The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

us good at non gym where on the newshour

tonight says and answer and race or as update the drive to map our genes it's all solomon tells the money story that goes with college basketball's march madness and karen smith takes a look at that new paper was novel by stephen king at all follows a summary than it is this thursday millions of the world's oil supply is due to clean energy sources it's been the corporation for public broadcasting this program was also made possible by contributions to pbs station from viewers like you thank you this was a record day on wall

street the dow jones industrial average gained four hundred ninety nine points are nearly five percent closing attend thousand six thirty it was the best single day again ever the previous record was three hundred and eighty points and was said investors went bargain hunting along blue chip stocks that had fallen last mark the nasdaq index also added a day at the back some of its recent losses gaining a hundred and thirty four points closing at forty seven seventeen president clinton said today he's working on ways to bring down fuel prices he spoke as independent truckers converged on washington for the second time in two months they want congress to hold back a federal tax on diesel fuel and give them other well at the white house mr clinton offered no details of any action he might take but he did say this we were working very hard on this now for several weeks and we hope to have something to say about it over the next few days but this is i'm encouraged the a

lot of the elements that are going on out there were recently so soon so when the opec meeting a curse but i do believe we need to do more on our own here in america to deal with some of things we've learned some of the pressure points we learned are on our people in these last few months opec estimate march twenty seven some members have said there may be a vote to increase production and thus to stabilize world markets on the china taiwan story today the state department called in the chinese ambassador in washington for consultations is it followed china's warning to taiwan yesterday not to choose a pro independence president in saturday's election a state department spokesman said china was being urged to show prudence and patience united states out of mourning today for albanian militants and cause of all us troops will raid more of their hideouts that they don't stop attacking targets and serbia american forces seized guns grenades and other supplies from the militants yesterday in washington a pentagon spokesman had this to celery eight

this kind of love of weapons cache and potential actively that could threaten our ability to maintain a secure and safe environment we took decisive action yesterday in this case against a year cause for all brainy and region and we will prepare to do so again against either because from danny an insurgent group or against a certain group the us and other nato members want to see a law goes of those border with serbia and serb police have stepped up security on their side of the law back in this country three men were indicted a day in the killing of a first grade girl but first grade boy a grand jury in michigan charged them with federal weapons violations were allegedly tied to the stolen handgun used in the shooting the boy found the gun and a flop out where he was living prosecutors have said he won't be charged independent counsel robert grey said the day hillary clinton was not involved in gathering fbi files on republicans he also peered other senior white house officials in the matter

the white house has said the nineteen ninety three incident was just a bureaucratic mistake also today a congressional panel found no evidence the irs targeted groups with ap clinton views the joint committee on taxation issued its report after a three year investigation some conservative organizations have alleged they were audited after criticizing the white house the investigators did say vice president gore's office tried to look payne confidential information once in nineteen ninety sevens mr gore spokeswoman disputed that claim and that's it the newshour tonight now it's onto a genome update money and march madness and stephen king's ebook an hour questions about mapping the human genome were raised and this week susan denser of our health unit begins the unit as a partnership with the henry j kaiser family

foundation on the surface the statement from president clinton delivered on behalf of himself and british prime minister tony blair was a commonsense call to make the road map of the human genome available to everybody we have a profound responsibility to ensure that the life saving benefits of any cutting edge research are available to all human beings today we take a major step in that direction by pledging to lead a global effort to make the raw data from dna sequencing of oversight just everywhere to benefit people everywhere i urge all of the nation's scientists and corporations to adopt this policy and its spirit we must ensure that the prophets of human genome research or measured not in dollars but in the bottom of human life at halftime this playoff far more intricate tale about a scientific horse race to uncover secrets about the genome the

