Zellerbach Hall, the University of California, Berkeley, November 18, 2002
Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Howell Raines in a conversation with:
Orville Schell Dean, Graduate School of Journalism, Berkeley
Mark Danner, Professor, Graduate School of Journalism,
Berkeley and Staff Writer, The New Yorker
Chancellor Robert Berdahl: It
would be difficult to find a time in which a discussion of the coverage
of foreign affairs by the American press would be more appropriate.
America’s relationship with the world has changed substantially
in the period since September 11, 2001. There are few topics of
greater importance than the questions that surround how Americans obtain
their information about the world from the press. Thus, we owe a
deep debt of gratitude to the Goldman family and the Richard and Rhoda
Goldman Fund for sponsoring this event and the series, of which this is
the first program. The Goldman family has frequently and generously
stepped forward to assist the campus in achieving the excellence to which
this university is committed. We will be forever in their debt.
Someone once said that they would never live anywhere where they could
not hear the slap of The New York Times being delivered to their
front steps in the morning. Today, through the miracles of technology,
we can live virtually anywhere in the country and enjoy the benefit of
having The New York Times delivered to our front door. It
is America’s newspaper – a newspaper that devotes more space,
I would guess many Times more space, to foreign affairs than any other
newspaper in America. If we believe, as Walter Lippman put it, a
free press is not a privilege, — but an organic necessity in a great
society, The New York Times has played a central role in maintaining
a free society in America. We need only to recall its role in the
publication of the Pentagon Papers to be reminded of how The New York
Times has made certain that information essential to the democratic
– the formation of democratic public policy — was made available
to the American people. Universities have much in common with the
press. For the freedom under which we both function, effectively,
is rooted in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Both bear
heavy responsibilities for educating the American people to think critically
about the central issues of the day. Both must give protection to the
expression of views that go against the grain. Both are among the
first targets of those who would suppress our liberties. Tonight
we are privileged to participate in a discussion with leaders from both
of these sentinel institutions. Discussing the role of The New
York Times in educating the American people about the world, we have
from The New York Times, Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. and
Executive Editor, Howell Raines. From the Graduate School of Journalism,
we have Dean Orville Schell and Professor Mark Danner.
Please welcome Dean Orville Schell to initiate this program.
Dean Orville Schell: It’s truly wonderful
to have you all here. It’s long been my conviction that a
university — particularly a public university—should be a place where
people who are in academia interact with people off the campus, particularly
on some of the great issues that perplex our world.
Actually, I can think of no more crucial issue than the question of the
media, which we will discuss tonight.
It’s wonderful that we’ve been able to do this with The
New York Times. They’ve been enormously generous.
It’s part of a series that we have done over the last few years.
I urge you all to go and see a really wonderful photography exhibit by
Vincent LaForet and Ruth Remson at the Graduate School of Journalism Gallery.
We had an event yesterday with Michael Kimmelman, the Chief Art Critic.
So it’s been a great pleasure to have all of them out here.
None of this would have happened, of course, without a wonderful faculty
at our school who works entirely too hard, and a staff and faculty working
together. It’s a great pleasure for me, as Dean, to work with
them.
And, it wouldn’t happen, also, without a lot of you who are here,
who have quietly supported both the school and the university. It’s
not often we get a chance to say thank you to you, and we can, in some
way, do that with these events.
Dick Goldman, thanks. We wouldn’t be here without you.
Nan McEvoy, Nadine Tang, Susie and Mark Buell, Steve Silberstein, Peter
Haas, Jack Edelman, Dick Blum, Topher Delaney, Walter Shorenstein, Herb
and Marion Sandler, John Gage and Linda Schacht — Amy Tan — I could
go on and on, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten all too many, but
thank you. It makes a tremendous difference to us.
And there’s one person I haven’t mentioned. Every morning,
before dawn, a huge pile of New York Times arrives at the Journalism School.
Almost every student that wants one gets one free. This is the gift
of Herb McLaughlin, an architect, who has chosen to help us out this way.
I must say, for us, it’s a bit like missionaries in far-flung places
receiving free Bibles. It truly is the Lord’s work.
So, thanks to Herb McLaughlin.
Now, without further ado, let me introduce Mark Danner, who is a
Professor at the Journalism School who will say a few words about Howell
Raines, the Executive Editor of The New York Times and Arthur Sulzberger,
the Publisher.
Professor Mark Danner: Thank you, Orville.
As the Chancellor mentioned, the Goldman Forum on the Press in Foreign
Affairs was conceived in the days after 9-11 in conversations between
Orville and myself out of the perception that after 9-11 foreign affairs,
in a certain way, ceased to be foreign.
You could be sitting at your desk having coffee, talking to a client on
the phone, getting your restaurant ready for your lunch, and foreign affairs,
in the person of those who resisted American power and were determined
to confront it, could come out of the sky and kill you.
We felt it was vital to establish, on campus, a forum for the discussion
of issues very much of the moment — issues that affected all of us.
The program tonight is based on another perception, as well, which is
that we live in a very unusual country at this moment in history.
It is a kind of Minotaur, a composite — on the one hand, an empire.
On the other hand, a democracy. When it tries to extend its power,
our leaders feel obliged to convince the citizenry to go along.
The news media and The New York Times, more than any other organ
of opinion — the dominant organ of opinion — is critical to that task.
It’s critical to persuade us, as we’ve been seeing in the
last couple months, for example, to go to war with Iraq. We would
like to get into those issues tonight and find out how, indeed, we all
arrive at our views of America and the world.
Let me introduce the two distinguished gentlemen we’ll be talking
to who have made a living out of, I think, as Arthur Sulzberger said,
“the fine art of slathering ink on dead trees,” just to give
you a sense of the gravity of the occasion.
Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher of The New York Times and
Chairman of The New York Times Company, is the scion of the family
that has controlled The Times for, now more than a century.
He graduated in Political Science from Tufts in 1974. He worked
as a reporter in The Raleigh Times, North Carolina. He
served as a Correspondent for the Associated Press in London. Went
to The Times Washington Bureau as a Correspondent. He was a Metro
Reporter, Assistant Metro Editor, and then served various terms of duty
in the Production Department, Business Department, Corporate Planning
until, in 1992, he succeeded his father as Publisher. He became
Chairman of The Times’ Company in 1997.
Howell Raines was born in Birmingham in 1943 — Birmingham, Alabama.
He started his newspaper career in several Alabama papers, including The
Birmingham Post Herald. The Tuscaloosa News, and The
Birmingham Alabama News. He was Political Editor at The Atlantic
Constitution and then at The St. Petersburg Times of Florida
before he joined The Times. Where he served in Atlanta,
he was the White House Correspondent, National Political Correspondent,
Deputy Washington Editor. He served a term in London as Bureau Chief.
Was then Washington Editor, Editorial Page Editor, and finally, in 2001
— I should say, September 7, 2001 — became Executive Editor of The
New York Times.
He’s published several books, including, Fly Fishing Through the
Mid-Life Crisis. Buy it, it will help you. A novel, Whisky Man,
1977 and My Soul is Rested, a wonderful oral history of the Civil Rights
Era. He also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for a beautiful essay called,
“Grady’s Gift,” in The New York Times Magazine.
