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0:00
Good morning. My name is Marisa Quinn. I'm the vice president of public affairs and university relations here at Brown. Welcome. Welcome to the 250th anniversary of your institution. Thank you so much for coming and bringing the sunshine from wherever it is you came from, because we're very happy to have it gracing us. Here in Providence, you just never know.
0:20
I'm a member of the committee that has been planning for the 25oth for more than three years. And this was a weekend that we thought about from the very beginning as being critically important. And I hope you'll see that when you walk around the campus. There is literally something for everyone.
0:37
And so I hope you'll take advantage of the laboratory demonstrations, the art exhibits, the theater performances musical performances athletics. Go to the Harvard game tonight. There's fireworks.
0:51
And then of course, there's panels like this. And the idea of these panels is to bring together alumni and faculty to explore issues that are of great importance to society and to Brown.
1:05
This particular panel is focusing on the role of the media in both shaping and reflecting society.
1:12
And this aligns very nicely with an area of our plan Building on Distinction, which is a strategic plan for Brown. And that is, how do we think about how we use our scholarship, research, teaching, and service to create just, peaceful, and prosperous societies?
1:30
So a person who's thinking a lot about this is political science professor Richard Locke. Rick is also the director of the Watson Institute for International Studies. And he's leading the conversation this morning, joined by two award-winning journalists, Mara Liasson, who is a National Public Radio political correspondent and Fox News contributor, and Mark Maremont, the senior editor of The Wall Street Journal.
1:56
So they have tremendous, impressive bios. I don't want to go into that. I want to just get into the conversation, so I'm going to turn it over to Rick. Great. Thank you very much, Marisa. And good morning, everyone. And welcome to this panel on the role of media in shaping and reflecting culture and society. And I also want to thank our two panelists, Mara Liasson and Mark Maremont, for joining us today. The panel is really going to focus on what is the role of media and journalism
2:28
and promoting a just and peaceful world, and how should we be preparing journalists in the 21st century? And so the way we're going to structure the panel is I have a couple questions that I thought I would sort of lead off and ask our panelists to address. And then we'll open it up for questions, answers, and discussion. So let me begin by asking both Mara and Mark if you could tell us a little bit about why you became journalists, and what if anything that you experienced
2:59
at Brown might have shaped that career decision and how has your career in journalism evolved, given all the changes and the business model of the media, social media, and things like that? So why don't we kick that off? And Mara, do you want to begin? I was an American history major at Brown. And now I'm the national political correspondent for NPR. So I would say there's a straight line from Brown to what I do now, with no deviations at all. No.
3:30
But I think that-- I do consider it a pretty straight line. I was interested in politics and history. I've always been interested in politics and history. I was interested in social change. And I came here in the late '70s. And I had a wonderful experience here. You know, I would say my experience in the history department at Brown was just one of the best experiences of my life.
3:54
While I was at Brown, I didn't write for The Herald, actually. But I did write for something that no longer exists. It was a free weekly. I think it was called Fresh Fruit, so embarrassing.
4:07
But it was a magazine, a weekly magazine. So I wrote for that. And then I also was lucky enough to get a freelance writing assignment while I was here.
4:20
And I was able to work in the summers. Certainly between my junior and senior year I got an internship at The Vineyard Gazette on Martha's Vineyard. And then when I graduated I worked for them year round. And I considered that to be a complete and utter straight line, just-- Some of this I wrote about in a chapter in The Brown Reader, which I'm doing an event at the bookstore later this afternoon, so if you guys go to that, you're going to have to hear this thing twice. But I mean--
4:48
Anyway, I wrote a history paper for brown with Jim Patterson. It was a psychohistory course, like historical biography. That's what that translates to. And I-- oh, let me back up. I'm forgetting the details of my own story. The year before when I took a course in early 20th century American radicals with John Thomas, who's now the late John Thomas-- he was my adviser and my mentor and my all-around hero.
5:23
To me, that was just what a kid comes to Brown and is in complete heaven when they look at the course catalog and they see early 20th century American radicals. Hey, this is me. Late 20th century American radicals. Where so I sign up, you know? So it was a class for upperclassmen. I talked my way in somehow as a sophomore. And that's my first class with John Thomas. And I wrote a paper for him about a group of artists in New York who painted very realistic pictures. They had a political agenda.
