Focus 580; Lost in the Blogsphere: the Attack on Mainstream Media and the Future of Newspapers

Good morning and welcome to focus 580 This is our morning talk program. My name's David inch. Glad to have you with us as we begin another week's worth of programs. When the Internet was born there were many people who predicted that it would truly democratize journalism any fact making it possible for anyone or almost anyone to be a publisher. Now it seems that it took a little time to get to that point but that in fact now with the increasing popularity and increasing numbers of web logs sometimes called blogs for short that day has finally come and we have seen that these online commentators and news sources have become very influential for example just two recent examples. It was bloggers who seemed to poke holes in the CBS story having to do with President Bush in his service in the National Guard before he was president also there was another case where a blogger seemed to have forced the resignation of Eason Jordan who ran CNN because of some comments that he had made about his belief that American forces might be targeting journalists in Iraq. And there are other examples as

well. This morning in this part of focus 580 will talk a little bit about today's alternative media and also look at the ways that newspapers but not just newspapers are responding to this challenge and our guest for the program is Steve Luxenberg He is assistant managing editor of The Washington Post. He is in charge of the Outlook section at the post and in that capacity edits the Sunday section of analysis and commentary and supervises a staff of five before joining outlook he directed The Washington Post investigative special project staff. First as the deputy assistant managing editor and later as the assistant managing editor and during the time he was there the staff won a number of major awards including a Pulitzer Prize which was shared by Leon Dash who was at the post then and right now he's on the faculty of the U of I. He's here visiting. That is Mr. Luxembourg is here visiting we'll be talking on this very subject a bit later today but we're pleased that he could be here and spend a bit of time with us chatting as well the questions of course from people who are listening are

welcome the number here in Champaign Urbana is 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do have a toll free line as well that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 so at any point here if you have questions or comments you're welcome to call. Thanks very much for being here. Thanks I appreciate it too. To begin I thought because as as we were chatting a little bit before we got going. Not very long ago on the show. Someone used the term blog and we were talking about blogs and a caller actually called and said I'm sorry I have no idea what it is you're talking about so we should not take for granted that everyone listening actually knows what a web log or a blog is so let's start there. What is it we're talking about. Well I was on a plane coming here on Sunday and sat next to a young woman who clearly was a U of I student because of her age and the fact we were going to champagne and I told what I was talking about today. And she said What's a blog so you're absolutely right. Most people don't know what they are. And yet eight million bloggers are out there according

to an estimate that was done recently by a web research firm blogging ranges from people who are just individuals who create a web page and who start a blog meaning that they want to express themselves and their views to people who are professional journalists or writers who might be in a particular situation and are filing reports that are not published in a newspaper or broadcast on radio or television. For example The Washington Post now is offering a blog of its baseball writer so that every day if you want to know what's going on in spring training you know whose fingernail has been torn off in catching a baseball beat writer will tell you the little things he doesn't really think are worth publishing in the space limited section of the post. There are newsletters for example in the Easton Jordan situation talk about Eason Jordan. For those of you might not know is was the chief news executive of CNN. And his resignation may have been for other reasons that are

internal I'm always suspicious of anybody who says that a single thing causes some of these resignation. But he was speaking at a World Economic Forum panel in Switzerland and there was some dispute about what he actually said but he certainly used the word targeted to suggest that U.S. troops had perhaps targeted journalists accidentally is what he said later he meant he didn't know that they didn't know they were journalists. This was the quote collateral damage of the war there. That was the actual discussion being held. But he. After this the World Economic Forum actually hired somebody to be the blogger the official blogger for the World Economic Forum. And then the blogging community which means some portion of those 8 million picked up this comment and they begin to have a discussion among themselves. It's really what begins to happen and then things you read things later on. It's a distortion of what was actually said not intentionally but because of that sort of old telephone game we played as children where I repeated to you and you repeated by the time it gets to the.

You know sixth or seventh generation who knows what they're really talking about. Well. This I guess is on the face of it than the one of the problems with their web log is this is it could essentially had someone's online journal ad that is offered there for anybody who wants to come along and read it less. That's what a lot of it is. But there are other people that are actually hoping to have influence as much influence as the Washington Post or The New York Times or CBS but that the problem I suppose as journalists look at the problem is that no one's vetting any of this that is on your Web log you could write anything that you want. Presumably at the post there are editors there are people who are looking over the stories. There are people who are responsible for checking facts. Reporters are supposed to provide information on their sources. You cannot the reporter cannot simply write anything here she wants. But a blogger can. And they could be right. They could be wrong they could have access to grind.

