Page One: Inside the New York Times Page #4

and say Bruce needs to talk?

- Just say Bruce needs it in 15 minutes.

- Okay.

It's another reshaping

of the media industry.

Comcast, which is

the biggest cable company,

they look at the future

and they see what's going on in media,

and they worry about if young

people are watching TV online,

are they going to need to keep paying

their cable bills forever down the road?

So they feel like, if they can own

as much of the television shows

and the movies,

they can play a bigger part

in that future,

whatever that future is.

I want to talk to you.

Can I wait?

You'll come up?

He's going to come up.

All right, here's the lede.

"The secret meeting"...

secret...

"The secret meeting was set for

1:
00 PM the second week of July

in an out-of-the-way condominium

along the ninth hole

of the golf course

in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Jeffrey Immelt got

to the condo first,

trying desperately to avoid

being spotted by Jeff Zucker,

the chief executive NBC Universal

who was mingling with other executives

in front of the duck pond

only a couple hundred yards away

and had no idea what was happening."

Okay, anyway, here's the story.

I'm calling GE now.

- Okay.

- So I'm hoping you can like...

- Sort of maybe tie it together.

- ...tie it together.

Because it's basically

just all these little weird stories.

And I tried to tie it

and leave little places to...

- Then how would...

- It works out for Comcast

if the thing becomes worth

a lot of money in the future.

- Okay.

- That's basically the concept.

All right. How many words do you

think we have for this? It's very long.

- You think you can do it in 1500?

- Yeah.

- Is it looking good? Are you happy?

- Yeah.

I mean some of this may just

be too much detail, by the way.

- I went a little overboard.

- Yeah no, I'm tightening it up.

- He said we have 1500 words.

- This thing's like 1500 words now.

No no, he said

we could have 1500.

I'll check and tell you

if it's different.

I've gotta make sure

we got the space.

- Sorkin have a look?

- Sorkin just emailed me

and said file away,

but said don't put it on the web yet,

because he still needs

to confirm something.

Once we could

pare it down and tighten it up,

I think it read well.

It tried to tell a tale

rather than get bogged down

in the financials

and the numbers.

Here was this kid, 21-year-old

Brian Stelter, who started a blog,

who did it anonymously

so no one would out him,

until "The New York Times"

outed him as a mere kid.

He made his brand

and his reputation

by just getting out there

and blogging.

You know,

he became this sort of must-read

for the Brian Williamses

of the world.

And I think "The Times" had the idea,

"Why don't we hire this guy?"

Stelterz A week

after that story was published,

"The Times" contacted me

and asked me to come up

and do these series of interviews

back to back to back with editors,

seeing if you're

"Times" material, I guess.

You see him

at his desk and he's got

two laptops and TVs open

and he's Twittering,

and he just embodies

everything about new media.

I don't know why anybody

who's a reporter isn't on Twitter.

I constantly berate

my colleagues who aren't on it.

It drives me nuts when I'll hear

my colleagues talking about a story

at noon, and I read it

on Twitter at midnight.

I'm thinking to myself,

"Why is that allowed?"

You know, "Why are we not

on top of the news?" It's 2010.

I still can't get over the feeling

that Brian Stelter was a robot

assembled in the basement

of "The New York Times"

to come and destroy me.

Here's an entertaining tip:

I'm putting

the expensive beer on the top.

Welcome to Austin,

the city where for the time being

everybody is famous,

the economy is rocking

and the grid is groaning

under an influx

of the digitally interested.

- I might have to put you on ban.

- No, I agree, I agree.

I might have to put you on ban.

You're both going to end up

with your devices over the fence.

Twitter entered

the lexicon two years ago here,

when it was the darling

of the conference.

Why talk when you can tweet?

You're reading an article.

If you want to tweet about it

or if you want to follow the columnist,

you can do it right there.

Headlines can be sent

out via Twitter.

It's about finding out what's happening

in the world that you care about.

Really, what could

anyone possibly find useful

in this cacophony

of short-burst communication?

But at 52, I succumbed,

partly out oi professional necessity.

Now nearly a year later, has Twitter

turned my brain to mush? No.

It's hard to convince someone

that they should use Twitter

until you get them on it

and they use if for 10 days

and they're like,

"Oh, this is why it's interesting."

I'm a narrative

on more things at a given moment

than I ever thought possible.

See how many people just now...

I get a sense of today's news

and how people are reacting to it

in the time it takes to wait

for a coffee at Starbucks.

Nearly a year in,

I've come to understand

that the real value of the service is

listening to a wired collective voice.

The medium's not the message.

The messages are the media.

- Bruce?

- We're always looking for ways

to show how cutbacks across the media

business has affected coverage.

And Brian Stelter has

come up with an unlikely one,

which is coverage

of the President of the United States.

When Obama travels

to Buffalo today,

there won't be

a charter plane traveling with him

because many of the networks

have simply opted out

of taking that very expensive ride,

and the reason is simply cost.

Uh, we'll call it "press,"

Oh good, my sources are

starting to come out.

They're starting to wake up.

It's job number one, of course,

for every DC bureau to follow

the president and to travel with him

on trips both foreign and domestic.

But lately there's been fewer and fewer

of these White House planes

that go with President Obama to events.

These guys are trying every day

to save every dollar they can.

It's a demonstration of networks

trying to do more with less.

Or just accepting

you can only do less.

Sometimes that's the answer-

is just doing less.

Is it 1,500 people

on staff right now? 1400.

Are you confirming that 300

and 400 number that's out there?

ABC's laying off 400 people.

CBS laid off 90 a few weeks ago.

God, that is stunning.

20 to 25% of the staff

they're trying to cut.

They're not just there to make sure

the president doesn't

choke on a chicken bone.

They're also there to corner

people for interviews

in a way they couldn't otherwise.

I think the other thing

you have to do is nod

to what this is going

to mean for coverage

in the next few campaigns.

In the last election,

because they couldn't afford

to send out regular reporters,

they were sending out

24-year-olds with video cameras.

They were capturing

all kinds of things.

Somebody fell asleep and it never would

Rate this script:3.0 / 2 votes