so called book of life for nearly a decade scientists have been attempting to decipher of this sequence of three billion chemical units of dna that constitute humans genetic makeup although a considerable accomplishments that's just the first step on a long road of figuring out just what role genes play in the body why some teens mutate and how to apply that knowledge to preventing or hearing the innumerable human diseases that result in one lane of the race to sequence the genome is the human genome project that's a consortium of university researchers funded primarily by the us national institutes of health and a british private charity the welcome trust in the other lane is a private company so where a corporation of rockville maryland it's headed by former an i h researcher j craig venter in just two years so lehrer has leapfrogged their head of the human genome project and now appears likely to finish the complete rough draft of the genome by early this summer for months representatives of both camps have been

trying to negotiate an agreement to cooperate and finish the sequencing job together but those negotiations recently broke down that reported eason was a disagreement about whether so where it could retain any rights to sell portions of the sequencing information during a briefing at the white house frances collins who oversees the human genome project repeatedly stressed the importance of getting the basic information about the genome into the public domain so this exhortation which is i think what the state mathias is that this raw fundamental data which is going to take years though sort out all ought to be accessible immediately to anybody with no barriers and possible barriers are numerous but the idea is get it out there as fast as you can with absolutely no restriction on how people use it after that statement was issued as a lerro put out its own response in adventure city also agreed that all basic sequencing information should be made public a point that he's made several times in recent months so as an information

company bought it will only succeed if scientists around the world use its information the pharmaceutical industry is already extensively using these discoveries some of them already finding their way into major research programs but the company said no further light on whether it was willing to call a halt to the horse race that way it and the human genome project could proceed to the finish line together and ray suarez for more we're joined by lee silver a professor of molecular biology and public affairs at princeton university is the author of remaking eden how genetic engineering and cloning will transform the american family and richard gere is the director of the human genome sequencing center at the baylor college of medicine in houston the center is part of the federally funded group working to map the human genome lease over here we have two different approaches toward getting a lot of the same work done

what's at stake here well what was at stake is our huge amount of money that can be made by understanding how human genes work in normal people and how they arm is functioning people that have diseases and the pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies want to be able to use this information to develop drugs and protocols to overcome human disease but that certain essentially different result if one wins or the other wins in this race to finish first this is a question of control and profits the human genome project was begun entirely with federal money because in the beginning scientists didn't believe that it would be possible for private companies to want to do this but now since our pride that nerve has entered the race a couple of years ago it's very clear that are private companies are willing to invest money in getting to ross sequence data ricky gibbs what you see as being at stake here you are as we said a lot of money this information is tremendously valuable it's the information that stimulates by medical research and can speed of disease

cures and and many other desirable things in the near future and the way that information is distributed will depend on how quickly now officially into the mode of the subsequent discoveries so when you say a lot of money is at stake did the clinton blair announcement this week change the landscape and he does it mean that these discoveries will get out into the public domain more cheaply well i guess the landscape china just reflected in the stock markets it as far as the actual workers it's been going on with free public beta release from the public side for since the beginning of the program this is my pressure the province ought to be mullen says yes to combat the collaboration that's been discussed in the past and as it generally ups the ante and clears the confusions are just there to disseminate information i think it's going to lead to a gentle improvement in the whole edge of it only silver if i'm a

researcher working on heart disease or are trying to unlock some mysteries of cancer who am i rooting for at this point well it got i think he probably be rooting for the border consortium but i think it's important to understand that that down the road the drugs and the thirties are going to be developed by private drug companies farms and companies about tech companies were going to make money by exploiting the information in the genome so the question is i'm at what point are they allowed to make money how much information how much they have to know about how itching works before they're able to patent that and make money off of it so does the games we have two different visions of the future one saying that that the profit motive brings these things along more quickly in another saying that the widest possible dissemination means the widest possible number of eggs is working on the problem well i think that the divisions are not so very different and they have the sign beginning point with a generation the information and i had assigned in point with a