That seems to be that one of the big challenges as far as as mainstream media is concerned here is as a kind of the enterprise that they have to in a sense compete with but operates under completely different rules. You know one of the interesting things is that you can ignore a blog that is just someone's opinion and most of that I would suspect that most of what is said every day on the web is enjoyed by the people who are reading it but doesn't really affect the mainstream media which is a term that has been created I think to distinguish it from the alternative media of the web but is used on the on the among the bloggers with some sarcasm. The mainstream media is something to be taunted feared poked prodded etc.. You're correct in saying that it's not edited. There are though some that have begun to morph into journalism and they know this and that and it worries them.

So for example one of the online media actually has a convention now each year like the mainstream media and they are talking about will they develop a blogging code of ethics which is patterned after of all things the Society of Professional journalism code of ethics and include such things as being fair being accurate looking for alternative views etc. and so once that happens you begin to ask well if if if they're like us being journalists then what's the difference between blogging and journalism. What legal questions. The questions begin to arise. Is it libelous or slanderous for someone to say something in their in their Web log that we in journalism would not be able to say. Or we would have to have facts to support that. I think these are the kinds of questions we get sorted out and get sorted out. The more

power the blogging has listeners might want to know well what kind of power do they have in the CBS matter that you referred to Dan Rather's situation where they put a report on about President Bush's National Guard service. The CBS had said they had documents that later turned out that CBS said they could not verify the documents after they had already aired them on the on the air. The blogging community immediately I should say was really communi there were people out there with expertise in document verification and within 12 hours some cases within I guess I'm going a couple of hours. People were questioning the documents. Now this could have been people who were ideologically based who didn't want to defend President Bush and would just question the documents but they had real specific evidence that it was unlikely these documents had been created in the way and manner in which they were shown on CBS. Some of the blogging community have taken credit

for this. I think that's kind of interesting because in some senses if you're if you're producing facts that undermine a national news report then you're committing journalism and you're committing journalism. You begin to care about well wait a minute what are your facts and how verified are your facts and how do I know to believe you. At the same time I'm not telling my own newspaper I just happen to know it because I work there. Michael Dobbs who was the reporter who had written our account of what CBS had said that night. Began to question the documents himself. He was quite upset when he heard the blogging community begin to take credit for this because of course we're all egotists here. And I said to him Well Michael why isn't that just the old tipster who's dropping a dime to use that phrase you know putting a dime in the in the in the pay phone and calling you up and saying you know I'm suspicious of these documents. Why are you worried about it well. The answer is because the tipster was unknown to the public and he didn't have to compete with the tipster. But the bloggers were out there writing their own things.

They of course many of them love it. You get a kind of person who had no avenue no way to give you his or her point of view. People who are retired who love the idea of being able to verify documents and tell you why this document wasn't correct. They were having a ball. I don't think that many of them they had no reason for trying to tear down CBS. But there is a portion of the blogging community which is ideologically based on the left and on the right. And which was interested in trying to show up CBS. Yeah. Let me introduce again our cast for this part of focus Steve Luxenberg He's assistant managing editor of The Washington Post and he's here visiting the campus to talk about this very subject a bit later on today. He was good enough to come by here and talk with us. Questions comments are certainly welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. We talked earlier about how newspapers for example are. Looking at blogs

some of their reporters have them and they're offered. I'm sure on the newspaper's websites. So they are. They're getting into blogging themselves or some of their reporters and staff people or are getting into it. Obviously they newspapers like yours and others have to pay attention at least to some blogs I'm sure that in newsrooms and reporters on their own are actually reading the blogs there they're looking to see what these sources are saying both because they see them as as competition and just you know want to know what it is that people are saying out there. Are there other ways in which you think that the business of journalism may quote unquote mainstream journalism is is changing because of blogs or maybe it's just that you acknowledge the fact that it's that it's real it's there it's influential and something that you have to pay attention to. I think journalism is changing a lot. I'm not sure that you know like looking yourself in the mirror every morning you don't see the change quite so easily but I think that for example I was reading a blog over the