5:59
And I submitted the-- this is such a stupid, long story. But I submitted the paper to a student essay contest in something called The American Art Review, which no longer exists. It got chosen. So my paper got published. That was very exciting. And I think I got $100. And then completely coincidentally and bizarrely, somebody, some art dealer from Boston read the article and wrote me a letter and said, you know, he wanted to hire me to write the text of an art catalog
6:33
about somebody-- an artist whose work he had purchased who also painted pictures of workers and factories. OK. He was like a, god, like a left-wing Norman Rockwell kind of from Ohio. His name is Jared Benicker. In any event, this is just such a long, stupid story. He came to Brown. This could never happen today. He went to the registrar. He got information about where my dorm was. He went up to the dorm room, knocked on the door. My roommate opened the door. And he said, "Hi, I'm a dealer.
7:04
I'm looking for Mara." [LAUGHTER] And she you know, like closed the door and freaked out. I wasn't there. Anyway, turns out this guy worked for the Vose Galleries in Boston. He had this complete collection of works by Jared Benicker, who was not a very great artist. But he did paint factory workers in Ohio. And they needed somebody who could work very cheaply, me, to write the catalog essay. So he hired me to do that. And he gave me $500. And I wrote the paper on Jared Benicker
7:34
for the psychohistory class, and then left Brown for a semester to kind of turn it into the text. Anyway, this is a long story. While I was doing that, I went to Martha's Vineyard for the second semester of the year, because I could live in somebody's house who happened to be a famous writer whose daughter I met here at Brown. But in any event, I lived in their house. I wrote this catalog essay. While I was there, I decided to apply to The Vineyard Gazette for an internship.
8:08
I would go down there every week. I would kind of camp on their doorstep until they either had to hire me or call the police to get rid of me. And they hired me. So that's the long story. That was my first journalism job at The Vineyard Gazette. I've left journalism for maybe one year or two. I started very early in public radio.
8:26
I've been at NPR since 1985. I'm sure my story is very different from Mark's. I've had the same employer for almost 30 years. I have done different jobs for them.
8:36
NPR has been remarkably immune to the tumult that has occurred in the journalism industry. We've been very lucky.
8:46
We didn't have the same kind of implosion that print experienced. We also are cheaper to produce than television, so we didn't have-- there was no cable kind of that came into the radio world.
9:00
We do have, we did have the same financial problems as any big nonprofit organization, any university. You know, our endowment took a big hit in the financial crisis. But for the most part, we're still standing. We're moving into every platform you can. And I'm sure we'll talk more about that later.
9:16
And we've actually benefited from the troubles of all of our sister publications and television networks, because we've been able to hire all these refugees, people who lost their jobs. And we were able to hire a lot of really great people in the last couple of years.
9:36
So it really was a straight line. I covered Congress for NPR. I was a general assignment reporter. I covered Congress for NPR. Then I covered Bill Clinton in the '92 election. Sometimes, not always, the journalist, the reporter who covers the winner gets to go to the White House as the White House correspondent. That happened to me. And I covered Clinton for eight years. Then I became the national political correspondent, which I am to this day. Only now I am back in the White House rotation.
10:00
There are three of us. Every third week, I'm actually physically there. I'm covering issues and ideas that I've always been interested in, that I've been interested in since I was at Brown, reform, social change, you know, how politics does or doesn't come up with solutions to big problems.
10:25
I really do think I've been doing the same thing since I was 18 years old. Great. Great. Thank you. Mark, how about you?
10:35
Thanks very much, Rick. It's funny, because listening to Mara talk about her history sort of history here at Brown and the American history department, I had the exact same professors. And they were incredibly great and inspiring.
10:54
But when I think back about why I got interested in journalism, it actually is actually all due to Brown. And I know you think that's a paid announcement. But I did my history thesis on something that was actually 10 years old at the time, which was the Chicago Seven trial. And so it was a little bit of a heresy. Everybody was focused on 1787 or whatever. And so the thesis, which they never thought I would finish, but I spent 20 hours a day in the library for the last month
11:30
and finished it up, was well received. But one of the commenters put at the bottom a little note saying, "this is very journalistic." [LAUGHTER] And I thought, oh no.
