. something new is being built. the center for public integrity has been around for 20 years. it is part of that new ecosystem that we are building. >> you're doing investigations. >> absolutely. >> the internet has been a great boon to investigative sites in the research and the dissemination of their stories and their investigations. sonya gavankar is going to show us a few online now to include that and what they're doing. sonya? >> frank, l's take a look at those sites. first up is the nonprofit, nonpartisan center for public integrity. they get their funding from foundations and individuals. founded in

1989, they have been posting their investigations online since 1997. they have won dozens of awards and have broken a number of important stories. click on investigations to see what they're working on now. you can also go to research tools for not only citizen journalists but mainstream journalists, as well. the center has filed hundreds of freedom of information requests for government documents and can show you how, too. another site that has great freedom of information tools is also the oldest nonprofit investigative news organization in the country. the center for investigative reporting has been dedicated to revealing injustice since 1977. they are funded by individual donors, as well. the investigative reporting that they have done has been used by media outlets all over the world. cir's newest venture is california watch. this major new reporting initiative to produce in-depth multimedia journalism is tailored just to the state of california. check back regularly for the latest

stories, as well as web exclusives. these are two of the most respected investigative reporting sites with new media tools. frank. >> sonya, thanks. your money, which comes from foundations and donors, right--and you've got a fair bit of it, it's flowing right now? >> right. >> which is a good thing. why? >> i think the foundation world, which is predom--which is where we receive the bulk of our funds, understands what a difficult period this is. they are worried about investigative reporting. they're worried about this kind of accountability joualism. they have been very supportive of the center, and they know that we do our work at a very high quality level, and we make it available to other journalists. other journalists use this work. these new centers that i spoke about, we're coordinating with them, doing some collaborations with them, providing data and documents for them to do their work. i think foundations see that as very important. >> would the "post" take foundation money? does the new--does the future of the "washington post" depend on some corollary to this? >> very good question, and the real answer is no one knows.

certainly, i don't know. now i think this model is very good and important. at thsame time, i think you have to go to 100,000 feet and look back at the system we have in this country, which is capitalism, and that entrepreneurs really make a difference. i mean, look at google, look at facebook, look at all of the new things the young kids came up with, and now they have all the money. the head of google, eric schmidt, is somebody i've known for a long time, and we've talked about--you know, i said, "it's gonna be on your tombstone--i destroyed newspapers," and that makes him uncomfortable. >> to which he said? >> to which he said, "well, no. maybe we can"--and i said, "well, no. you're taking all of our money." >> and giving people things for free. >> and he said, "it's not your money. it's our money now." >> to which you said? >> which is quite true, and so

somebody is gonna--and this feeds in with this idea of crisis, where people are gonna need the news so badly, and it's gonna be younger people are gonna come alo with a busiss mel, and they're gonna have something that's so important and so useful to so many people, they're gonna actually be willing to pay for it. >> the business model and the interest and the content--one thing is certain. the future of news is clearly in the hands of the next generation of both news consumers and news providers. we spoke to adrian holovaty, and he's a journalist and computer programmer who's an expert at data journalism. he founded a hyperlocal site called everyblock that unlocks public information and combines it with neighborhood news in a very tarted y. we spoke to him, and he had a question for our panel. >> so a simple question--how do you fuse experience with youth and technical knowledge? so there seems to be this vast gap

between the pele who are super-experienced in journalism but aren't the most technically savvy and the young people fresh out of journalism school, who are very technically savvy, grew up with facebook and the internet but don't have the experience. how do you fuse that together to the benefit of both groups? >> bill, why don't you start then? >> i'll jump in and say we do a lot of experiments at the center. i mean, i have 3 web guys, who are about 24 each of them. they're very smart, they're doing all kinds of things. about half of the staff is relatively young researchers and journalists who come to the center. they have lots of ideas how we can get out this material. it isn't just about we produce it and publish it. it's how do we interact, how do we collaborate, how do we make information available that others can use and tell us stories from that information? so there is a new way of working that's being developed. i rely on these younger people actually to help us do that.