weekend in order to prepare that speech that I'm going to give later today. And the woman who was writing the blog said well I was late coming to the Eason Jordan controversy at least in blogosphere terms that meant that she was three days late. Now newspapers are responsible for covering a wide panoply of stories nationally locally internationally. We sometimes take three days three months occasionally a year to report something because we're trying to verify. We're trying to understand we're trying to be comprehensive in the blogging world. You know three days is death essentially there. And you know this when you're going in I mean the contract that you have with your community I would argue all writers have some contract with their readers readers understand when they pick up a newspaper. Basically how it's been put together

there are editors there are filters not reporters are going to write everything they desire. In the blogging community you understand when you're reading it you're not reading something that was filtered. It may be something like a college kids online journal. I have two kids in college and I've read some online journals and you know it's basically a chronicle of what I did yesterday. But in the in the Eason Jordan CBS affair they were demanding attention to themselves and to their views. And when we see other people who are ahead of us in perceiving what the news is behind something then we're going to be competitive with them. We're going to start paying attention to them. We think that our readers how do newspapers remain essential in this world. That's essentially what we're talking about. And one of the ways they remain essential is to be more vital than anything else so if a blogger is at spring training for example just to use something that's not

controversial and giving you a better view of the Chicago White Sox as spring training then the Chicago Tribune is that you're going to get worried about that and it's going to respond in some way. The question is whether we're constitutionally capable or whether we lose our other readers because we become faster more superficial less interested in verifying things. That's the that's the challenge of newspapers is whether they can survive in the world by being all things to all people which is essentially what a mass medium tries to be. I don't think it's possible. You know I think we have to make a choice. Well here I got a call and I'm want to get to them in a moment here so I promise them will make them wait too much longer here but just one further question. There was a time in journalism when reporters got a chance to catch their breath. The major in the broadcast world the major news deadline I suppose was the 5:30 or 6:00 o'clock or whenever the networks did their casts and for newspapers.

There was one major edition and it went to print and then it went out and everybody could go. OK let's think about what we've done let's actually sit down and read the paper we made when cable news came along. Now that meant that the cycle is continuous so there is no catching of the breath and it seems that what happens now with bloggers is that that just makes it that much that much quicker that somebody with a blog could be updating it every half an hour every 20 minutes. Things now move so fast and I think that's the concern of a lot of people in the business of journalism is the things that move so fast and there's so much competition even more competition than before. To be first that it doesn't give you the opportunity to think as carefully to check your story areas carefully and there so there's this greater risk of stories being put out that you might say if we had a little bit more reflection or had more time to check and to think about it we might not have done that story or we might have done it differently.

Will I remember the days where being alive on television was about the most scary thing you could possibly be. Now if we don't update our website constantly readers either go away from our website and post has its own website or they they think something wrong. They actually call and say you haven't updated the website in 5 1/2 minutes. You know I'm glad I work for a weekly section because what we do is we think for about three and a half days and then we begin to assemble it all together into something you get on Sunday. I think readers are smart I think they they look for what they need and they're not going to go off looking for a blog for certain kinds of stories. You're asking the question I think very very perceptively do we end up committing journalism that we wished we had and that we would want to retract on. And I think there's going to be more and more of that. I was involved in a story back in 1992 where there were allegations that we had received about. Unwanted sexual advances

by Senator Robert Packwood this is in the days when I was doing investigative editing and we could not confirm the story to our satisfaction when the rules that we could use was they were going to have at least three on the record sources not even a lot not even on background before we publish a story we couldnt do that before the election we decided not to publish the story. We published it three weeks after the election you know of course the senators are looking for six year terms and we were excoriated in parts of the journalism community. For withholding quote unquote this information from Oregon voters so they could make a choice. We didn't like the situation we were in but we just did not have the story ready. Now 10 12 years in the 90s or 13 years later. I suspect the bloggers would have been reporting the allegations long before we had ever done any quote verification of what we were doing we would be reporting on the blogging allegations instead of trying to verify the facts for ourselves.