11:45
What kind of an insult is this?
11:49
And then he wrote, "have you considered becoming a journalist?" A little light bulb goes off, like--
11:58
So I actually went back to my hometown, which is Chicago, for a couple years and worked in a business sort of job, which was unbelievably boring. And so I started doing some freelancing for a local-- I went into a local free weekly. I'm not sure they even have these anymore. But they would in each neighborhood in Chicago, the Lakeview weekly or the Lincoln Park weekly, they would throw them on your doorstep once a week. And I went in there, and I talked to this crusty old guy.
12:30
He says, what do you have that's written? I said, well, I just did a 180-page thesis.
12:37
And he said, that's too long. I said, what about a chapter? So I carefully Xeroxed, you know, in those days, a chapter. And I dropped it off. And I called him, never heard anything. Then I went by there like two weeks later. And I knocked on the door again a smoke-filled room and the whole thing. And I said, did you have a chance read that. Too long, he said, what ideas do you have for me? So I gave him three ideas. and he said, OK. Those all sound good. Do them.
13:08
So I got paid $25 for my first article. And it was just like a big buzz. And I just got very jazzed about the whole thing. I came of age in the sort of post-Watergate era. And everybody I think-- I went to journalism school at Columbia after this. And everybody I met there wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein.
13:39
Actually some of them have become incredibly famous journalists.
13:44
And it was an incredibly talented class. But I wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein too. So guess what. I'm not.
13:53
But I have had a very wonderful career. I worked at Business Week magazine for many years. I was posted in London, did some stuff in Europe. And then I've been at The Wall Street Journal for quite a long time. And what really still jazzes me-- I've been an editor and also a reporter. And I actually am back reporting a lot now. And I just get really excited about finding new things out that people do that's bad, particularly that are bad.
14:23
It's like I'm like a detective. And so there's nothing-- I spent a lot of time recently doing kind of data journalism, like you find things in big data. We talk about the changes in the world now. And there's been a huge change in the media industry, of course, as we all know, because of technology.
14:43
But it also has presented all kinds of opportunities for people to say, there's a change. But there's also great tools out there that we can use. So just mining data for interesting trends or stories, a couple years ago, I did a story about using jet aircraft, private jet aircraft flights. And so you can-- believe it or not the FAA has a database of every flight in America going back however many years. And I discovered there was another database of golf
15:15
scores, where people would post their own golf scores. So we did a like match them up, the story about the CEO flying on the company jet to go to Naples. And then he'd post his golf score for the weekend and fly back, $70,000 for the jet flight. So you couldn't have gotten this before the technology era. So we try to adapt. We try to change.
15:41
I still have a great time. It's fun. And I'm looking forward to talking a lot more about journalism and the media. Great. Thanks Mark. I have a couple more questions. And then we'll open it up. And let's go back to you Mark about the different roles that journalists play. So you play a role of watchdog. And some of your articles about executive compensation, a variety of other things, have done things like that, of educating the public in a variety of things.
16:09
And especially in the print media space, but not only the print media space, there have been so many challenges and changes in that sector. How have those roles evolved or been challenged given all the changes in your line of work? Well, I mean there's no doubt that the print media has been incredibly challenged. I just have a question of everyone here. How many people today have a daily newspaper delivered to their door.
16:37
Oh, this is--
16:39
This is the wrong audience to ask that question. Wrong audience. Well no. It's actually interesting, because a lot of us are approaching middle age.
16:55
Ask in a different way, how many people here who are under 30 have a newspaper delivered? So there's nobody here under 30.
17:05
I was at my daughter's college in Colorado. And I asked the same question.
17:11
And obviously, just like where do you get your news, and college students all get their news online. And I do too. Actually, I have three daily newspapers. But I'm in the business.
17:22
But it's obviously changed a lot. And we've had-- I have to say, it's one of the sort of most depressing things is we've just been through cutback after cutback after cutback. And the benefits are shrinking. And you know, it's been a little disheartening from time to time. I mean, we had some new ownership changes as you know. And it's actually stabilized the situation from a financial standpoint. But I do think that journalists have-- the sort of watchdog role has diminished to some extent.