Gentlemen, let the games begin.
Orville Schell: Well, it’s great to have you both
here, so let’s dive in. Maybe begin by telling us what you
do?
Howell Raines: I’ve never thought about that.
Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.: We just come to auditoriums
— big auditoriums — full of people and we just do a shtick.
Mr. Danner: Well, commence.
Mr. Sulzberger: As Publisher of The
New York Times, I’m responsible for the overall responsibility
for the newspaper. That includes the News Department and the business
side, as well as our Editorial Board, which reports separately from our
News Department. As Chairman of the company, I’ve got sort
of over-arching strategic responsibility for the company. I don’t
even know how to think about this question — I think a lot about the
future, yes.
Mr. Raines: Pretty basic stuff.
Mr. Sulzberger: And trying to keep
people aligned against a set of strategic goals that we have, both from
The New York Times Newspaper and from the corporate level.
Mr. Danner: Howell?
Mr. Raines: As Executive Editor, I have responsibility
— I think a lot about the next 24 hours, actually. I have responsibility
for supervising a worldwide news staff of 1130 people. That’s
a pretty time consuming enterprise. I could go on in great detail,
but I think the thing that we always keep foremost in our mind, at The
Times, is we exist to serve the information needs of our audience.
We feel we have an intellectual contract with the people who buy The
Times to tell them as much as we can, as fully as we can, as soon
as we can what we find out about the world. That’s pretty
much what I do every day when I get up.
Mr. Schell: Do you both enjoy
your jobs?
Mr. Raines: Yeah, this is a really
good job I have. [laughter] I don’t know — I mean,
I’m measuring against covering the Board of Education for the Birmingham
Post Herald, this is a lot better! [laughter]
Mr. Danner: That’s setting the
bar high. Actually, maybe in finding out what you do for a living,
which, I think, is a good place to start, we can look at — dive right
into the process of what you do at the paper. I’m looking
at today’s edition, which many of you may have looked at today,
I have a feeling, in the audience. If you didn’t look at it,
you’ll have seen during the course of the day, the influence of
The Times coursing through the information system of the country,
through the television stations, cable stations, networks.
We have a lead, “US Taking Steps to Lay Foundation for Action in
Iraq.” How did this story get to the front page, and why is this
news today? Since, presumably, last week, the US was laying the foundation.
Why is the lead of The New York Times?
Mr. Raines: There’s a genre that
one of my city editors told me about years ago, “You write a lead
that says thus and so, old newspaper clips revealed today.”
Mr. Danner: This is a more candid answer
than I expected.
Mr. Raines: This particular story,
actually, is one that I’m pleased with. I mean, one of the
things that I do is I try to give myself a grade based on what’s
in the paper and what I brought to it.
One of the glories of our paper is that we have a lot of people thinking
every day, every moment about what the news is. Every now and then
I think it’s useful for somebody to come in and try to bring a value-added
idea. This was about last Wednesday, I think, I was reading or watching
some broadcast that triggered in my mind the idea, well, what has — when
you talk about going to war, what has to happen before you do that?
What has to happen diplomatically? What has to happen politically
in the country? What has to happen logistically in the military?
What has to happen in the intelligence community?
I thought it would be useful, not because it’s breaking news or
spot news, but because I thought it would be useful for our readers to
take a look at all the things that have to fall into place before war
can begin. So that was sort of the impulse. I asked that question
and asked our Washington Bureau to start working on the story for the
weekend that would try to answer it.
Mr. Danner: So this is a story that
really originated in your mind?
Mr. Raines: Yeah. I mean, normally,
that’s — I try to have one really good idea a day because I feel
that if I can think of one thing that nobody else had the time to do,
I’ve brought something to the paper.
Mr. Sulzberger: The rest of us try
to figure out what that idea was. [laughter]
Mr. Danner: Because we’re trying to figure
here.
Mr. Raines: The Brittany Spears front-page
story was one of those.
Mr. Danner: We’re going to get
to that.
Mr. Schell: Was that preempting to
mention?
Mr. Danner: Yes, I was going to say
that was coming up.
Mr. Raines: I have no apologies for
that. I can dialog on that at some length.
Mr. Danner: Let me ask — I think we’d
like to stay on Iraq, perhaps, for a bit and the coverage, not only what
the coverage has been, but what it will be in the event of war — but
let me ask you, Arthur Sulzberger, you are involved, obviously, as you
mentioned when you answered the question of what you do for a living in
forming editorial policy. The Times has been fairly critical on
its editorial page of President Bush’s idea of going to war against
Iraq.
How are those opinions formed? Does the publisher speak frequently
to the editorial page editor to come up with that position? How
does that happen?
Mr. Sulzberger: It’s an iterative process.
Yes, Gail Collins, our Editorial Page Editor and I will talk. In
fact, every Wednesday, Gail and Howell and Gerald Boyd, our Managing Editor,
and Janet Robinson who is the head of our business side, runs the Business
Operations of the paper and I have lunch. We’ve been doing
this for a long, long time when it was not some of those people at the
table. I’ve been doing this from the beginning of ’92
when I became publisher.
We try to just talk about issues that we’re facing, sometimes business
issues, sometimes personnel issues, sometimes tough issues regarding editorial
positions. But, in the end, Gail has an extraordinarily talented
group of men and women who are the Editorial Board at The Times. They
have a lot more knowledge and understanding of the world around us than
I do – a lot more experience.
But on something critical like this, the paper can’t get too far
from where I’m comfortable, and sometimes that means I have to move
and that they move me.
Mr. Danner: How does that happen?
I mean, do they actually bring you a draft editorial or do you — how
is it hashed out?
Mr. Sulzberger: Mostly it’s just
sitting down and talking with Phil Taubman, our Deputy Editorial Page
Editor, with Gail, with one or two of the Editorial Page Board members
who is specifically focused on this topic.
We spent — we have spent, actually, on this case — a lot of time trying
to get ourselves comfortable with where we were; not trying to get ourselves
positioned in a box where we couldn’t get out of, but not being
dragged anywhere by the administration or others where we felt it would
be inappropriate for us to go.
We have a focus on civil liberties that’s going to — you’ll
see — you’ve already seen some of that in our editorials.
You’ll see more of that in the days and weeks to come. And,
a sense of internationalism that’s deeply ingrained in The New
York Times and has been from the days of Adolph Fox, my Great-grandfather
when he bought the paper. So I think you’re seeing that reflected
in the editorial coverage. It’s not — the process is not
really very different from when Howell was the Editorial Page Editor and
we were struggling with, say, the Clinton matters.
Mr. Schell: How did it come to pass?
I mean, you’ve mentioned that the paper has a real internationalist
slant. It’s self-evident. But the common wisdom in the
media at large is very much, of late, is that foreign news doesn’t
sell. Now we’re about to go to war with Iraq, and I assume
you’re going to be all over that story, how is it that you, alone,
seem to be — have broken free of the gravity of that presumption that
foreign — people don’t want to hear foreign news. They don’t
want to pay for foreign news. We’re not going to do a lot
of it?