Got me stuck with a call here in Indiana. One number four. Hello hello. I'm retired so I have 24 hours 7. You know it. Look at blogs and I did it for very short periods and I decided no this is ridiculous you know I don't know who the hell these people are. And of course in my conspiracy mind I figured Republicans have already got a number of them CIT Group set out to do it with you know in the Farias names like clear skies putting out information so I rely on New York Times Washington Post you know basically for my information and public radio. What concerns me is you know just the actual operation I mean how and how do you decide which bloggers to read to get information. You think that it's possibly accurate or could give you some direction to make further investigation. And secondly. I think there's a great deal here for bloggers and what the Bush administration's interviews the

new capsule news thing given to the. Rick you know TV stations here. Here is a fake reporter or a lot of stuff in here it's fake but it's good stuff and you can run it and it's only it's less than a minute so get on with it and I could see the blogger getting involved in that too and then I can see you know them changing photographs and putting on the web you know like in the movie it was done back when when Woody Allen was a run around the law. I think people in the movie is where if you sir give a general comment about that. Firstly my vote is for the post in the Times and NPR. But with these young kids it has to be immediate satiation sometimes and this is really a great place for a fascist state to start. Well we're all in favor your vote. We love readers like like you think that we're still the kids would say. I was at a panel discussion recently with the blogging focus and one of

the bloggers was a woman who name is Ana Marie Cox who goes by the name Wonkette and she writes a lot of humorous stuff about Washington. Somebody in the audience who is also retired and who reads the post was a Washington audience said directly to her face to face. Why should I bother to read you. Me Who are you. Why should I care what you have to say. And Ana Marie who is quite charming answered with a lot of aplomb and said you shouldn't if you don't have anything have any interest in what I have to say don't read me read me because I'm funny read me because I'm saying something that you haven't read anywhere else but you know don't spend more than a few minutes with me if you don't care. That's an easy thing to say and I laughed and said in response to her I said you know you're more of a journalist than you make out to be because you're trying to write about the things that are going on in Washington. And I think you're trying to escape the responsibilities of being a journalist by saying well don't read me I'm just a humorist. How do we.

Why should you spend any time with this. You know I think that we should play to our strengths our strength is that we have a large news organization with a lot of resources in which we are selling you our credibility. And the more we go toward the blogging sensibility the less credibility that we will have. And I have no reason to think that we're going to do that blogging that we're doing is really supplemental. You know writing from spring training about what you've seen during the day it's kind of what we would call notes in the profession you're filing your notes and the professional journalists are smart enough not to file notes on things that they haven't checked out. Let's talk with someone in Urbana line. Hello. Yeah. I've been. We're active on not so much reading the blogs but more active on these reading bulletin boards and discussion forums. And I would I would just there have been lots of these forums where I would just swear that one individual or two individuals on the forum

just seemed like somebody was paying them to say what they were saying I couldn't imagine anybody possibly you know actually believing or caring about someone some of these individuals are saying. And I'm wondering you know about this somebody is somebody spoofing you know on these on these things or there are other entities. You know we talk about the democratization of the Internet. Are there these large government or corporate entities or maybe political entities that are out there. You know it's spoofing you know pretend to be private individuals. But you know kind of pushing some kind of agenda. Well I can tell you one specific example you're absolutely right it's a very good question. In Maryland where I live Governor Ehrlich is the governor now and an aide of his was just fired for his comments really I guess a discussion for more than a blog called Free Republic dot com. Where he was under a pseudonym. I

mean everybody uses a pseudonym so that itself isn't the Farias was passing along rumors that there's some question about when he started the rumors but passing along rumors about the mayor of Baltimore who is a Democrat Governor Ehrlich is a Republican Republican. And. These are the kind of thing that without any proof it made the governor and his a look worse than it made the mayor. But he was definitely posing as nobody knew who he was. Free Republic dot com is a more Republican oriented website so you could go there and say well you know I understand why they're chatting about Mayor O'Malley but what was happening was as the rumor was now filtering into the mainstream. And I ran into a number of people in Baltimore where I live. I commute to Washington who absolutely believe that the mayor had a love child which was part of the rumor. And there's no proof for it at all and the

