Page One: Inside the New York Times Page #8

"Der Spiegel"

and "The New York Times."

In a sense they were detoxifying

the information that they had,

and they were giving it

a little more veracity.

What Julian Assange

realized is that

going through "The Times"

and "Spiegel"

and the "Guardian"

would actually have

a greater impact. He was right.

We as a journalistic group-

the four media groups

who worked on this-

have really only just

scratched the surface.

We've treated them

as an advocacy organization,

but we're partnered with them.

Are we partnered?

I think they're a source.

- But they're a publisher.

- I think they're more like

a source than-

well, you're right.

He's not our media partner.

He's not our collaborator.

He's a source like any other source

giving us access to documents.

They can be a source when they're

a publisher. I think that's very clear.

- We're all in this together.

- But you wonder about the negotiations,

when they come and say,

"You can have this,

but we're going to give it

to other papers,

and you guys are all going

to hold hands." Where we say,

"But we are 'The New York Times,"'

and they say,

"But we have all this

and we are dictating terms."

You can say that. And then can you

turn around and say, "By the way,

'The New York Times' never should

have done this in the first place"?

I really am appalled

by the leak, condemn the leak.

There is potential there

to put American lives at risk.

Do you believe there

should be an investigation

into whether

"The New York Times" broke any laws?

I'm not calling

for prosecution of "The Times,"

but I think they're guilty

of had citizenship.

The basic calculus

that you try to do in your head

is the trade-off between

the obligation, really,

to give people information

about how they're being governed

and on the other hand,

the government's

legitimate need for secrecy.

I've had a dozen of these instances

where we had

classified information

and had to decide

whether or not to publish it

or publish it with some

parts of it withheld.

Officials at the White House

asked us to communicate

to WikiLeaks

their strong exhortation

that WikiLeaks redact

the documents and take out

the names of people

who might be identified

and put in danger.

And we passed that along.

The oddest thing in the story,

you saw, was that "The Times" said

that the White House asked them

to lobby \MkiLeaks not to print things.

- Yes.

- Which is really odd.

Like, "You're the White House.

Can't you call WikiLeaks?"

- But also we're "The New York Times"-

- "It's 1-800-WikiLeaks."

The supposedly

private cables detail everything

from security threats

to diplomatic dirty laundry.

There are unflattering

views of key allies.

It's the largest release

of diplomatic correspondence ever.

...from highly encrypted

telegrams to email messages

to raw, unfiltered analysis

from embassies and consulates.

I'm still getting messages

from people who think that

I'm a treasonous son of a b*tch.

And I'm getting some from people

who think that Julian Assange

is the messiah

and why did I not

treat him as such?

Many of the media outlets

who had been partnered

with WikiLeaks

now find themselves

trying to figure out

whether this guy

is a villain or a hero.

It would be great if people got

past the debate over WikiLeaks

and the disclosures, and looked

closely at what these are,

which is a real-time history

of the US relationship

with some very important countries.

It is one of the biggest journalistic

scoops in the past 30 years.

And the fact that "The Times"

made it their front page

for weeks shows that,

even as all these papers

are becoming a shadow

of their former selves,

"The Times" is still in the game

and very much leading

the game at this point.

Maybe newspapers are

going to have to supplement

using WikiLeaks

to get their news.

It's unclear what the model is,

but I think it's a sign though

of openness at the paper that

there are many more sources.

In a lot of ways

it's a very positive step,

even though it definitely

is coming at the cost

of a contracting

traditional newsroom.

Like the Chinese say,

it's a very interesting time.

It's kind of a curse,

but it's also a blessing that we live

in interesting times-

especially if you're a journalist.

You should want there to be

interesting things going on,

even if it is also a curse.

"New York Times."

Get your "New York Times"!

Come on, check it out.

Check it out.

Good morning,

"New York Times"?

"New York Times," $2.

"The New York Times"

announced today that it's going

to start charging

for access to its website.

The system

they're going to adopt says

anybody who comes to the site

who's not a paying subscriber

can look at X number

of articles free,

and then when you reach X+1

you'll get a message saying

if you want to keep going,

you've got to pay.

The design of "The Times" paywall

comes this close

to the NPR model,

which is to go to the people

who care most about "The Times"

and say, "You and us, we're partners.

We're keeping this thing afloat."

"As of today

you've lost a daily reader.

If they start charging, I'll change

this away from my homepage."

This was a college friend of mine:

"I want to pay,

but I'm not willing to pay

for information I can

easily find elsewhere.

Sorry, 'New York Times.'

Freedom of information."

I worry about people like

that who have grown up

in that era where

everything was free,

or everything seemed free.

Ifs never free, but...

The economics of this business

have always been that

it required both advertising

and payment from the reader.

And for the last 15 years

on the internet,

we've sort of pretended

that that wasn't true.

This is the end of pretending.

They find it through you.

They click through through you.

They come up with the story,

which is currently free.

So they're still

not getting paid for it.

There's usually advertisements

on the page when they land there.

In many cases, I don't think they're

getting that advertising revenue,

and it certainly isn't covering

the cost of doing business.

My view is that it's still

very early and that-

When you say it's early,

it's not early for "The Denver Post"

or "The Seattle Intelligencer"

or a bunch of folks

who are facing bankruptcy today.

Information historically

was not free.

You had to pay for it

in one way or another.

I think what "The Times" says-

"This is what it's worth

to read our newspaper

every month"...

will go a long way to establishing

what people feel they can charge

or maybe what they can't charge.

It's actually kind of a big day

in the newspaper business.

And some people may

date this, you know,

this is the day the whole thing died.

We'll find out.

People who make prescriptions-

"They should go do a paywall;

not do a paywall;

put it all on iPad;

kill the paper product"-

they're being naive.

They have no idea about the economics

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