Mr. Sulzberger: I don’t think
we’re alone, quite frankly. I think you’ve seen some
very good reporting from the Washington Post, from the Los
Angeles Times — some other papers — The Wall Street Journal.
I think, as much as I appreciate that thought, I think that there are
others in the same journalistic space that we are.
It’s funny. As you go back to the history of The New York
Times, and we recently reviewed this when we made the decision to
purchase the full ownership of the International Herald Tribune…the
international marketplace has been one The New York Times has had
its eyes on since it was founded in the 1850s. We started
a European edition in — about two or three years after we — 1851, when
The Times was founded. It failed miserably…and we have a long
history of doing that ever since.
But there’s — maybe it’s being part of a port city, of an
immigrant city. That could be a part of why it’s in our DNA.
But it is, and it is deeply. When Adolph Fox took ownership, he
moved foreign news — international news — to the front of the newspaper
and he said at the time, “We are all of us, first of all, citizens
of the world.”
Mr. Schell: But how do you make a go
of it from the business sense, whereas other people claim they can’t?
Mr. Sulzberger: Because it’s part of the package
that speaks directly to the kind of readers that we have, who have a sense
of themselves and their place in the world. If it was just foreign
news, it wouldn’t work. If it was just cultural news, it wouldn’t
work. But it’s the full range of human endeavor that we cover
that speaks, I think, to the audience.
They do recognize that what happens outside their immediate sphere of
influence has a direct impact. Of course, the events of 9-11 have
brought that to a larger audience. We’ve been able to make
use of that, as well. Our circulation has been growing, in part,
because of that.
But it’s not just a financial — I guess what I’m trying to
say in my — is that it’s not just a financial equation that’s
focused on foreign news. Our financial equation is focused on quality
journalism across the board, and that’s what makes it work for us.
Mr. Danner: I’d like to keep on this
for another second because I know you said earlier today — or Hal said
earlier today in talking about 9-11 — that he knew that morning that
there would be a section of the paper in which several hundred thousand
dollars worth of ads would be thrown out. Not only did he know that,
he didn’t make a phone call to you to confirm it. He assumed
that if there was a problem, you’d call him, which is rather remarkable.
How are you able to do that when other papers can’t? This
gets into, also, obviously, the issue of a nation challenge, of an entire
section that— famously — did not have ads, which presumably cost a hell
of a lot of money…how can you do that, business-wise?
Mr. Sulzberger: Two or three reasons.
One, we’re a highly profitable newspaper. We have moved —
and that’s not, actually, I didn’t mean for that to be a laugh
line. We’re actually proud of that fact.
Mr. Schell: But what does it mean?
What are you looking for in terms of profit? We know that Knight-Ridder
just doesn’t go to sleep happy unless they get that 22%. How
about you?
Mr. Sulzberger: I’d rather stay
with the first question. [laughter]
Mr. Schell: Well, you can answer it any…
Mr. Sulzberger: I’ll let Hal answer
the Knight-Ridder question. I know Jay Harris is in the audience.
We’ve moved more and the folks in this audience know this, as well
as anyone, we’ve moved more and more – our circulation costs
have gone up. The paper is not an inexpensive paper to buy.
We think the value is there. But one of the things we try to do
is ensure that the value is there.
Finally, it’s what we do. It’s the business we’re
in. We’re in the business of journalism. Yes, we need
profit to support what we do in journalism, but that’s the reason
for profit — to support what we do in journalism. And, an event
like 9-11 comes along, the greatest event in our journalistic history,
I think. Personal history now, a story that is, really, is going to have
— has had and will continue to have enormous repercussions for this country
and the world — and that’s where you have to commit to funding
it the way it ought to be funded.
We can do it because we have The New York Times Magazine.
We have the Circuit Section and we have all those other elements that
not only provide, I hope, useful and important journalism, but bring with
them tremendous amount of advertising revenue. We can do it because
we have our subscription base and our circulation revenue. That
helps support this enormous news operation that Hal runs.
Mr. Raines: Orville, I think another thing
that’s interesting to think about in this context is breaking down
the question in terms of audience. Also, in terms of news organizations.
We can speculate about what the news media is interested in when it comes
to foreign affairs. We can speculate or even measure with polls
what the American people’s interest level is in foreign affairs.
But I know, as a matter of direct contact with our staff and through them,
with our readers, that we have 1.2 million readers every weekday or buyers
of our paper every week day (subscribers) and 1.8 million on Sunday who
are intensely interested in the subject of foreign affairs. That’s
why the come to us. It’s what we call the “quality information
audience.” We think that’s a growing audience.
Arthur and his colleagues are in charge of the economics of this, but
I can see in terms of our news budget and our staffing, that we are expanding
our foreign policy coverage. Other people are contracting, particularly
the broadcast entities. But, in our case, we were measuring this
the other day. I think five years ago we had something like 26 or
27 foreign bureaus. Now we have 29. We have more reporters
by — ramped up — 1, 2, 3 people for each of those.
So it’s simply something that it’s a response to events in
the world, and it’s also a response to the interest needs of our
readership.
Mr. Danner: Is it fair to say because,
in a way, because others are contracting, that really is a benefit to
you because The Times, more and more, is the place to find foreign coverage,
as others get rid of it? So others’ misfortune on this level
is really a benefit to The Times, which is branded, in a way, in covering
the world?
Mr. Raines: If that’s a way of
saying we want our newspaper to become more indispensable to more people
who we think ought to be subscribing to The New York Times — and
we actually think we have a sense of how many people there are out there
who are potential readers for our paper — yeah. I mean, we want
to become more essential and we want to do that by the way we present
the world to them.
Mr. Danner: Let’s get back, a
second, I think to something where The Times really will be essential,
we hope, which is, if this war comes in Iraq. I wonder if we could
talk a little bit about how you are going about preparing for this?
I mean, last time you said earlier that the Gulf War was the least reported
major conflict since Sherman’s march to the sea. We all remember
correspondents essentially locked in hotels in Dhahran. What is
the process by which you go about preparing to cover this war? In
particular, getting around Pentagon restrictions? Who very naturally
– the Pentagon, very naturally, is going to want it covered its
way.
Mr. Raines: I had the experience of
being the Washington Bureau Chief during the Gulf War. There we
learned how captive our reporters became to the Pentagon Press Pool.
We also learned that because of the configuration of the battlefield in
the first Gulf War, it was very difficult to filter our people in if we
weren’t already pre-positioned. So when Afghanistan came along,
we spent a lot of time putting seasoned reporters and photographers around
the perimeter of that country and in distant locations where we felt they
had a fair chance of getting visa’s to come in — or to come in
with military operations, including those of the allied nations — so
that we were prepared there in a way that we were not prepared in the
Gulf War to get our people into the theater.
As it happened, the chaos of that war and the relatively unrestricted
areas around Afghanistan allowed us to get first-hand knowledge of the
battlefield. It’s not — to some degree, it’s a satisfying
tactical mission to figure out how to get there, but it has a journalistic
rationale. Vietnam was probably the best reported war in American
history, as far as press having access to the battlefield.
The reason I mentioned Sherman was because there is historical –
a historical footnote that’s rather interesting. When Sherman
had sacked Atlanta and decided to go to the sea to break the back of the
Confederacy in an economic sense, he knew he was going to wage a kind
of warfare against civilian installations and civilian populations that
had not been seen before on the American continent.