generation of disease cures and better drugs and so forth what is different is something in the middle there and you might imagine that it's the outplacement all tollbooths close to the production of the information on the one hand that can not discourage for her interest in the development of these killers and drugs versus a system where that information is available to everybody and therefore stimulates the widest range a possible research while on some parts of the whole genome the billions of separate letters and bits that are already been sequenced there are preliminary patent applications waiting at the patent office to be decided upon does that in effect wall off a discovery a set up that tollbooth the talk about i think to some extent of least the issues of intellectual property gathering have already passed and that is that patents are already out there are out there waiting to be a besotted by the patent office with an obie award and

so to some extent that's true will lee silverman easy way in here all week what i'm walking on new territory what is important to understand is that this is a dispute over intellectual property and it's a dispute that can be decided by the patent office and by regulatory committees in washington it's not the dispute over ethics and i think it's it's important not to bring in the notion that this information has moral value of some kind it's really a question of who gets to use at what point and when people can apply for patents so that they can a profit from their discoveries what discoveries as opposed to inventions so very different way of looking at patterns in the first place is in well the patent office has the side decides whether or not a particular invention has use has has value and the panel should decide which of these companies is able to protect its information and to use that information to develop drugs and then duck and thirties what are we at that point he had with some of these genes if they've been mapped onto some of

them that have been that but we don't know what the map tells well here where all different points with so many different genes some genes of the take it all the way forward into drugs or therapies and nobody disputes the patterns that have been placed on the use of those genes and they're many many genes were we don't understand the function at all and the dispute is whether or not our scientists should have the right to patenting genes before we understand how they work that's the prom for the patent office to sign up or by what this is the site well does it matter to the public richard gibbs who wins this race and under what circumstances oh yes it does i think we should be clear about one thing though and that is that the public genome program is in no way in opposition to the development of by technology and threw through the pending system the pilot program is a strong support of the patent system is really the singular issue of the level of function that is has gone to james before that hannibal that gives is great

concern and i think a good analogy would be a land grab most of us are enthusiastic about town all old mine a fellow jurors local miners who were their own patch and discover discover which is the less enthusiastic about the audio vast amounts of territory being quiet without any real knowledge of what's in it good analogy we silver land grant well i think dr benner has indicated that he's going to publish the raw data and abroad is just the first step all he wants to do is to make money off our interpreter that data with sophisticated software and other bio technological tools and i don't think that should be stopped and if i understand you correctly you're richard gibbs you're not against people who risk capital to develop information being able to make a buck off of that's right you know the differences between auditors sides of this it will come down to some very fine in some ways technical points one of them is the idea of what is function had you ascribe function two again and the crowd cheered for that are being added be among scientists so we

couldn't really expected to stage a simple formula to be applied to the patent office and the other issue is the night for a free diver release the woodford it wastes with fried it really see is quite loosely end up on the public's awkward talking strictly about free an incumbent hamid it relates there's other divisions have some other strings attached to them in as underly perhaps well i'm trying to understand this only silver i was thinking about somebody walking along the coastline and trying to draw a map of it as they walked along it and shipped not too far off that coast also doing the same thing trying to draw that same map when it have been better for the two sides to find some way to work together at some point well i actually have worked together on preliminary projects to look at the genetic information in simple organisms like a flight which which they have worked together on forever well for reasons that i don't understand that were not able to work together on on the human genome ah there is a huge amount of money at stake here and really it's a question of where the money is going to go out in the beginning or at at the end yeah my comment on that

the flight program part of which was done here in houston at baylor college of medicine was a successful collaboration and the elements of it that were out what just the way they showed that the fact is that the stakes are just not as high but the flight you know the stakes are very high with the human genome that's why we have a difference in the model but if the federal government is indeed the human genome project is able to release large amounts of data before so lehrer does what differences and end up making if any well i think once again he is really say the role of the public program history's shown that when dave of these type a generation the private sector and then ultimately released to the public it was only being in response to the pressure of the emerging public by the set so in a sense the public programs just doing its job now as you can imagine this an hour with a public program did not exist and we would be sitting here having this conversation at all and that we're not that the data from the private sector would be released or at least in a way we like to say