17:54
We just don't have the resources we used to have, even at The Wall Street Journal. And there are very few newspapers in the country that do now. New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and a few others still do excellent kind of investigative watchdog group, and NPR.
18:10
But it's shrinking and shrinking. And you know, I am concerned about that, because I think that there's a lot of commentary and great stuff on the internet. But a lot of it is kind of reflecting what I would call, it's like a pyramid with a small base of original reporting at the bottom and then a lot of chatter at the top. And the question is, if you shrink the base further and further, the chatter sort of becomes more and more diffuse and not as good.
18:44
I mean, there's been a lot of good citizen journalism and interesting things that are going on that are changing the environment. But another thing I'm a little concerned about and I can see in our own work and sometimes in a weird way, is the rise of basically partisan journalism, which-- I mean, I grew up in as we talked about the Woodward and Bernstein era. And I was taught and almost injected into our veins that journalism school, like you're
19:14
supposed to be completely impartial, which is basically impossible because we're all human beings as reporters.
19:22
But in addition to putting pressure on people-- and The Journal actually has been pretty immune from this, even under the new ownership on the news pages. But one of the issues is that people out there perceive everything we do in a partisan way, like they think that we're writing partisan things. We have kind of like a joke, on the online wsj.com, we bet how long before an unrelated story will be attacked by commenter that uses a political thing.
19:56
So I did a story about how-- a series of stories about how Google and other tech companies are not-- giving free food out to all their employees, like lavish buffets, but there's no taxes being charged. Oh right. And so we had a little bet going internally, which I won. By the third comment it was all about the IRS and partisan attacks on Republicans. But this was about a 1950s-era IRS regulation. And if they did take on Google, it would've been taking on a Democratic-leaning,
20:31
Silicon-Valley-type thing. People will just read anything into sort of benign stories these days. And I find that disturbing. I mean, we get very cynical about it. But it is, I think, sort of undermining the fabric of our society and political and even economic or social discourse. Great. Thanks. And Mara, even though NPR didn't have the same kinds of challenges as a print media, but in terms of the proliferation of these kind of very partisan blogs, all this chatter, and every now
21:06
and then, actual political attacks on the funding of NPR. Oh. Every now and then? Or maybe continuous. And I just wonder, how do you feel these different roles that journalists play have been affected? Well, first of all, there's no doubt that the environment, the media environment, is hyperpartisan, like every other part of politics today. And what do they say, Fox and MSNBC don't even cover the same natural disasters. It's like people live in completely separate universes.
21:34
And we can talk about partisanship for like 12 hours here. And you know, it's permeated every aspect of American life, including people. I mean, people now live with people that agree with them. They work with people that agree with them. The country's more partisan. However, as somebody who appears on Fox and NPR-- and believe me, I get grief from both audiences for different reasons. And I believe I say exactly the same things on both places. NPR's my regular job.
22:03
And then I go to Fox once or twice a week to be on a panel of journalists.
22:09
It really is true that people live in different universes. And I think it's really too bad.
22:14
I don't know what the answer to that is.
22:18
I really don't. I mean, NPR strives to be down the middle, objective. There's no doubt that our audience is more liberal than the audience at Fox.
22:31
And there are people who perceive NPR as left.
22:36
I mean, it's just-- all I think that I can do-- and don't forget. I'm a lowly content provider. I'm not like an editor. I don't make decisions. I just provide content. And all I can do is do my best. And like Mark said, I'm a human being. Of course I have opinions. But to be as balanced as I can, to make sure there are voices from both sides in every story. That doesn't mean you can't come to a conclusion or make some kind of pointed analysis. But you know what he's talking about,
23:11
the inverted pyramid, sometimes we call it the echo chamber. I mean, all the people up there commenting and bloviating and the punditocracy, there is a kind of self-perpetuating Tower of Babel kind of aspect to it. But one thing that I did want to ask Mark is I understand that resources are diminished. And that's just across the board. And it's a tragedy. I mean, you turn on local news, I don't know if there-- so few local stations, even local NPR
23:40
stations, have the money to do real good investigative journalism. However, it seems at a time when the barriers to entry are so low to being a journalist-- all you need is a laptop-- and I would think that big data is also relatively accessible.