>> and a new role perhaps for universities, for those of us at universities working with future journalists who are actually current journalists. >> my solution is the old american capitalism way, and that is i hire them. it is amazing what they--they never have let me down in terms of finding somebody or getting somebody's address or phone number. they search the web, ey gthroh all this data, and they give me a daily feed of things that are going on. i'm writing a book about how president obama governs, and their capacity to retrieve data instantly and relate it to the reporting we're doing is absolutely astonishing to the point where i couldn't function without them. >> what about the culture of investigative reporting? you know, we see it in the movies. certainly saw it in your real life and in the movie that was made aboutt, this ki of mission-driven sense of being

an investigative reporter. are we losing that? >> i think it's still very much mission-driven. it's technology, though, so much more. it's dealing with data and documents and foias. it's just--it's not, i don't think, going out--we do have whistle blowers still coming to us, as i know you do and the paper does. you still have people coming to you with information, but it's a lot of tedious, hard work is what investigative journalism really is. >> but i think this gets mixed up--you know, whistle blowers, freedom of informaon a requests. i mean, one of the things--i think there's useful information obtained in these freedom of information act requests, but i know the government too well, and if there's really something good and juicy and incriminating, they're gonna find an excuse not to give it to you. it happens time and time again, and we talk about whistle blowers, where we're passive, we're sitting there waiting for somebody to come and blow the

whistle. actually, we are whistle inserters. we walk around and go to people and say, "do you want to tell the truth about what's going on?" >> there are a number of pioneering programs around the country that have responded to this loss of newsroom reporting by teaming news pros with students--we spoke about that a moment ago--in university settings. now sonya has a few sites to tell us about where we see that taking shape. sonya? >> frank, on the east coast is boston university, educating new journalism students at the new england center for investigative reporting at boston university. they are the first nonprofit university-based investigative reporting collaborative in the country. this new business model teaches journalism students old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting. next up, my alma mater american university's school of communications. their investigative reporting workshop teaches students, among other things, how to focus on data journalism. their banking crisis stories really allow you to dig deeper.

they've been tracking the banks all over the country and allow you to type in your location to see if your bank is in trouble, and lastly, columbia university, the school that answered the call of joseph pulitzer to train journalists, is now partnering with several new media sites, sites like the huffington post investigative fund. this partnership is already producing headliner stories. these universities are attempting to bridge classic watchdog function with the best in new media tools. >> thanks, sonya. are you confident that given all this change that we're gonna have a strong, vibrant investigative journalism future, or is this something that at the end of the day, despite the experiments, is truly endangered? >> i think it's--there is a danger here. i reay do belie that. i think we are building a new system, and it's not clear how it's gonna be paid for, it's not clear what the model is for it. there are lots of still investigative journalists who want to do this work and who know how important it is, and a good story does travel, it does get

disseminated. when you have the goods and it's solid, it does go everywhere. we have seen that over and over again. so it's--it's a worry. i can't tell you is it going to continue or not. i do think there's a press crisis beyond just the investigative journalism crisis. you look at some of the g ises that we've seen--our meltdown leading up to the iraq war in which our major papers in some cases said they didn't do as good a job as they should, and now they have fewer reporters to do that job. that's a worry. >> bob. >> yeah, yeah. i mean, you have to be worried, but basically, i am very optimistic about it, and if you look at the history of this country, the first amendment, not by accident but because the people who drew that up realized it was a core function of this democracy that they were building, and time

and time again, the first amendment in one way or another has kind of proven itself as a tool of democracy and in many ways the essence of democracy, so democracies die in darkness, and that's exactly what will happen, and i don't think people want to live in darkness. i think they want to live in light, and so they will insist on good information and this accountability reporting of those who have power in government, business, or even power in the media. >> all right. let's get the audience voice in this a little bit. sir, you've got a question for the panel. go ahead. >> yes, i do. do you think we need more investigative journalists who are not clubby, not close to big corporate news outlets like charlie rose contends and like bill moyers contends? >> bob? sure. of coursebut thin