that this is the role of the public program to provide the pressure as well as to independently struck a rich the same goal if the files in other quarters well there's there was there's unexpected competition from the private companies which the human genome project a richly didn't expect and one of the things that's done is push the public effort to go faster than it expects to go in the beginning so that's actually a very good thing it is a good thing and to some extent we were really not to expect stiff competition this is arturo the most important project that the biology is every duck ever done perhaps the most important part of the burden that has ever done so the idea that there would not be some stiff competition nelson sell the consulate to be a little optimistic gentlemen thank you both very much an ad now money and the madness of march our economics correspondent paul solomon of wgbh boston looks on and all the basketball court ok everything is positioning

warplanes on friday's keep you out yet the subtleties of big time college basketball with six foot ten runs ice stone of the oklahoma sooners so you are actually putting lots of pressure on the radio was a person a lower body how i thought could query out like that and stone spends fifty plus hours a week working on his game i mean this year is stolen his teammates have made it to march madness the annual ncaa basketball tournament cbs recently paid six billion dollars to televise the next eleven years as with so much money at stake and economic question has been raised about the status of these players are these students or more nearly workers should be paid professor murray sperber was written the host of books on the economics of college board's thinks they're exploited labor dnc the blanket six billion from cbs for march

madness pie and the players are getting a twenty thousand dollars scholarship the play in this tournament there's a huge wage gap i mean these are professional athletes essentially and they are nowhere approaching their market value to quantify sperber the problem is the ncaa itself the national collegiate athletic association formed under orders from president teddy roosevelt in nineteen oh six to halt a rash of deaths in college football but as college sports really became a big money industry the ncaa developed interests of that so today says sperber is impressive and then there's america you want to hire you wanted as big as possible what sperber calls an empire the ncaa considers a mission support for a huge variety of college sports nice but since ninety percent of its budget comes from march madness the ncaa innocence is re channeling basketball

money to build a big time big budget college athletics across the board says employers meanwhile have their own ambition to approve korea even though the odds are enormous despite the hoop dreams of most of the forty five hundred or so players in the ncaa's top division only two percent land a job oklahoma's basketball program takes in over four and a half million dollars a year from the ncaa a separate tv deal with espn advertisements of local and national nearly ten thousand tickets again at the athletes meanwhile get roughly twenty thousand dollars worth of rooms ward intuition but some say they get a lot more seconds for kelly giddens says there are tangible benefits just to spending so much time on the court look advancing evaluate days wealthy

and low level from assembling a lot in a way that is brother walter does everyday life is it easy now to do with the slow socialization go along with a three week different if thirty years is not the size so teaching how to deal with certain people and if the situation and moreover say defenders of college sports but whenever these kids if they didn't go to college newton worked at a taco bell before going to community college in kansas history test was not good enough to get into a school like oklahoma direct something if owen went to junior college to play the school just stay at home which are the work of a couple of the club some practice at this level of college basketball is part of boot camps are advance seminar every day of the week oklahoma coach kelvin sampson

insists that when he lectures he teaches a valuable lessons even in wind sprints river into certain lines and back in a prescribed title samson insists his players touched every lie a lot of shares will change bill senators this was a well what's the big deal of the big deal is that we utilize to most of the basketball them and i asked you to do something you make compromise russia lies is not that important so it's you've got to draw that line if you will is how is a little small think of this discipline ms boucher supposed to be aborted when disposable as four disciplines and that's a crucial lifeless as a crucial influence obama's president former senator david boren says lessons in the classroom or even more important that we're an educational institution at the core of what we are willing as create for these athletes who are first of all students their statements they come here to get an education and for that for the rest of their life the best thing we can give them as an education not more money president gore might consider runs ice

stone a case in point of stone's taking among other classes england after eighteen thirty nine but it's unusual that you're getting something that's because back in damages but other investors the stereotype of an overall goal professor judith lewis has her class using primary sources here two letters of queen victoria's was used to be biased against athletes but she says student athletes like stone turned around and that was a change in university policy and the money is these schools like oklahoma may be more demanding of athletes the most andres i still himself is more demanding still

