Page One: Inside the New York Times Page #3

in just six months.

So print as an industry

and a medium continues

to nosedive.

Publications like "Newsweek"

and "Times" are going down fast.

We like to say that

we're perfectly positioned.

Not only are

the sort of biggest media companies

willing to come talk to us,

but the biggest brands

are wanting to come talk to us

and give us money.

And what we have to do

is we have to figure out

how we can be meaner and faster

and more dynamic than

everybody out there.

We don't want to get hot and die.

We want to get hot and get hotter.

You asked the question is there

a business model that, like...

Just a sec though.

I want you to feel me on this:

I don't do corporate portraiture.

What the f*** is going on that

you're doing business with CNN?

We know how to speak

to young people.

They're listening to us.

We're a trusted brand for them.

I mean, the first thing

that CNN said when they walked

into the meeting

last summer was,

49-year-olds are watching

CNN right now,

and we're f***ed.

Can you please help us develop

a new, young audience

for the future?

They like the way you tell stories.

They like your hosts.

They like where you go." That's really

what they came looking for.

So what kind of war is this, guerrilla?

I don't know Liberia.

I don't know what's going on.

I don't pretend to.

I'm not going there for a news thing,

reporting on a particular news story.

I'm not there to solve

the problems of the world.

I'm just a regular guy.

I didn't get flown in on a thing.

I don't have security.

I don't have anything.

And I've been to some places

just f***in' insane.

If you're a CNN viewer

and you go, "Hmm,

I'm looking at human sh*t

on the beach."

I'm a regular guy

and I go to these places and I go,

"Okay, everyone talked to me

about cannibalism, right?"

Everyone talked to me about cannibalism.

Now I'm getting

a lot of sh*t for saying the word

"cannibalism" and stuff- whatever.

Everyone talked to me

about cannibalism!

- So you'd kill the child?

- Yes.

- And then drink the blood?

- Yeah.

That's f***ing crazy.

So the actual- our audience goes,

"That's f***ing insane.

Like, that's nuts."

And "The New York Times"

meanwhile is writing about surfing.

I'm sitting there going, "You know what?

I'm not going to talk about surfing.

I'm going to talk about cannibalism

because that fucks me up."

Just a sec. Time out.

Before you ever went there,

we've had reporters there

reporting on genocide

after genocide.

And just because you put

on a f***in' safari helmet

and went and looked

at some poop doesn't give you

the right to insult what we do.

- So continue, continue.

- Sorry.

I'm just saying that

I'm not a journalist.

- I'm not there to report.

- Obviously. Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

I'm just talking about, you know,

look what I saw there.

What's up?

Dressed like a big Page-One guy.

- How are you?

- Boy, what a day.

"The Times" was

really where I wanted to work

from when I was very young.

I always had this idea of the place

as this sort of magisterial place

where great things happened

and were done.

And there was this idea

in the past where

getting to "The Times"

was almost like getting tenure.

And you could have

this great long 30-year, 40-year career

where you go cover politics,

you cover some foreign,

you maybe write a book.

And that's not the track now.

Ladies and gentlemen,

we are now on West 43rd Street

in Midtown Manhattan in the

central office of "The New York Times."

They are this minute busy getting ready.

This is the beehive, the central office,

the city room.

Here an avalanche of news

is shaped

into Monday morning's newspaper.

Well, here we are, boys.

That is Tumer Catledge.

He is the managing editor.

And I just heard from the circulation

department a few minutes ago

that we had the largest

distribution of papers today

in the history

of "The New York Times."

Hard news was a phrase

"The Times" almost owned.

NBC, CBS, ABC- the first thing

they'd do in the morning,

the directors of their shows would

look at "The New York Times."

If "The New York Times" had a story

about such and such in a faraway place,

the networks would think, "Ah, now we'll

send Walter Cronkite over there."

When I was growing up

I read "The Times" every morning.

And then I read this book by

Gay Talese, "The Kingdom and the Power,"

and it went inside

this imperial institution.

And he just,

you know, thrilled me.

I mean there was

nothing else I wanted to do.

"'The Times' was a very human institution,

run by flawed figures, men who saw

things as they could see them.

But it was equally true that 'The Times'

nearly always tried to be fair.

And each day, barring labor

strikes or hydrogen bombs,

it would appear

in 11,464 cities around the nation

and in all the capitals of the world,

50 copies going

to the White House,

39 copies to Moscow,

a few smuggled into Beijing,

and a thick Sunday edition

to the foreign minister in Taiwan,

because he required 'The Times'

as necessary proof

of the Earth's existence,

a barometer of its pressure,

an assessor of its sanity.

If the world did indeed

still exist, he knew

it would be duly recorded

each day in "The Times."

There's actually something called

"The New York Times" effect.

In the world of analogue newspapers,

there was an observable effect;

If on day one,

"The New York Times" ran a piece

on a particular story,

a political or business issue,

on day two

the tier-two newspapers

would all essentially

imitate the story.

Just like everything else

in the newspaper business,

we didn't realize that

"The New York Times" effect

actually depended on

the structure of analogue

newspaper distribution.

"The Times" still, I think to a

remarkable degree, does set the agenda.

I mean, you really can trace

almost any major story these days

back to something that

originally appeared in "The Times."

The problem is

is that once it reaches

the public,

they may not even know

it came from "The Times."

Okay, so at 6:
00 AM

the release goes out. Is that right?

So for two, three months now-

I think the end of September

the story leaked

that Comcast was going to buy NBC.

It seems like finally

it will be announced.

So the challenge is this piece

I'm working on with Sorkin,

which is what we call

a tick-tock, which is

the fun details behind the scenes

of how the deal came together.

So I'm just waiting for Andrew

to come up so we can sort that out,

and we'll get that

in the paper tomorrow.

By the way,

how's the tick-tock coming?

Sorkin, I'm just waiting

for him. He's like...

- Has he filed anything?

- No.

So that means

he hasn't written a word.

I don't know.

Like at 11:
00, he said,

"I'll have something

for you in an hour."

So now I'm going to look

like a chump if I don't hit that.

Because our deal was

he was going to write what he had

and I was going to write into it.

Do you want me to go to him

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