newspapers have been checking it out in fact wasting resources I think for a year including hounding a woman who was allegedly the mom to the point where she was at her wits end because she kept getting calls from reporters. Yes and remember that no one book called Bush's Brain about Karl Rove I think I remember one passage not that I had proof but kind of suggesting you're wondering about one one one incident where somebody had been posting out of a forum and it was just that. The handle of the the used poster used in the content seemed suspiciously familiar. Based on Roseanne but I guess it's I guess that's just a rumor. And anyway you can go and talk about I would be I'd like to hear about it some more if you have anything more to say blogging up and just and just listen. All right thanks for calling. I was just going to add that. You know we all want to blame technology for the techniques that have been around for a long time. Dirty

tricks done once a grotty in the Watergate era. You know when he was doing some of his things they use whatever technology is available to them. And so it's no surprise that they're going to use the web for that there's no surprise that they'll try to leak things to newspaper reporters who aren't smart enough to realize that they're being manipulated and will appear in the newspapers. Will this. I'm thinking about going back to the example that you gave. But supposing that there is some story that there are a lot of prominent bloggers that are spending a lot of time writing about it and maybe it did maybe it is a story that has to do with political scandal. Who knows what it is. And you're in your judgment and judgment of the people at the Post and other places you might say this. This is just I doubt the persons. I doubt the story. I doubt they're facts. I don't really think it's very important. There are I can think of 20 stories that it's more important for us to be reporting on should we spend our resources trying to chase down this story and determine is it true is it not. Or should we say

you know that's just not important there are these other things that we should be doing. Does that do we risk someone looking at us and saying well you know you guys you're just really not doing it because here's this very important story over here. All these people are spending a lot of time talking about why aren't you why aren't you on that stuff. That's what happens we get accused of cover up and we get lots of calls from people eventually in part because there is enough of the world that is ideologically based that eventually you're going to get accused of not reporting on something. We don't have to check everything out. But at some point a critical mass is reached and you just say well often there is some kernel of truth to things that seem unusual distorted. Fantastic. Let's try. To get to the bottom of this. So we're stuck and in one sense though it's good. Why is it good because the public is turning to newspapers television perhaps radio as the truth tellers. We hear this rumor we want you to tell us the truth

one way or the other. We have sort of an ethic in the profession we don't print rumors to tell you that they're not true. You know I'm sure that you wouldn't want to be the subject of a rumor and have us tell you Well here's the rumor and it's not true but it gets in the paper anyway. Yeah but this is our function and so I'm glad that the newspaper is considered to be the truth teller although as we see with these public opinion surveys we're also regarded as being less trustworthy than car dealers these days. So I don't know what to make of that. Let's go to another call here Lie number two. Hello. I think you know what you did answer my last question. That is well my idea was to suggest that newspapers have a section just for this prepress it labeled clearly as untested and notes and so forth. But then if the rumors might get in there that would be a danger.

And I agree with you. Does that did you have further comment cause it well not on that I had a question on the CBS blocking and that is it seems to me that if somebody wanted to set up CBS they would have the bloggers ready to go. And it seemed that the response was so fast that it's almost as though the whole thing was set up by somebody who wanted to go this way. Another was the CBS became a story rather than the content of the phony letter. Well I doubt that it was a set up although I think it it's possible that it could have occurred that way. CBS if you look if you read the report or you heard in your news accounts of the report of the investigation made it easy on people to go after them because they just didn't do the kinds of steps that they ought to have done and they ignored red flags when they went to their own document verification experts they didn't take them seriously enough and it just seemed like a

sort of let's check the box off and say we talked to some experts but they really didn't look hard at those documents to see whether or not they were accurate. OK back to the first thing it might be interesting to readers if. John I want to say that we need verification on something. Can anybody help us. And if that appeared in the paper you might get a lot more notes to the letters and so forth. And interesting if you can do that without spreading rumors. You know that's that was the idea. All right well again thanks for the go. We have somebody else here waiting and I should introduce Again our guest for this part of focus 580 we're little bit past the midpoint of the conversation. Steve Luxenberg is assistant managing editor of The Washington Post. He is responsible for the Outlook section. That's a section of analysis and commentary that appears on Sundays. Before that he directed The Post investigative special project staff. And before that spent a number of years working for The Baltimore Sun questions are