So he left — no reporter went from Atlanta to Savannah to Columbia, South
Carolina where they finally wound up. I have no problem saying that
Sherman was on the right side of the issue, but the fact is, the kind
of war that was being waged was one that the government wanted to keep
hidden…and I think that’s an important fact to consider.
In Vietnam, American and world journalists had more access to the battlefield
than in any war, including, probably World War II.
So, as students of that history, Powell and Cheney set out to create a
restricted information environment of the Gulf War, and I presume that
that’s what they’ll try to do in this war. We’ll
try to be ready because at the end of the day, our commitment is to our
readers.
Mr. Danner: Are you in negotiations
with the Pentagon? I mean, will there actually be talks about access
and possibly legal action if — and we all know that during the Gulf War,
other press institutions did go to the court and try to seek access —
how will that work now? Are you trying to negotiate with them?
Mr. Raines: There’s not much
negotiating to be done. I was in the original discussion groups
between the Washington Bureau Chiefs and the Pentagon about shaping the
Pentagon press pool. In the early ‘90s, it was kind of an
abstract operation — or, late ‘80s. When the Gulf War came
along, then the press pool became institutionalized — and it’s
not going to change. It has its place.
You have a reporting pool that’s flown to an aircraft carrier that’s
off the shore of a country. There’s a value in having a presence
there. But, to get the unrestricted information about the war, about
what’s happening in the war on the ground, that’s not a very
good instrument.
There’s really no negotiation to be done there. It is what
it is. It will operate the way it is. We’ll be represented.
Other institutions, press organizations will be represented, but it’s
not much — it’s their show — they, being the Defense Department.
So we are looking for other means of information.
Mr. Schell: When our country, or indeed,
any country goes to war, there’s a whole new set of imperatives
that come into effect — patriotism, security. I’m wondering
if you both have had experience where a story, which wouldn’t necessarily
endanger troops, but certainly would make — would defy common wisdom
or would seem grossly unpatriotic to many – where you’ve felt
you’ve had to change it, hold it…? We may be in for
a bout of this.
Mr. Sulzberger: Well, we had a case
like that just a few months ago, if I’m not mistaken. It was
a lead to the paper regarding the military plans at the time for the Invasion
of Iraq. It caused a — when we reported the story, it caused a
great furor among many in government and people — Americans — that somehow
The New York Times was leaking secret battle plans thereby endangering
potential future actions and the lives of our troops.
In truth — and we didn’t talk about it at the time, but we have
talked about it subsequently — we made sure before that story was printed
that if there were things in there that were legitimate military secrets
that would endanger lives that the military had a chance to tell us and
we had a chance to consider whether we wanted those elements in the story.
We did, in fact, pull a few what are not great elements out, at their
request. Furthermore, Howell and I made clear that if that wasn’t
enough, because that was negotiations that took place between our now
Washington Bureau Chief and the Defense Department, that we were at the
ends of phones of the President of the Secretary of Defense wanted to
call. They never did.
So, yes, we do deal with those situations — not very frequently, but
we do occasionally do that.
Mr. Danner: Of course, the question one could ask is what,
given a leak like that, what makes that news? I mean, somebody —
as you know well from both of your experiences in Washington, somebody
always has an agenda or almost always has an agenda behind that kind of
a leak.
I have to read you a quote, which I’m sure you know well from
Mr. Charles Krauthammer, “Not since William Randolph Hearst famously
cabled his correspondent in Cuba, ‘You furnish the pictures and
I furnish the war,’ has a newspaper so blatantly devoted its front
pages to editorializing about a coming American war as has Howell Raines’
New York Times.”
Mr. Sulzberger: That would be your
fault.
Mr. Danner: Well, this has been a drumbeat
of conservatives that The Times have taken off against the war.
Many liberals believe that The Times has essentially rolled over
and is reporting these war plans and so on, and seems to, for example,
the piece today, “US Taking Steps to Lay Foundation for Actions
in Iraq,” somebody said to me earlier, “It’s like CNN
with ‘Countdown Iraq.” I guess my question comes down
to how do you decide if a leak like that is news or if you’re simply
being used by someone with an agenda within the government who is trying,
perhaps, to allay the plans that they’re leaking?
Mr. Sulzberger: Well…
Mr. Danner: I mean, which of those
questions…
Mr. Raines: Every one of them.
I can’t explain why Charles took leave of his senses. He’d
be the best witness on that.
Virtually every conversation that takes place in Washington takes place
because someone wants to gain an advantage of some sort. People
don’t put out information that they regard as contrary to their
interests. There are several levels to the game. I mean, one
is, governments lie – including the American government. Another
is that people put out positions to advance policy positions against the
interests of their colleagues within their structures, Defense Department,
let’s say — Hawks, Doves, etc.
Journalism is intellectual activity. That includes the ability to
discriminate among different kinds of information and to make a calibration
about the interests that are involved. I’m taking aback at
your quoting an unnamed colleague about that story because that strikes
me as such a naïve interpretation of that story that I…I’m
almost at a lost to respond to it.
The information need that it’s meant to answer is, if a reader wants
to know where the United States is on the timeline that could lead to
military action, that’s the story that’s designed to answer
that information need. If you read it as a piece of advocacy, then I think
that’s a factor that’s really hard — it strikes me as such
a misreading of what a newspaper report is about, that it’s hard
to respond to in any logical way.
Mr. Sulzberger: Can I tackle the quote that
you read from — who was it? Charlie …
Mr. Danner: Krauthammer
Mr. Sulzberger: Krauthammer.
This is a fascinating time for us as a society. We’re actually
engaged, for the first time in my memory, in an on-going national debate
as to whether or not this country should go to war. And most debates,
at least in my experience, which is heavily flavored by the Vietnam War
experience, which was my growing up, those debates always seem to take
place after Americans are already in combat — not before.
I think whether you think we should go to war, whether you think we shouldn’t
go to war, or whether you feel you don’t have the information you
need to make either of those decisions, what is healthy here is we’re
having this national debate. That’s our job. That’s
Howell’s and my job and other journalists, is to ensure that that
debate is open, is honest; that we can marshal the facts that we need
to let the American citizens decide what’s the best course of action.
Mr. Danner: I don’t get the impression,
though, that most Americans really feel that, that the debate has been
— I mean, this obviously isn’t The Times’ fault
— but that the debate has been full, open and thorough.
Mr. Sulzberger: I think that’s
right. It hasn’t been.
Mr. Sulzberger: I think that’s
right. It has not been and I would love, speaking as an American
as well as a newspaper publisher, I would love to have this Administration
more engaged in that discussion and the debate.
Mr. Schell: We had the Fulbright hearings,
you know, on China, Vietnam. I mean, we haven’t had such a
thing.
Mr. Sulzberger: That was very late,
actually.
Mr. Raines: Well, Mark, with respect,
I think you’re missing something there. If there’s an
absence of debate in the country, if the Congress is not standing up to
the Administration in a adversarial way on issues of national import,
that’s a news story. That condition is part of what we report.