most average wage in low but overall white male basketball players in division one graduate from the same school within six years and roughly the rate of other students fifty three percent compared to fifty seven percent for white male students overall and while only thirty three percent of african american male players graduate same school six years that's actually better than the rate for non athletes thirty one percent of course the graduate puny time to go to climb study it's hard to do that of basketballs are full time job as sir for a third string center or the place he says the service is no social is this a special news this was on the road with noble time consulting so the question remains if they're

working full time and bringing in millions why shouldn't college basketball players share them well the question has become more pressing in the past few weeks when you were us players have been suspended by the ncaa for breaking its rules against taking gifts among them chris porter of auburn who re routed twenty five hundred dollars from an agent so that his mother wouldn't be evicted stories like this have prompted a free market proposal to sue the ncaa on behalf of student athletes so that they'll be paying in oklahoma we found support for that mary stone a businessman who play college football is right size towns that as a parent of all the other things as for men's eyes don't tell there is so much money that this that this port brings in and you know i look around campus and their kids were

my jersey and know somebody is making money off of my jews in but even the team mascot propped on the most telling testimony though came in telling you last on the african american male you think that leaves you should be a hint that you are seen as millions of gallons out how these athletes enemies entity like easier way march madness isn't do not consciously serious so it's not a lack of money but they stayed away is because of five fours players make it to approve the end of the year so i'll believe that the money is there it's just the focus to be put on that athlete in an institution we asked the head of the ncaa cedric dent see you actually makes five hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a year what would happen to have maybe once border to sports because most institutions jews of dollars and are generated

out of those high profile sports to help fund a very broad based program we have three and thirty five thousand young people in this country who haven't had to experience maintain a federal law so called tidal mine also forcing schools to offer women a chance to compete in any sport that made soap who would lose if college athletes work at oklahoma athletic director joe castiglione other athletes i think that would reduce the number of the opportunities that we offer for many women student athletes on our campuses generally speaking native of support programs we sponsor do not pay for themselves even coach sense from things athletes do deserve some of the money they bring in supports only modest like that in the un that he like many is afraid of opening the free market products are not against still at least have a better offense and then my goodness look at the money we make off this doubly torn not my problem is as

legalizing pan where you draw the line i mean it we start now set a furious argument thousand dollars mark baum maurice poplar or what was is all i'm afraid of repercussions and ramifications of panic and a t ok from was louisiana and universe of oklahoma are to be just you know if we eat them a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars that they had an opportunity to six thousand dollars on the outside and i think that's still possible i hear that all the time if we just a student athletes money we would have these poems i don't buy that at all but i don't think money is going to keep people from a can not living by the rules is because the ncaa in other words will continue to resist the notion of faith and play even within a start of march madness and it's six billion dollar price tag and for the record oklahoma won its opening round game this afternoon in the ncaa tournament seventy four to fifty

over winthrop still to come on the newshour tonight a new something called the evil but first this has pledge week on public television were taken ashore break now so your public television station can i ask for your support that support helps keep programs like ours on the air and for those stations not taken a pledge rate the newshour continues now with a second look at a june fisher essay about an up to date small town in the midwest how's business leaders are part of the midwestern back could be a poster child for every cliche about lawler asphalt over railroad tracks to close school empty streets vacated storefronts

are closed down lumberyard a mini mart is the biggest retail business you know the litany kids flocked to the city owned timers get older self cheaper goodbye mayberry usa except what's this a no parking sign in a town of three hundred or this especially bank every house all through the occupied and above all this commerce in the form of months and cut the rate of twenty thousand a year and rubble all the carols law finished goods that through seed fertilizer and charcoal bridget asay need to find the phrase value add say unemployment in this town for the week they were forced almost doubles the population and people say

