Page One: Inside the New York Times Page #7

There will be winners

and losers tonight,

and you the audience

will be our judges.

I work at

"The New York Times."

We have 17 million people

that come to our website.

We put out 100 videos every month.

We have 80 blogs.

We are fully engaged

in the revolution.

"The New York Times" has dozens

oi bureaus all over the world,

and we're going to toss that out-

which is the proposition...

toss that out and kick back

and see what Facebook tums up.

I don't think so.

What you're going to hear

tonight is that the media

is necessary

for the commonweal.

An informed citizenry

is what this nation is about.

That is self-serving crap.

"The New York Times"

is a good newspaper...

sometimes. "The Washington Post"

is a good newspaper.

The "LA Times," before it became

a had newspaper, was a good newspaper.

But after that, it's off the cliff.

It's oblivion.

The news business in this country

is nothing to be proud of.

The media is

a technology business.

That's what is.

That's what it has always been.

Technology changes,

the media changes.

Over time, the audience

has switched to the web.

The audience that's

worth a buck in print

is worth a dime and sometimes

a penny on the web,

because we end up

competing oftentimes

against our own work aggregated.

"Newser" is a great-looking site

and you might want to check it out.

Aggregates all manner of content.

But I wonder if Michael's

really thought through

get rid of mainstream

media content.

Okay.

Go ahead.

There are a lot of websites,

the core of their being very often-

not all of them, but some...

is repurposed pieces

by "The Times"

with a sexier headline

or a bigger picture

or bouncing off

of "Times" reporting,

commenting on "Times" reporting.

Places like "Gawker,"

they're going for what

will feed that

Google-beast algorithm.

They'll go to feed the hits.

And how we build a really

rich media environment

where you don't lose

coverage of statehouses,

of Congress is a question.

The big board is anathema

to anyone at "The Times"

or any other traditional

daily newspaper.

It's a list of 10 stories

from our sites

on a big television screen,

which are at that very moment

getting the most buzz,

being distributed

and passed around on the web.

It's our equivalent of the front page.

It's the most visible manifestation

of a writer's success.

We've always been

very much focused on stories

that our readers want.

We're not trying

to force-feed them.

We're trying to give

them what they want.

I have a friend

who's at the Albany bureau

of "The Times." I told him

about the big board,

sent him a picture of it

and "How do you like

our new innovation?"

He was terrified.

Albany corruption stories-

they may be important to cover,

but no one really wants to read them.

The future is to be found elsewhere.

It's a linked economy.

It's search engines.

It's online advertising.

It's citizen journalism,

and if you can't find

your way to that,

then you just can't find your way.

There's nobody covering the cop shop,

nobody covering the zoning hoard.

The day I run into

a "Huffington Post" reporter

at a Baltimore zoning board

hearing is the day that I will-

Senator Kerry, I was not around

when the printing press was invented,

but if I were around,

I would imagine

that the people dealing

with stone tablets

would be making

a similar argument.

There's no way that I can think of

that you can have

a "business model"-

you know, one that

makes a prom...

for investigative reporting.

ProPublica- a very interesting model.

Part of its formula is pairing

with legacy media to get

its information out

in the most effective way.

Everything we do

goes on our website.

But for our biggest stories,

we get a CNN,

a "60 Minutes,"

a "New York Times"

to work with us.

You know, I was 25, 26 years

at "The Journal."

We were absolutely

rolling in money.

Why should you open yourself

to some story

that you didn't know

where it had been?

Who knows what kind of gems

that had gotten on it?

People are open

to new ways of working,

because the world has changed.

Vanden Heuvelz

There's a hybrid model here,

and I do think journalism

is a public good.

And if it's a public good,

then that requires

a whole new mindset about

how you support journalism.

1,000 bloggers

all talking to each other

doesn't get you a report

from a war zone.

Somebody's gotta take a real risk.

There's gotta be some

infrastructure and some pay,

and they've gotta go

and gather that news originally.

A lot of the people

in the Baghdad bureau

were moving to Kabul.

And they asked if there was

anybody who wanted

to volunteer for Baghdad,

and so I'm going to Iraq.

Headlamz He's done

all these stories on media companies

and, you know,

capital cases and death row.

And Tim is just one

of the guys who wants answers

to really basic questions.

And I think once you've got that

you're curious about

all kinds oi things.

Iraq is kind of

off people's radar screens here,

but we still have

120,000 soldiers there

and it's a real crucial point

in terms of seeing

what the last chapter is

for our country there.

The locals who have worked for us,

some have been killed

and kidnapped and- and-

yeah, I worry about that.

But that's something

he wants to do and...

you know,

kind oi just hope he'll be okay.

Cheers, to your good health.

Did they tell you

what they want you to do?

I mean, there's no beats.

It's just...

do the day's stories and...

settle in with the Iraqi staff

and write stories, you know.

For the beginning,

it's going to be the election.

You had covered a bunch

of other conflicts, right?

Civil wars and conflicts in Africa.

Somalia-

a lot of time in Somalia.

I did a tour in Yugoslavia

when all that was going on.

Oh really? The only advice they give is

fall into this well-run machine

that's been going on for seven years

and you'll figure it out.

As you may well know,

I expect you to be on TV in a week-

"Those of us who have been

covering this for a while."

"Those of us who have been here

for two days think...

it's been a privilege to work with you.

Come back real soon.

- Thanks for the kind words.

- Cheers!

Stay safe.

It is a history. It is an enormous

compendium of material

that will affect many different people

in different ways.

There has been a massive leak.

There are so many pages

of military secrets now public.

Some of the documents rip the cover off

the US-led war effort in Afghanistan:

Unexplained American deaths,

questionable battlefield tactics

and a mission just

not going that well.

WikiLeaks released

91,000 raw military documents online,

but this time also to three

traditional news organizations

including "The New York Times,"

which vetted the material,

it said, eliminating information

that could put lives at risk.

Well, I think it was

an important moment

that WikiLeaks chose

to go through the "Guardian,"

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