Now, part of what set off this kind of rant that you read there is that
we reported the fact that important Republicans, such as Brent Scowcroft,
thought that the process by which Bush was pushing the country toward
military action was imperfect in two main ways — one is that it had not
examined the diplomatic and political framework that needed to be put
in place; and two, it had not looked at the military situation in terms
of whether this was a practical application of American force. It
was a submerged debate within the Republican Party, including people like
Scowcroft and Jim Baker who were very close to Bush, Sr. So, it
was us bringing to light that subterranean debate that led to this outburst
in, and some others in the conservative press.
Mr. Danner: How do you stop from over
compensating, as it were, when you get that kind of criticism? That
is, this has been – the Krauthammer quote is just, obviously, a
tip of the iceberg. It was a great stir. The perception has
persisted that The Times is conducting a campaign against the
war, at least in conservative circles.
Indeed, you know, you can sit here and say, “Well, gee, here’s
Arthur Sulzberger, he has lunch every week with the editorial page editor
and they’re against the war; and here’s Howell Raines and
he was the editorial page editor an eye-blink ago and they’re publishing
these leaks in the paper and so on.” How do you stop the conservative
criticism from hitting, in some way, affecting your editorial decisions
about what you’re publishing?
Mr. Raines: Well, one I think you —
one, you put any kind of criticism in an intellectual framework.
The latter of connections that you just ran through is from a Weekly Standard
editorial. I don’t know if you’re quoting it?
Mr. Danner: No, it’s all mine.
Mr. Raines: But that’s exactly
what the Weekly Standard put out. The Weekly Standard is
the publication that was founded to promote Rupert Modock’s political
ideology in the United States. So, when one hears that vein of criticism,
one considers the source — and I don’t mean that as an insult.
I mean to say that it’s not a disinterested intellectual comment.
It is a piece of political advocacy. You should have the balance,
as a journalist, to be able to interpret it and process that.
I mean, what we do is set out — the beacon that we sail toward is giving
the best information that we can at any given time to our readers.
That is to say, both the events that are happening and a sophisticated,
historical, diplomatic, political contextual analysis of that information.
You sail toward that beacon and you don’t let the winds from either
side buffet you off course. It’s not, to me, that hard to
understand. It’s a process, I think, that we’ve not adequately
explained. Perhaps, – we here, being the serious press as an institution,
have not adequately explained to our readers.
Mr. Danner: Of course, as you sail
toward that beacon, you’re constantly tacking and making decisions,
which are, indeed, the daily work of journalism.
I have to point to a piece that I’ve wanted to ask you about, which
was a front page piece on August 18th by Patrick Tyler, “Officers
Say US Aided Iraq in War, Despite Use of Gas.” Extraordinary
piece that had special interest to me because the time they’re talking
about (1988) was when Saddam gassed the Kurds. I and many other
people wrote about it. In fact, the Reagan Administration basically said
nothing about it.
This was a remarkable piece because — I don’t know if it’s
bugged many of you — but President Bush constantly says “he gasses
his own people,” as if the United States had protested at the time
(which they didn’t).
This piece, to me, is remarkable because it actually goes into the history
of what happened during that time; how the US was involved and so on.
It’s very sophisticated historically, and it appeared on the front
page of the paper. I think this was a great piece, and I’d
like to ask you, first of all, how it came about. Secondly, why
aren’t there more — I mean, we’re essentially engaged in
a debate that is built on history – about Saddam, why he gassed
his people; why he attacked Iran and so on.
I think a lot of people have the perception that there’s a lot of
disinformation out there about what the history was. Why can’t
you do more people like this?
Mr. Raines: I’ve never thought
of walking up to it exactly that way, Mark. It’s an interesting
formulation, “Why can’t you do more like that?” I guess
the answer is, they’re hard. I mean, why haven’t you
written more pieces about massacres like El Mozote? I mean, you
know…you shoot your best shot at any given time.
Let me walk you back in that story a bit. Pat Tyler came to that
story with a depth of experience that not many people in the United States
– or in the world, for that matter — have. He was on the
battlefield in the Iraq/Iran war. He knew from experience, on the
ground there, that there were signs of use of chemical weapons, atropine
cartridges and so forth, that he had information only from being there.
Then he was able, years later, to develop intelligence sources who would
acknowledge the critical point in the story…which is that the Pentagon
had intelligence operatives in there who were helping the Iraqis with
targeting and troop deployment information about the Iranians.
Those same officers knew that, in all likelihood, once they revealed this
information, that chemical weapons would be used against them. That’s
not a piece of information that the Pentagon announces at a press briefing.
I don’t know any other reporter in the business right now, who could
have gotten that story, except Patrick. So, why don’t we do
it more often? Because, at the moment, there’s only one Patrick
Tyler in America
and, luckily, he works for us. But they don’t — those reporters
don’t come along every day. Those conditions don’t come along
every day.
Finally, the ability ten years after the fact — or the luck ten years
after the fact or the conscious-driven conversation ten years after the
fact in which somebody comes out and says, “This is what’s
really going on,” those conditions are not ones that one can dictate.
Mr. Danner: Let me give you a specific
example. Along with a litany about Saddam, along with gassing his
own people, it frequently comes in that he has attacked his neighbors
— he’s twice attacked his neighbors, sometimes more than that.
There is an argument that Saddam was given a green light by the Carter
Administration to stop the Iranian Revolution. I mean, it’s
more than an argument. It’s in Brezinski's memoirs.
It’s part of the public record in one-way or another. Why
isn’t that kind of history in The Times?
Mr. Raines: There’s a geopolitical
aspect to this that is worth noting, I thought that’s where you
want to go. At the time that the Pentagon decided to give military
aid to Iraq, Iran was using the waves of volunteers – the human
waves attacks. The motivation of the U.S. government to supply military
intelligence information to Iraq was they thought if Iran overran Iraq,
it would destabilize the whole region, and it was better to have two contesting
powers in that region (Iran and Iraq) than to have a defeated Iraq.
I thought that was a dimension of the story that needed to be brought
out.
Your question is why we didn’t have what Brezinski said about…I
mean, I don’t understand the…
Mr. Danner: I mean, it goes along with
your point which is that the U.S. essentially green-lighted the invasion,
Saddam’s invasion of Iran. Also, in the interest of stopping
— earlier we were talking about – of stopping the Iranian revolution
and its threat to countries in the Gulf.
Mr. Raines: Right, right.
Mr. Danner: Which is a matter of public
record.
Mr. Raines: Yeah.
Mr. Danner: And it seems would be —
should be part of the public debate, but how does that become a story?
In other words, if the President is essentially…
Mr. Raines: That’s a very old
story. So it’s unlikely that we were going to put a lot of
resources into retelling a twice-told tale. It may be germane to
the context of the current conflict. With respect, it doesn’t
strike me as being an astonishing bit of news that the United States has
manipulated its relations with hostile powers for its own advantage.
I’m not sure it really rocks the world in terms of helping us understand
what’s going on right now.
Mr. Danner: But if the argument —
just one last point — if the argument is that Iraq is inherently an expansionist
power and attacks its neighbors, and that is said day after day in the
press and examined, isn’t it relevant that the United States, indeed,
backed a major act of expansion that is being now put on the sort of bill
of attainder against Saddam?