23:59
How come the resources, the diminishment of the resources is such a big obstacle? In other words, it seems like we live in a time when some of it-- good journalism should be easier to do in some ways, not more expensive. I'm just curious. Yeah. I mean, there is a lot of-- I have seen and been the beneficiary of a lot of what I would call good citizen journalism, people who do stuff on their own and they gather some interesting material. But they don't know what to do it.
24:35
And nobody listens to them. So then they might contact me or somebody else with The Journal and say, look. I've gathered this really interesting information. Some of them filed elaborate Freedom of Information Act requests and done all sorts of interesting things. And they just don't have a big enough voice yet. You know, there are people who are gathering a big enough voice and are doing very good journalistic-like stuff. Like the Glenn Greenwalds of the world. Yeah.
25:02
But one of the things that we try to offer people is what we call curated journalism, which is that somebody besides me-- there's a filter between me and you, which is probably usually a good thing. I don't always agree, but in the case of The Wall Street Journal, there's usually at least a couple of editors who look something over, and a lawyer and another lawyer. And so-- some of my best friends are lawyers.
25:33
So the people when they see the content of The Journal, they know it's been thought about and carefully cultivated. And you know, I think that adds hopefully a little bit of imprimatur to our-- or an imprimatur to our copy. But I mean, there's a lot of stuff that just gets around. I mean, look at this TMZ video of-- Oh, it's unbelievable. Yeah. There's just a lot of different media operations, or the 47% video or audio that-- video, I guess it was,
26:07
that I think had a very large role in President Romney not being. And that was Mother Jones. That's an established publication. Yeah, but somebody-- Yes. Yes. Somebody had to get it. Exactly. So it's like, why would you even do that if you weren't thinking about citizen journalism of a different sort?
26:26
So it's a challenge. I mean, things are-- it's expensive to do good journalism. We have three or four like really, really good data people that we now work with who just sit there all day long crunching numbers and comparing spreadsheets in and mining stuff for really interesting stories. But these people are not cheap.
26:52
And it's not easy to keep them employed. Great. Why don't we open it up to the audience. And people ask questions. And when you ask, just identify yourself briefly. Sure. John [INAUDIBLE], Class of '84. I teach journalism at GW a little bit. Mark, more for you, Silicon Valley, what role are we going to see from some of the folks who have been successful in tech who are now venturing into journalism? What do we anticipate, given that you have [INAUDIBLE]?
27:26
Yeah. I mean, it's sort of a joke among journalists these days, which is choose your billionaire carefully.
27:37
Who do you want to work for? Is it Pierre Omidyar?
27:40
Is it Rupert Murdoch? Jeff Bezos.
27:45
Is it Michael Bloomberg?
27:48
Bezos. I mean, lots of-- yeah. I mean, just there's lots of people. And you know, I think it's good that wealthy, influential people want to-- see the value of influencing opinion through media. So that's a positive. And these people obviously have the resources to sustain a Washington Post or a new venture of some type. But obviously, a lot of them bring opinions or biases or whatever you have to the party. And you just have to decide whether you as a journalist want to live with that or not.
28:32
So I mean, I'm not sure it's just Silicon Valley. I think Silicon Valley is obviously minted a lot of new people with a lot of money. But it's just a lot of folks out there who want to play in this exciting space. It's sort of like an expensive toy. It's like a baseball-- I mean, look, Steve Ballmer spent $2 billion on the Dodgers.
29:00
So-- OK. We have three-- But Rick, I just wanted to say something about that. You know, rich people have always bought publications. But there's a difference between a Rupert Murdoch who is an old-fashioned press baron, and what you're asking about, which is-- and I would only say the answer to your question is like TBD, because so far Jeff Bezos, we haven't seen anything. He's owned The Post. Like we were waiting for some incredibly interesting thing
29:24
to happen because he comes out of this world of tech. So far it hasn't happened. So I would just say-- or it's TBA, not TBD.
29:30
But anyway, whatever it is, we don't know yet, because they haven't-- and I don't think-- the Omidyar, what's the name of his-- First Look. First look. Yeah. I don't really-- Yeah. Hasn't happened yet. Yeah. So I think it's just to be continued. But one more thing. And I probably didn't really address your question, the underlying question, which is, can technology be used to further the media? I sure as hell hope so, because we're trying hard. We do a lot of multimedia at The Journal.