welcome here we're talking about has started out talking about the Web logs the blogs and what they say what they mean for quote unquote the mainstream media and big newspapers like The Washington Post. Questions welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 here in Champaign-Urbana toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Urbana next caller here online number one. Hello hello. Yes go ahead. I was a little bit surprised to hear the moderation in which you designated free republic as a more Republican website. They are an out and out 100 percent extremist Republican website which exists for no other purpose than the slander Democrats and like minded people. For instance one of their director Mary Speight the former child actress. Not that that has anything to do with it. I saw her in the world of Henry Orient. Anyway she was responsible for partly responsible for

funding the swift boat both the Swift Boat film. For one thing. Well this is why I'm glad that people are listening and calling in because you actually know a heck of a lot more about that specific site than I do. I was just being moderate because I was being cautious. Oh yes I do read the blogs. We have an under. Direct access to the Internet and the building I live in there are very general manager and so I keep up with that very much. I find things you have to look at them. You have to read them with caution because what it is is conversation. It's not really journalism. It's only with conversation verging on journalism. I agree with you I think that's the that's the fulcrum on which this rests is that I learned lots of it. I've learned lots of interesting things about about the blogs because let's face it there are lots of people with expertise out there who are just freely giving of that advice and expertise and why wouldn't you find something interesting. Of course you would. But in terms of

checking out you know journalism is the is that essence the observation of events we were witnessing of thence and were testing and evaluating things constantly. If someone sitting in their apartment building and writing their opinion about something and they're dependent on just the rumors and other blogs that they're reading you know they may or may not have something interesting to say but it's not going to be something that is journalism. But in the in the cases that we've been talking about the blogs in CBS in the in the blogs Eason Jordan they really were pushing into journalism because they were asking for action to be taken. They weren't just giving commentary. Most definitely and I understand although I wasn't really into the Bronx at that time but that the scandal about Trent Lott what he said about Strom Thurmond was apparently that was first talked about a good deal on the Internet. Only then did it get into the mainstream media.

That's correct. My understanding of what happened with Trent Lott where he talked about it I hope I'm right about this. He would have been better had Strom Thurmond won for president. He said this at a birthday party celebration. It was actually reported by a journalist who does not have a job at a newspaper but he would like one who had started his own Capitol Hill. I wouldn't call it a blog because he's actually trying to commit journalism and and that's that's what he he had gone to this event or actually had you know the issues at the event but he talked to a lot people who had been at the event. Well there's no real difference there between what newspapers do and what he was doing except for the fact that he has news judgment was such that he thought it was more newsworthy I guess than with whoever else had heard the comment. Yes and that's well it's conversation sort of course of conversation and journalism because he will hear Oh a lot of gossip and rambling chatter that is. You just have to be filtered. Look Dad you can't

take it as 100 percent gold. That's what I will tell you. They actually opposite thing with great fury and passion on both sides. Welcome to my world. Yes OK. I find things that I find things that have turned out to be very true and useful to learn on the internet that I've never seen in mainstream media. I'm sorry to insult you or no I think that you're not insulting me at all. That sounds like not only a factual statement but but one that's common sense Of course you would find those things. But you you're very discerning about what you use. You think about it whether it's you call a conversation rather than journalism and that's that's the most important point. OK right. But I think you know we have about 15 minutes left in this part of focus 580. Let me give you our numbers again 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 that's for Champaign-Urbana. We do also have a toll free line so that it would be a long distance call. Use that number that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 and hear someone else calling from the campus. My number two.

Hello. Yeah can you hear me. Yes. All right great. Yeah I've been taking issue with almost everything you said actually. I find a lot of problems with the mainstream media like a lot of other people. Whenever you say that that the alternative media you know. Doesn't check its facts I don't think the mainstream media is too good either. You talk about being fooled by Z by institutions and organizations. But I think the mainstream media if not its equally gullible is perhaps more gullible and discontinuous. All right you have against a position that the mainstream media has about not allowing for the possibility of current concerted group effort also known as conspiracy. Just makes the field ripe for conspiracy and for the kind of stuff that