I guess what I’m concerned about is the information that people
have when they try to make decisions — I’m talking about sophisticated
people, people who read The New York Times — when they’re
looking at a decision about, as Arthur said, when they’re looking
at a decision about war and peace and they’re hearing something
that really tells them something rather different than the historical
record, to those who know it, reveals.
Mr. Raines: OK. I’m going
to…
Mr. Raines: I assume that applause
means that someone understood the question. So…[laughter]
Mr. Danner: I think my mother started
it.
Mr. Raines: So, I’m going to
hack through there and take my best shot. Let me go back to your first
formulation. You said, “If the argument is thus and so,”
we’re not in an argument here — “we” as a news organization.
We’re in a reporting task, which is to try to bring forward what
is being said.
If the United States government, if the President continues to say something
erroneous, as they did in Vietnam, every day, month after month, year
after year, two things have to happen. One is we report what they
say, because our readers have a right to know what is being said, whether
it is right/wrong, foolish/wise from elected political officials.
Two, it puts on that there is a stenographic role in the news business
that people want to know what is happening at any time. That’s
not to say that you endorse that. It says you fulfill your duty
to tell your readers. Then you have an additional journalistic obligation
of putting that up to the test of the information about the real world.
This takes — this plays out over time. It took months/years of
battlefield reporting in Vietnam to countervail the information that was
being put out at the Pentagon; and indeed, only two years ago when Michael
Bechshloss’s book came out — I’m sorry, when McNamara’s
book came out in ’93 or ’94 — did we learn that McNamara,
himself, the engineer of that information knew at the time that it was
false. So these things don’t fall into place immediately.
Mr. Schell: Let me, maybe, ask a slightly
different kind of
question, bring it back closer to home. Arthur, we were talking
off-stage about how you came to occupy your place and the allusion to
North Korea and Kim II Sung and Kim Jong II came up. And you said
the difference was that they were only two generations and your family
was four. [laughter]
Now, on the face of…
Mr. Sulzberger: I don’t like
where this is going.
Mr. Danner: I’m going to vacate
North Korea.
Mr. Sulzberger: And if you don’t
be a little more careful, I may nuke you. [laughter]
Mr. Schell: My question is, really,
I mean, The New York Times is governed and held in a very unique
way in Corporate America. It is a family company and the family,
I assume, decides who the successor is, in a way that isn’t either
particularly corporate or democratic. Tell us a little bit about
that and what affect you think it has on how this great paper can deport
itself in the world? What does it free you of that other media outlets
are not freed of, in terms of pressures?
Mr. Sulzberger: There’s a lot
behind that question. First of all, just to get it on the record,
the family did go for talent. [laughter]
Some of our best journalistic organizations are, in fact, family dominated.
The Washington Post and the Graham Family, the Bancroft family owns the
controlling shares of Dow Jones. So I think that’s not as
unusual as you might think. Knight-Ridder, to a lesser degree is
— although I’m not sure exactly what their stock structure is.
I believe Voplatchi, in this state, is still a family controlled company
from a stock point of view. So, some of our finest journalistic organizations
are of that sort.
What does it give us? Perhaps a stable base. The ability to,
even for those of us who do buy into the market and buy into the strength
that being part of the capital market system gives you, it still gives
you a sense that if you need to, you can leverage past that. Shared
commitment, the family values are important. It wasn’t really
until I got the job of publisher that I really began to see how much the
Sulzberger, [Ochs Sulzberger] family values are inculcated in The New
York Times. We have some of the same strengths and weaknesses
on the corporate side that we do on the family side.
That’s both good and bad, but it’s a reality — and an impressive
one.
Mr. Schell: Do you have errant cousins
who call you up and say, “Dammit, you know, what are you doing here?
Pushing out that section with no ads?”
Mr. Sulzberger: No, actually not.
In truth, the family subscribes to the journalistic principles of the
company in such a deep and rich way that it’s a — every year, when
we get together to talk about the state of the business, journalistically
and from a financial point of view – their reaffirmation of what
we’re doing is really…is heartwarming. It’s a
great, great strength.
Mr. Schell: And to what do you attribute that
kind of sense of unity, whereas many companies have fallen apart with
families breaking up, wanting to sell off, cash out?
Mr. Sulzberger: We work at it.
We work at it very hard. We have shared values that came from our
grandparents, from Imogena and Arthur Hay-Sulzberger, transferred to their
children — our parents. And, hopefully, we’re transferring
those same values to our children. Not hopefully, I know we are.
We work hard at making sure that the family is aligned around the principles
of the company; what we call our rules of the road – our behaviors.
We bring them in. We meet — and Hal has spoken to this group many,
many a time, as has Janet Robinson, as has Russ Luis. So it’s
something that we don’t take for granted. We work very hard
at it. And, yes, as the family grows, it becomes a little more complex.
That’s a bit of a challenge.
Mr. Danner: How many are there now?
Cousins?
Mr. Sulzberger: 723,000. [laughter]
Mr. Danner: I thought that was it.
Mr. Sulzberger: Um-hmm.
Mr. Schell: What’s your attitude
towards this family? What’s your relationship to this family
and how do you view them?
Mr. Raines: I wanted to add something
to what Arthur said. One of the things that I think is very important
that’s going on now is the younger people in this family who are
coming up, have unrestricted access to people like me when they come to
the paper for the annual meeting. And by that — by unrestricted
I should say unmediated. In other words, I had lunch with a group
of 8 or 10 and several of my colleagues do, and these are people ranging
from early teen through post-graduate age. They get to ask us anything
they want to about the paper, without Uncle Arthur there to check up on
whether they’re polite or ruded or well informed, or not well informed.
Mr. Danner: Do they all make suggestions,
every one of them?
Mr. Raines: No, mostly it’s a…it’s
mostly wanting to know the process about which we do this peculiar thing
that we do. If it was easy to understand or we were better at explaining
it, perhaps I could give smoother answers to some of your questions.
It’s a hard, intricate process that is supported by this extraordinary
ownership. What the family is doing so well, from a standpoint of
an employee, is communicating to the future generations, “Hey, this
is not a coat dealership that you’re inheriting an interest in.
This is a public trust.” That’s, for me, after being
a journalist since 1964 to be able to be part, not only of this great
newspaper, but part of the process of passing along our values to the
future generations — not only to the practitioners in the newsroom, but
to potential owners of the paper is extremely valuable.
Mr. Danner: Did you communicate to
them the intention to publish this section without ads for so many months?
Are those sorts of decisions day-to-day discussed with the family?
Mr. Sulzberger: The family is not the
Board of the Directors. We have an independent Board of Directors.
And, quite frankly, we wouldn’t have communicated it to our
Board of Directors, our decision to do this. This was a decision
made by the management of the newspaper in its judgment, and fully supported
in — subsequently — by the Board and by the family, which is quite frankly,
very proud of what Howell and his newsroom have done and the support that
the newsroom got from our business side, which was looking at a very tough
year…let’s not forget what that year was like from a business
point of view. It was a brutal year. 9-11 comes along and
makes a brutal year even worse, again from a financial point of view.