30:03
There's a lot of video. We have this sort of webcast several times a day.
30:12
But I think the traditional media people are just not as swift at is as people from the Silicon Valley culture. And I'm hoping that some cross-fertilization can take place where we are still allowed to tell stories, still allowed to do investigations and have the funding for it, which is the key thing, and people will see it. So as Mara said, stay tuned. Great. Other questions. I thought I saw-- yeah. I realize that I at least according-- Charlotte Andrews, '78.
30:42
I realize that at least according to the Supreme Court, corporations are people now. But what do you think about the role of corporate advertising and what does or doesn't get a lot of play in the media today?
30:54
Well, I mean, the question is about corporate advertising.
30:59
I mean, NPR does not have sponsored content, OK? So I mean, I can't-- That's why I like you guys. Well OK. But we do have underwriters, which are advertisers, translation. And I think it's pretty clear when we have an underwriting credit on NPR. And I hope it continues to be. And that to me is the big important thing. I mean, there's always been advertisers in the media. And there has to be, because otherwise then we are going to be dependent on the federal government forever and ever.
31:31
And I can make a prediction that NPR at some point in the near future will have no federal funding. And I'm fine with that, absolutely fine with that, personally. I'm not speaking for NPR.
31:42
But as long as it's delineated as corporate advertising and not something else, I think that's OK. But there is this whole new world now of sponsored content, which I can't really speak to. And we don't have it. But I mean, the real issue is the economics of the media business, which for years, it was we would sell you a Wall Street Journal subscription for $200 a year, which was very little for somebody to print up the newspaper and go around and throw it on your front doorstep
32:12
or bring it to your building or whatever.
32:16
And most of the money came from advertising. I mean, back in the '99 period, we literally could not print enough newspapers, hard to believe.
32:26
So they had to like close sections early so we could print new newspapers. Of course, we'd love for those days to come back, come by in another section. But now, advertising has shrunk dramatically. So the question is, who's going to pay for this?
32:43
And The New York Times and we and others have these paywall-type things where people are paying. But it's not nearly enough, really, frankly. So there's hopefully going to be a balance struck. And I think we're still striking it at The Journal. But there are other places that are starting to move a little more blurred of let's have the advertisers, but also let's keep some pretty strict line between what we call church and state. I'm not sure who the church is.
33:15
But it's a lot of economic pressures on the business. And when people are under pressure and they have profits to produce, then they'll make compromises, unfortunately.
33:28
Great. Other questions. Yes? Jeff Anderson, Class of '84. Is there any concern about the youngest generations and how they're getting news? I think most of us here probably sat down with our parents and we watched the nightly news.
33:42
We delivered newspapers, so it was part of our lives. But now kids are trying to do things just on Instagram or whatever in 140 characters. And they don't have that sort of [INAUDIBLE] news like we do. It's TMZ and YouTube and not the real stuff. So what are your thoughts about that? Well, my thoughts are I'm scared to death. I mean, really. I think that just an uninformed public is a really scary, an uninformed generation is a really scary thing.
34:13
And sure, they know everything about Miley Cyrus, at least my kids do. But it scares me to death. I mean, I don't know what the answer is to that. I really don't. But I can tell you just having interns at NPR who come from excellent colleges and are supposedly highly educated, when they are typing up my interviews, just transcribing them, and they come across the name of an elected official, like a prominent elected official, and they have no idea how to spell that person's name,
34:43
because they've never-- obviously they have no idea who he is Senator So-and-So, whatever. Anyway, I can't help you on that one. I'm scared to death and totally depressed.
34:54
Great. Yeah. Sure. Could you introduce-- [INAUDIBLE] '78. I would have agreed with you a few years ago. But I have to say my two sons, ages 22 and about to be 20, they don't read newspapers in print. They read everything on the Internet, and I mean everything. So they do know all about Miley Cyrus or cars or whatever. But they also know a huge amount about what's going on in Ukraine or in Gaza. I mean, now we're both political science types, but they read-- Oh. That's great. That's really great.