the nice people secure particularly in the coverage area are good at you know inserting little bits of killer effect or AIDS. And now I want to test your ability to to sort out the raw beef. I just try to do that I want to save the CBS thing for example to my knowledge. At least I've heard that nobody has actually said that the documents in question or were actually proven to be fast. Instead what happened was this. This one of these factoids was put out there. That be it couldn't of been true because the pipe fund was incorrect for the period. Well I had to you know put much emphasis on this but the only kind of people that keep that kind of information are the intelligence agencies in our

criminal investigation bearers that kind of thing and they're just just the type that would put out a negative what I call a little factoid been let me ask you and I want to hang up after this. I just wanted to ask you. I'll test your ability to not be you know made a fool of in the lead by the nose. What do you think about what's happened. How about the. Pronouncements. Exceptional. Discovered Sachs quote unquote around the death of vets. I mean they yet tack on that Italian journalist and Baghdad at the airport. I really like to hear you see if you could find any kind of any kind of or deliberate effort to mislead. There are no i got Thank you. OK well you say something about that. The first thing I would say is that to the callers I hope I wasn't ranting I thought I was actually trying to educate and eliminate. I don't have any.

I think that blogging is quite a useful thing. But I also our job is to try to be as factual and as careful as we can be and if we're not doing a very good job editing you're not believing in us. Then of course we should do better and answer your specific questions. Let me take a CBS one first. You're absolutely right the caller was right in saying that there was no proof in the other direction that the documents were false. But what CBS had to admit to was is that they couldn't prove that they were authentic and since what they were offering in their initial news report was that they were authentic documents than they were says essentially admitting that they shouldn't put a money order to begin with. It's very hard to prove a negative. As we all know so you know you don't go forward with a report in which you later on have to say well we're really not sure about these things. I'm not sure I'm reluctant to dip my toe into waters that I don't know much about. I don't know much more about what's going on with the Italian journalist who was for those callers who were

aware of this is the Italian journalist who was had had been a hostage or a kidnap victim in Iraq. She was being taken to the airport on a highway in the dark by Tahlia an intelligence agent who was had been the one to some people think negotiate other people think just pick her up essentially and bring her to the airport. There was confusion. There's been much reporting on this and people are trying to sort it out the troops open fire. And U.S. troops manning an impromptu checkpoint that was apparently set up to ensure the safety of investor Negroponte. The Italian agent who shielded the Italian journalist was killed and she was wounded. We had an article in my section just yesterday by a journalist from Iraq. His point of view was is that checkpoints save lives and that they're important to disrupt terrorism and car bombings because after all terrorists and car bombers

need to use the roads in order to accomplish their goals and that the troops have been trained and he's seen them act very professionally in trying to make sure that they don't open fire on people who are not terrorists and car bombers because they know the consequences. I'm not. Of course there are people out there who are the caller was suggesting that there are conspiracy people who are trying to change policy affect the course of events. That's exactly what I'm talking about we're talking about verification we are doing the best we can to try to make sure that we're not bringing to you somebody else's manipulated point of view. There are a number of reporters who are trying to sort out unclear as is the U.S. military what happened at that checkpoint and the post is published. A lot of them for interesting information that would support either the notion that the the troops hadn't had a car coming out in the dark that didn't have its lights on but that

they weren't sure who it was. But the Valsalva reported that there's been disputes about whether the Italian convoy had said that they were coming and the troops were alerted to their presence. I'm sure we'll learn more about this in the next few weeks. I want to come back to the subject of mainstream media and the Internet when when the internet with the growing popularity of the Internet I think a lot of. Organizations like the Washington Post but also CNN the those that were kind of our brick and mortar news operation said we have to have an online presence. And so the New York Times and The Washington Post and a lot of lot of other newspapers newsmagazines Monthly's broadcast outlets everybody started their online operations so now you go down to the newsstand you buy the Washington Post but you can also go online and read The Washington Post and organization said well we've got to have an online presence even though they there was some question I'm sure about how it is we're going to manage to stay in business if

we keep giving the newspaper away like that has now that they're there. You've had a number of years of online presence. Do you think that being online has been good so let's just talk about the Washington Post and being online has that been good for the Washington Post. I think on balance it has been good. It has changed things dramatically. The Washington Post for those of you who have some familiarity with it does not describe itself as a national newspaper even though we are regarded as one of the best newspapers in the country. We consider ourselves to be a local newspaper and for many years that's the way we arrange and organize our news coverage. We have national international reporters but we distribute ourselves within the Washington metropolitan area. Unlike the New York Times we have no national daily edition. You can't buy us easily on the streets of Champaign Urbana or Chicago or Dallas Denver. Once we went into the online world at first our online service