And, in the end, that’s OK. This is what we’re in the
business to do.
Mr. Danner: Did that decision actually
cost The Times a lot of money? I mean, there seems to be
some dispute because, supposedly, the circulation gains…
Mr. Sulzberger: There’s no dispute.
In retrospect, it didn’t. We did not know that at the time,
but the circulation — as you just suggested —the circulation gains covered
the cost of that special section. We had no way of knowing that
and, quite frankly, if it hadn’t, it wouldn’t – that
would have been OK, too. That it did and that our readership grew
by such a substantial amount is really a sign that we’re on the
right road. Quality journalism pays.
Mr. Schell: This is a very strange
business model, I think, for much of the rest of Corporate America to
hear…quality pays and foreign journalism sells and family feudalism
rather than…
Mr. Sulzberger: It does sound perverse.
Mr. Schell: …democracy corporate
whatever…I mean, I’m a great fan of this paper and I’m
very intrigued that such a curious structure should lead to such a great
institution.
Mr. Sulzberger: How can anyone who
works at a university be surprised by this? [laughter]
Mr. Schell: I think if we were family-owned…
Mr. Danner: Nobody consults us.
Mr. Schell: …we might have a
very different kettle of fish here. It could be worse. I don’t
know, but it does strike me as an amazing anomaly, in a way, this New
York Times.
Mr. Danner: Well just, let me ask specifically,
there are analysts who say that part of this business model is demanding
much higher profits from Times’ acquisitions and possessions,
the other papers and so on, then from the jewel and the crown itself.
Is that accurate?
Mr. Sulzberger: We’re going to
get into a very esoteric discussion that will make the conversation that
you and Howell engaged in seem almost understandable. [laughter]
Mr. Schell: Would you rather move to
questions from the audience?
Mr. Raines: That’s a high mark
you’ve got to make there!
Mr. Danner: Yes, I know. [laughter]
Mr. Raines: Let me see if I can complicate
the question for you.
Mr. Sulzberger: In a nutshell, the
profit margin of The New York Times newspaper is lower, margin-wise,
than that of a regional newspaper. That’s just the nature
of regional newspapers versus major metros. Right?
On the other hand, there is no more profitable newspaper in a pure cash
term than The New York Times. So the margin is lower, but
it flows…it spins off more cash. So the result is that the
acquisitions that we make are really funded by The New York Times’
newspaper’s cash flow. Got it now?
Mr. Danner: All right. Let me
jump over the esoterica from the business side and ask a question that
people have been putting to me the last couple of days, which is more
directly on point on foreign coverage. I’ve had the question put
in many different ways, why is there no bureau on the West Bank or Gaza?
That is, why is the reporting in Israel all from the Israeli side?
Why is there not an Arabic speaking reporter stationed in Ramallah, for
example, where Haaretz has two — one, and sometimes two very good reporters?
Mr. Danner: There’s interest
in this, as you can see. I’m sure you’ve had that question
put to you before.
Mr. Raines: Actually not, in that form.
It’s an interesting one. We — let’s take the basing
part of it first. It presumes that where you sit influences how
you think, and I just — all I can do, Mark, is just keeping going back
to the fundamental principle. This is an intellectual enterprise.
The people that we send over there, their address does not determine where
they go, what they think. You could say, I suppose, that if they
were based in Gaza they would have a different daily experience.
The fact is that our people are all over the country. They’re
in Gaza constantly.
Mr. Danner: I think to do justice to
the question…
Mr. Raines: I don’t want to interrupt
your question, but maybe my answer has…
Mr. Danner: I was just going to say
that I think this is a version of a question that essentially reflects
the concern that the subtlety of the reporting on the Israel side -
Mr. Raines: Yeah.
Mr. Danner: - especially its attention
to politics is not in any way mirrored by the reporting from the Palestinian
side, which is thought to be rather black and white, at least by a lot
of readers I’ve spoken to.
Mr. Raines: Yeah, well, you’re
telling me someone’s perception. I can’t argue with
their perception or your perception. I can tell you that as a matter
of professional practice and judgment, I don’t think our reporting
out of Israel is unbalanced toward the Israeli side or incomplete on the
Palestinian side. If you’ve been following James Bennet, including
his story today, I think you’d say that’s a pretty rounded
picture of life in Hebron, for example, which was there today.
Mr. Sulzberger: I find the question
fascinating and if we were sitting in a New York audience right now, it
would have come the exact opposite way: Why is The New York Times
so anti Israel? Why is it that all of your coverage is so pro Palastinean.
So, you know, maybe where you stand/sit, depends more than where our reporters
are based on how you come at that.
Mr. Schell: I want to, since time is
short, let’s get to a few questions from the audience. Hal,
this is addressed to you, why were you so hard on Bill Clinton, and do
you feel differently today?
Mr. Raines: [laughter] The New York
Times Editorial Page, which I used to run — and I’m out of
the opinion business now — is a special trust. We endorsed Bill
Clinton for the election. There was no more fervent advocate of
the Clinton health care reform…we were still pushing forward after
Hillary and Ira Magaziner packed it in. So on a policy base, there
was no real issue between us and much of the Clinton domestic program
and most of the Clinton foreign policy program.
Where we got off the train is when we saw — when I saw, as the editor—
political behaviors that I could not, in good conscious, align the institution
of The New York Times with endorsing, I said so. Would I
do it differently? No. Not in a minute. Not in — so
that’s a fairly compact answer. We could go on.
Mr. Danner: Do you still believe that
he should have resigned?
Mr. Raines: I don’t think we
ever called for resignation.
Mr. Schell: How do you think history
will remember this?
Mr. Raines: No, I mean, you know, this
is one of the problems that we have is sometimes the record of what we
said gets muddled, and sometimes I even forget what we said. But
in this case, Mark, what we said was that he should not be removed from
office by the impeachment process, nor should he resign.
Mr. Danner: A question from the audience:
it appeared to me that your coverage of the October 26 Iraq Peace Demonstration
in Washington was quite contradictory. How did two different accounts
appear over just a couple of days? And I remember this, I believe
there were different numbers given for the number of people who participated
and so on — quite different stories in the paper.
Mr. Raines: Not really. The first
story was incomplete. I don’t mean to be splitting hairs with
you, but it said “thousands” when it should have said “tens
of thousands.” When we became aware that we had under-covered
the event. We went back and wrote a story that re-examined the number
of people who were there and re-examined the organizational framework
of the anti-war organizations that were putting it on.
Mr. Schell: Let’s just stick
with these questions here. This…
Mr. Sulzberger: If they hadn’t
been marching, we could have gotten a better number. Not true…they
weren’t marching. That would be antithetical to our structure.
This is going to get us into trouble. I apologize, Hal. We
don’t allow that.
Mr. Schell: Why is network news so
silent on current events and so compromised?
Mr. Raines: Look, I’m not going
to be a spokesperson for network news or for the media. I have one
concern, that’s The New York Times. I’d like
to respond to this comment, actually, about the March coverage.
It does make a difference where your reporters are. In this case,
we had four people in the field and they simply didn’t get it exactly
right — that’s why we went back to it.