35:33
--so much more widely. And they tell me, at least, that all their friends do. So I don't know whether that's really-- whether there's really as much to be concerned about as we newspaper readers like to think. I just don't know. OK. Let's bring-- yes. Yeah. Hi. I'm a reporter with the Brown alumni magazine. So it seems to me that we're talking about this new period as new and unprecedented. But it does seem to me we're just going back to the way the media was the pre-Watergate era,
36:02
the way it was in-- the way it is in Europe even still, where community, gossip, rumor, and partisan papers all come together to produce the civic fabric of the United States. So is it just that maybe Watergate, that era, was just a blip and we're really just going back to the normal state of journalism? I mean, if you think back to-- I lived in the UK for quite a while. And the papers were much more aligned and I think still are with political parties than American newspapers supposedly are.
36:41
And Parliament was, of course, a little bit more raucous than the Senate used to be.
36:50
But as you say, the civic society got along well. I think that there is some view in the journalism world that that was kind of a golden era, the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, whatever, and now it's changing a lot.
37:10
I'm not sure that we're going back so much as to an unknown future where we don't know how well these things are-- what's going to happen to society.
37:22
I'm actually a little bit more optimistic than Mara is, because I think people-- there have been a lot of technological changes over the last several thousand years. But people adapt. And I'm hoping that we can adapt to the 140-character era, which by the way journalists love, because we can like tweet our latest accomplishment or our friend's accomplishment out. And then 200 other people tweet, retweet it, et cetera. It's like a huge megaphone.
37:53
So all the people I know, it's basically like self-promotion as opposed to anything else. But I agree that we are changing in some ways back to something that was-- back to Thomas Paine and the various founders and they have a completely different view of what journalism was back then too.
38:18
But it's not going to be exactly the same as it was in the 1780s. Mara, do you want to add to that?
38:28
Yeah. I think we're entering a brave world. I mean, nobody's figured out the business model, you know, how you make money on something that's basically free.
38:37
And I would say in terms of what we do at NPR with social media, it's definitely a promotion tool. It's to get people to link to our stories, to come to our website.
38:51
But it's really important.
38:54
And also, we have a little bit difference. We're listener supported. And we do have corporate advertising. But we also have listeners who support us. But, you know, I said this earlier. You know, NPR's this remarkably stable-- I don't want to say we're not changing like crazy like everybody else is. But we're a remarkably stable island in this roiling sea of journalism. But I don't think the future has been figured out yet. I don't know what it means to get your news in 140 characters.
39:23
I know what it means to be told about a story that Mark or I have written and then link to it. That I get. But to get your news from your Twitter feed and that's it. I don't really know what that means. Other questions. Yes. Scott Tate, '83.
39:40
Assuming you agree with the premise of my question, to what do you attribute the incredible decline in television journalism, where I grew up watching Walter Cronkite, who allegedly his own family didn't know what his political persuasion was, to Fox News, where you've got to turn your head way the right, with all due respect, and others would argue that MSNBC, you've got to turn to way to the left, both in terms of the selection of what they cover and in terms of, god, I mean, unabashed bashing
40:15
of the president in the case of Fox, to the point of sport? So what do you attribute to that? And what do you see as the end game should one be very pessimistic? Because there's big money in opinion as opposed to news. There's also a big money in this idea of narrow-casting.
40:33
And you know, Roger Ailes figured this out, that there was this incredible audience for a conservative newscast, news channel that hadn't been tapped. MSNBC found the same thing. We talked a little bit about this earlier. This is not something-- you can't put the genie back in the bottle. And it's not something that a few nefarious people in the press invented. This is what's happening in society. I mean, people listen to news outlets that they agree with. To me, like why bother?
41:05
You know, I always tell, when I talk to groups of students, I say, look. It's really important that you listen to stuff and read stuff that you don't agree with and go to a news aggregator. There are some great website that are news aggregators, Real Clear Politics, there are a bunch of them, that have everything that's been written on a certain subject from all. And you can link to all the different outlets.
41:32
I think that society, because of technology, has become more atomized and more-- what is it? You can kind of create your own-- it's the selfie culture. You can create your own news feed, just of things you want. One thing that-- the reason I still read newspapers, not just because I am old. But when I go on the website of The Wall Street Journal and New York Times and then I look at the paper, there's something that I missed. If you can't flip through it, it's
42:00
not-- I just feel like I'm not getting everything.