which is Washington Post dot com had mostly local hits. But over the years the balance has shifted and we now have most of our readership of our online paper from our from a national audience and even an international audience it's wonderful to watch what happens with the from 9 to 5 during the daytime we have a huge audience in the United States. From midnight to 5:00 a.m. We have a huge audience in Europe. So this is the course change the way we do business and we have three or four reporters who are writing for what we call our continuous news division. The idea of a newspaper having continuous news is of course antithetical to what a newspaper used to be and the continuous news people our staff through all throughout the 24 hour cycle in order to update the website with breaking news. These are these are Post reporters. These are experienced people we actually put experienced people into these jobs to begin with because we didn't know what we were doing and wanted to make sure that we had the best kind of people. Fred Barbash is one of them. William

Branigin is another they both been foreign correspondents and they're now back doing a rewrite. You could argue. So we have we are now changing our business model. Not that I want to start talking like a businessman because of the Internet and not because of our own desires to think that we can do a better business because we can be the national and local. So it is a dramatic change for us and we're still sorting out the website makes a little bit of money now I think to break even with the advertising. But this issue of giving the news away for free. I mean we are training people who are in their 20s to think that they can get news we the media not just we the Washington Post The news is free. And newspapers have never been free. The Washington Post has a peak of its circulation of 800000 daily and 1.2 million on Sunday. Ten years ago it has been declining slowly ever since and it's certainly tracks the Internet. It may have something to do with the quality of the newspaper I hope not. But

now it's at about 700000 and it's not doesn't seem to be holding steady. And I have to believe that most of that is because while the experience of reading online is nowhere near as pleasurable at least for me as reading the printed copy and of course when they invent a portable device you can take into the bathroom that will probably really be dead. You know the idea that news is free is something that we cannot turn back away from. That's what a lot of younger people think. Let's offer some one indicator here in line number for a toll free line hello. I do. You may have already talked about this but this just again. Is Guckert scandal. Yes we have not talked about it actually have a laugh. It's an autobiography with nothing to keep him out of last week. I don't know what if any protests were not like to comment on it please. WILLIAMS Your question was the Eason Jordan incident in the paper indicator to the one about CBS and the news

executive who made some comments overseas about yeah come forward. Yeah not in here that was in there. How about the CBS incidents of course when once they said it when they were wrong I'm sure that Dan Rather. Yeah seven I think. That I'm not sure whether the for callers who aren't sure what we're talking about the Jeff Gannon. It was a blogger who received White House credentials to be part of the press corps and he is on the you know he's more favorable to the administration and his ideology is not hidden. He doesn't pretend to be objective and he was and then raise questions about what kind of review the White House was doing if people got White House credentials as a kind of confusing story to me. I don't think that the White House press corps ought to be restricted to the you know mainstream journalists by any means.

He was writing under a pseudonym which is another issue. As to whether the paper covers it or not. I mean you obviously were very interested in it is all over the blogs but the editor of the paper probably is saying you know it's one of those inside the beltway Washington stories that just doesn't interest me. And if it hadn't been all over the blogs you wouldn't know about it. I guess one way of looking at it is well the blogs are providing you with journalism that you're not seeing in your own paper and you can either think that the newspaper ought to cover everything or you should say well I'm getting some of my news over here and gotten some news over there and I got to go look at both of them now in order to keep up with what I want to keep up with. We're going to I'm going to jump in here my apologies. Jump in on the call but we're simply going to have to stop because we've come to the end of our time for people who are here in and around Champaign-Urbana by the way our guest Steve Luxenberg assistant managing editor of The Washington Post will be talking on this very subject at noon today in Rome 144 of Loomis lab on the campus that

said corner of green and Goodwin and I am expecting that anybody interested in hearing more from him should feel welcome to attend Pistole to hear what he has to say. Steve is the assistant managing editor of outlook that's a section that appears in The Post on Sunday a section of analysis and commentary. Thanks very much. Thank you. Enjoyed it.