My first year on The Times, I was standing with Abe Rosenthal
at the bank where we read the papers — you know, the bound volumes of
the papers — the copy editor came up to Abe and said, “Here’s
a correction that’s been suggested.” The fellow then
went on to say that technically we didn’t have to run it because
of this and that reason. Abe said, “Well, tell me something,
in the main, were we right or were we wrong?” The copy editor
said, “We were wrong.” He said, “Put it in the
paper. In this business, there’s only one thing to do when you’re
wrong and that’s get right as quick as you can.”
So, the volume of information that we handle on any given day means there
are going to be errors. We have a number of ways to try to revisit
them, including a more complete story than the one…but the fact
is, when you revisit the story, the error was a judgment error, not a
— you know, the number was five when it should have been six. It
was a matter of scale and interpretation and scope. That’s
what we try to bring to our journalism is a feel for the event, the context,
the history, the whole picture.
Mr. Danner: Let me give you a much
more difficult question and more grave. What were you thinking,
putting Brittany Spears on the front page of The New York Times?
So many have asked me this, I have to bring it up. Please, there
are obviously, questions of demography of readers and other things, which
people perceive that to be about…that I’d — please address.
Mr. Raines: OK. One of the things about our readers,
we are convinced, both by evidence and as a matter of philosophy, that
the reader of The New York Times is interested in every aspect
of life in the world — not only foreign affairs, but the sociology of
America, the culture of America, both classical culture and popular culture…the
pulse of the country.
Now, I was interested — when Brittany Spears went off the road last summer,
I thought that was a moment to do a sociological piece about the nature
of celebrity in this particular aspect of the music world and the economics
that underlie it, and the whole phenomenon of being the flavor of the
month and then nowhere the next day.
The fact is, we didn’t move quickly enough on it. Then, when
Brittany Spears fetched up in New York and then at the Armani Fashion
Show, it was clear that there was a public relations reinvention strategy
that was playing out that I thought had not been told in a sophisticated
way.
The story was not about Brittany Spears, if you examine it. It was
about the fame machine and the economic engine that underlies it.
Similarly, two weeks ago, I was listening to radio and I heard a report
that Snoop Doggy Dog was trying to revive his career by insulting Shug
Night. I thought, “Well, that’s interesting,”
because what is this…[laughter]…what…?
Mr. Danner: A foreign policy class.
Mr. Raines: What is this really about? What it’s
really about is huge corporations, like Sony, battling over a multi-billion
dollar market that has had a 20% decline in sales this year. So,
the next day, when the disc jockey was shot in New York, we jumped right
on that to write a piece about the rap wars — not about whether Snoop
Dog has insulted Shug’s mother, which is pure [garbled segment]…element
in the American music industry.
Now, let me just say this. My presumption is that our readers are
interested in reading a sophisticated exegesis of a sociological phenomenon
like that.
[Applause]
Mr. Danner: Let me follow up briefly. You know, it’s
interesting that so many people point to that story, because I think it
perhaps relates to an underlying worry or insecurity that The Times is
going to change in the search for younger readers, in some way.
Are you trying to get younger readers and is that…
Mr. Sulzberger: Or do you want them all just to die
off?
Mr. Danner: Yes, exactly!
Mr. Sulzberger: We love all of our readers, regardless
of age.
Yes, we’re going to change. One of the great moments we…back
in the early — late ‘80s, early ‘90s, when we began to grapple
with what it would mean to change The Times for the next generation of
readers and advertisers that led to the creation of the six section, color
newspaper that…a greater commitment to the national edition, satellite
printing in Boston and Washington; the creation of a Northeast edition
— all of those changes which I hope you’ve all seen and gotten
used — color on the front page! Remember that? The debate?
If we were going to put color on the front page, it would be the end of
The Times.
We did a lot of rigor research and one of the most compelling moments
came from a non-reader, a like-minded, non-reader. In other words,
somebody who we think has all the characteristics to like The New York
Times, but doesn’t actually read us. He was in this group
and we were taking them through the changes that we were thinking about,
and he was appalled.
He said, “The New York Times is a great institution.
It is an icon in our society. I don’t read it, but you can’t
change it!” [laughter] So change is a difficult process, but
if you stop changing, you’re going to start to diminish what you
are, not to enhance what you are.
So our challenge, Hal’s and mine and our colleagues in New
York and elsewhere, is to change within the context of appealing — continuing
to appeal to our loyalists, the people, hopefully, in this audience, while
also bringing in the next generation — not just in print, but on the
web, in television, in books — all the myriad ways that we think that
we can expand on our journalism.
Mr. Raines: I want to do a follow-up to that, if I may?
Mr. Danner: OK.
Mr. Sulzberger: Plus, he likes Brittany Spears.
Mr. Raines: Almost every question that we confront of
this sort, Mark, has the idea, well, if you’re doing more local
coverage, that you must be short-cutting foreign coverage; that there’s
a subtractive element. What’s important to understand about
The Times, is that our ambitions are additive.
Right now — and let me tell you why, you know, as Flannery O’Conner
said, “Everything that rises must converge.” For the
kind of readership we have, many of these things do converge. You’re
interested in foreign affairs. This audience is. I am.
I also want us to get much better at reporting the world of popular culture.
Why? That doesn’t mean we’ll ever abandon classical
culture. I happen to be a big ballet fan. We’ll always
be there, but we want to get better at reporting about the popular culture
machine in Hollywood because they are speaking and inventing and manipulating
a global language that is affecting governments in Africa, in Asia, in
China and around the world. So, if you narrow your coverage to fit,
you know, a Counsel on Foreign Relations Pie Chart or a Rolling Stone
Pie Chart, you’re not going to get the breadth of coverage that
our readers demand, and that we’re committed to giving to them.
Mr. Schell: One final question, why do so many people
take such a dim view of journalists?
Mr. Raines: Good taste.
Mr. Sulzberger: They know us. [laughter]
Mr. Schell: What’s going on here?
Mr. Raines: I don’t know, Orville…
Mr. Schell: It’s not my question, now.
Mr. Raines: Oh, I thought it was your question!
Mr. Danner: It sounds like a disgruntled audience member.
Mr. Raines: It’s been my experience that anyone
in America who is perceived as having influence, whether it’s the
proverbial used car dealer or the HMO’s or lawyers — you name the
list — has an understandable level of resentment and shove-back.
I think that’s a healthy element of what is, in many ways, a very
adversarial society. I mean, we’re — this society, in many
ways, is founded on competition, on whatr enemies outside of the borders,
I’m speaking about people with different points of view on important,
critical subjects. It’s easier to demonize your enemies than
it is to engage in a dialog and a discussion. We’re seeing
that play out in the far right press and we’re seeing it play out
in the far left press of this country. We are not benefiting, as
a society from it.
A journalist, as part of our mandate, is to bring people news –
not always good news. In fact, rarely good news. It’s
often easier to – in the old song — to kill the messenger than
to listen to try to understand what the message is. So I think we’re
also trapped in that moment.
Mr. Schell: Well, listen, before we wear you out, let
me thank you on behalf of everybody at Berkeley. It’s been
very gracious of you to be here.
[Applause / Mu
(End of recorded material)
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