42:05
I don't know m because obviously everything should be on the website. But it's not. It's hard to find, yeah. Yeah. I don't know why, but it is. Yeah.
42:13
Great. Yes. If you could just introduce yourself, please. Oh, Anastasia Rubis, '81. What do you tell students who want to go into journalism? And could you please be very honest? If it were a family member, what would you-- Stop! No. [LAUGHTER] That's the question I always ask the doctor. Like, if you were treating your daughter, what would you say? And they usually lie. But you know, I'm sort of torn. I think that for people who really like to tell stories or interested in this sort
42:53
of career, I mean, first of all, the one thing I would say is that it sort depends upon your personality. If you're a doer, someone who likes to do things, then maybe it's not for you. If you're an observer, then it's something to consider.
43:12
You know, it's funny because I think that there are people approaching middle age like me who are toward the sort of latter stages of our career. And we've got enough seniority that we can sort of last out the technological changes. And then there's young people who are now coming in, and we actually hire a lot of them at The Journal, who have tremendous skills with multimedia and with-- some of them can code things on the internet. And they are very good with social media.
43:49
And they can do six screens at once and whatever. They seem to be doing fine too. It's the people who are in their '30s and '40s that I'm a little more concerned about, who-- a little more expensive than the young hires and maybe don't have the skill set. And a lot of these people are learning up quickly. But I think young people, there's going to be-- if you're adaptable and you can sort of manage your brand you and your career, then it can be a viable career.
44:21
I'm not sure that I would-- one last thing. But The thing I would be a little concerned about is I'm making a decent income at The Wall Street Journal now. But I think it's very difficult to be like a main bread provider for a decent family in the journalism business unless you really are a superstar.
44:43
So it's becoming to some extent, I hate to say this, a pink collar profession. And at Columbia Journalism School, which I graduated at, there's far more women going into journalism then there are men.
45:00
And take that as it will. But it's definitely changing the economics and changing like who wants to go into it too. That's really something to think about, when all of the most important professions in a society starting with teaching and journalism become pink collar. Why? Because they don't pay that much. That's really something to chew on. I mean-- and medicine will be that way too, I predict. Medicine will be that way. All of the most important things will become places
45:36
for people who don't have to be the sole breadwinner. I mean, that is really bad. But anyway-- Great. Yes. This is the last question. Go ahead. Yeah. Eleanor Blackrock, '65.
45:47
I wonder for those of you who are in reasonably objective media and therefore want to cover-- supposed to cover at least two sides of the issue, but how do you handle these issues where one side is just wrong? I mean-- [LAUGHTER]
46:11
Well, you can do that. You mean, one side is wrong on the facts, like if-- Like birthers, or-- Yeah. Like birthers. I mean, there is actually objective truth. There's also opinion. And there are-- on almost every policy debate there are two sides.
46:26
That's different if you're arguing about a fact, was the president born in the United States or not?
46:31
You can say that people are wrong.
46:34
That's different than saying-- you know, that's different than saying somebody who believes in some kind of a policy solution is wrong. Yeah. No. I mean, I agree with that. I think there's a tremendous problem that we're having. And we have it unfortunately at our paper. And I see it in The New York Times, which I read regularly, which is this what I call false equivalence. You say, on the one hand, the earth is round. And on the other hand, it's flat.
47:07
On the other hand, some people think it's flat. You know, it's like-- and they often are given almost as much ink as the main sort of things. And it happens in more subtle ways a lot. But there's just a lot of pressure toward false equivalence as opposed to, we've spent six weeks reporting and researching this. We've talked to all the various parties. We've come to our sort of approach. Yes, we're going to tell you that there are alternate theories about this.
47:43
But this is what 85% of the article is going to be about.
47:48
But not all the editors of my paper agree with me. I mean, climate change is the biggest example. Great. Yeah. Unfortunately, we've come to the end of our time for this session. Please join me in thanking-- [APPLAUSE] --in thanking them for helping to promote a peaceful, just, and prosperous society through their work. Thank you.
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