you also--i mean, i am close to the "washington post" because i work for them, and there is--there really isn't a club quite frankly. some people think there is. last year when i was interviewing president bush for the last of the 4 books i did on his wars, he said essentially to me, "if you write the truth about what's going on, you won't be able to go to those wine and cese parties ineorgetown." and i th--wine and cheese parties were something from the sixties at yale, i think, not what goes on in washington now, but those parties and whatever goes on are quite irrelevant, and lots of times, you're writing about people you will run into socially or just run into. washington is a small town, and

doesn't keep me from trying to do what i do. >> are too many reporters too clubby? >> there are a lot of reporters in this town that are part of the establishment in such a way that they want that access. that access is very important to them, and they don't want to jeopardize that. the journalists that i know and the investigative reporters and i think the ones that bill moyers is talking about, they're not in that access journalism world. they can talk to people, they can find sources, they can get information, but they're not there--they're very independent. think of the seymour hershes of the world. they're not--they're not--i me, th mayork r a corporation, but you wouldn't call them corporate in any way. >> like i.f. stone? >> yes. >> there's no club that hersh could ever get into. >> [laughter] >> hi. your question. >> hi. my question is that in light of what you've said about investigative journalism today,

if the watergate story came up today, how would you investigate it and what would you do differently than you did back then? >> hopefully, we'd be better and faster, but one thing i'm quite confident in that no one would be able to stop it if you had the evidence. >> i think the "post" in that era clearly had the resources, even with the stock going down, to back up the work that was done. it's a different era today. yeah, we do very careful libel review of everything we put out. we check and fact check, and we have a whole system to do work because we have to stay out of trouble. it's--you don't want to be sued, you don't want to be sued. it's difficult, it's different. i think we're not at the same level as the "post" was then, but there's a leveling t going on in so way >> investigative journalism has a long history in our country. it's been a key ingredient in american newspapers and american democracy from the very start. a look back now courtesy of the newseum archives.

the very first newspaper published in the colonies was "publick occurrences" in 1690. the paper featured an expose on the mistreatment of prisoners of war and printed rumors of a sex scandal in the french royal family. the governor immediately banned the paper for "sundry, doubtful, and uncertain reports." jump forward 200 years, and you'll find 3 trailblazing women at the forefront of investigative journalism in america. nellie bly went undercover for pulitzer's "new york world" in 1887 to investigate the inhumane treatment of women in a mental asylum. in the 1890s, ida b. wells exposed the horrors of lynching. her paper, "free speech and headlight" in memphis, was destroyed by an angry mob, but wells continued her work in new york, and ida tarbell took on john d. rockefeller and the standard oil company at the turn of the century. she didn't like the

term, but she was called a muckraker. so back to you both. muckrakers, accountability journalism, investigative reporting, whatever we call it, it's really revolved around key individuals. you're one of them, bob. i want to ask you both who are your heroes? who are the investigative reporters or the accountability reporters or the authors or the journalists who you think stand heads and shoulders above them all? who'yo favorite? >> i'm sitting next to the one that i would describe as one of the best. >> [applause] >> no. really. >> um, being a reporter for an institution that's very strong like the "washington post," quite frankly, is quite easy, and my heroes--to answer your question--are the editors--ben bradlee, len downie. they're the ones who set the standards. the publisher katharine graham, her son don graham, and now her granddauter katharine

weymouth. they say, you know, "let's get the story," and whenever there's trouble--it's very interesting--they surround you, and they support you, and they say, "keep doing it." they never say--never heard anyone say, "oh, don't do that. it's too sensitive," or, "you're gonna get us in trouble." in fact, we have a saying at the "washington post," which is, "all good work is done in defiance of management." >> [laughter and that doesn't mean break the law or the rules. it means be down there scrambling, looking for trouble, and looking for what really goes on, and though sometimes management is not happy to hear that things are being done in defiance of them, in fact, they love it in the end. >> my last question, which is

on a totally different plane, which i cannot let you leave without asking, with all these accompshmes inour career to be played by robert redford... >> [laughter] >> how do you put that in perspective? >> you have no idea how many women i've disappointed. >> [laughter] >> i--i think that's one story i'm not going to investigate. >> i can prove it. >> bob woodward,ill buzenbg, thanks to you both. this was great. that's all for today. from the knight studio at the newseum, i'm frank sesno. thanks very much for watching.

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