what's that you can see a bit of the future a need and hundreds of places like this a place relatively low skill workers toil and labor intensive jobs that turn out the products that other americans by without a second thought in return people here are able to fulfill one of the deepest yearnings many americans their life in a small country in the world their neighbors like actually no big yards or kids can play in schools that teach the basics low taxes and above all available space and room to breathe rex table the university of missouri professor of rural sociologist says that redefines what he calls the end of the friction of distance because of improved transportation and proved the communications people who live anywhere today people dont have to be in new york city to be in the job market they can be a meaty missouri and in the stock market or wherever and so

the climate which was known for the live almost overnight the perception of distance enroll america has changed not so long ago a trip to the nearest big town jefferson city up the road now a jarring today ride and white behind itty now people jump and their new surveillance or pickups and take along a cell for a fraction of the state's barely met the new way of looking at this is a given for people who have that but for most it changes almost unnoticed why is it because not visible because of not seeing that people fly people go through an interstate a dome that invisible and middleweight rural america had not seen and so therefore forgotten except by the people who want a good way of life in nineteen seventy seven until just two numbers complete a telephone call in meetings are not now as anne diamond had the oval office itself for all fifty

states and unbelievable forty six forty now resemble insurance for rather than its and a seat or forward brain was converted the flour bring in cornmeal event called sluts but change can also be silent less visible take the rock island railroad tracks once in a violator of this it's that big rusting from disuse these past eighteen years see those white calls beside the rusting tracts they mark part of what's changed buried beneath it is a new highway so to speak and new annihilate her of distance is called a fiber optic line one that can take people anywhere and jim fish it's been tonight the

arrival of the new technological wrinkle for readers this week media correspondent karen smith has the story it's a scary prospect for a hardcore of of instead of leaving through the well worn pages of an old friend they might be downloading the next chapter of the digital content this week for the first time a bestselling author released a new work exclusively on the internet steven kane who has published some thirty bestsellers on paper chose to release his latest the sixty six page novella and titled riding the bullet in cyberspace along here's how it works readers sign on and pay a modestly in this case two dollars and fifty cents to download games sixteen thousand word work which he describes as a ghost story in the grand manor the manuscript could be read on a computer but to protect the copyright readers cannot print duplicate or email the document to others if reading on a desktop computers since

confining or even a little tiring the story can be downloaded and especially designed devices known as e books that can contain a number of works this one's called the rocket ebook it's about the size of an average paperback and it sells four hundred and ninety nine dollars it's this is the soft book it's got an elegant leather cover it costs five hundred and ninety nine dollars barnes and noble offered the king's story to its website browsers for free on tuesday creating the cyber equivalent of a traffic jam for hours those who log on to amazon dot com experienced the same congestion what a reader's really ready to traditional turn the page on electronic theater nut libre company based in boulder colorado is betting yes the leading provider of electronic books that librarians retrofitting hardcovers

by scanning them into their computers were retired to their current library houses fifteen thousand plus titans verdict from gothenburg to get evidence things before i should provide a good guide as to the future of electronic authorship in the first twenty four hours four hundred thousand people ordering or downloaded riding the ball to discuss the significance of this ebook experiment were joined by jack remarks the president and chief operating officer of simon and schuster stephen keynes published and by linton weeks who was once one of that dying breed the independent bookseller and sell and now covers publishing for the washington post welcome to you both i jack remembers the update us if you will other than a few more hours set to sell book once was the letters elliot late this afternoon the total we got was approximately five hundred thousand downloads

in roughly twenty two days so it seems like an extraordinary number as phenomenal the audio and it is expectation why did you do this book this way and why now are two reasons one that probably the the main reasons is stephen king wanted to win and the second reason has is publisher of we're more than happy to take the trip but equally as important we were ready to take the trip which has been a lot of time working in this new arena and we had the people and the expertise in place to actually put the publication into effect and white in audio inclined as well i didn't re lend itself to print i think if it's ever done in print will be done as part of a bigger collection of stevens' work dr liam weeks so how does all this strike you as this brave new world of the end of the book as we know it went well i'm not sure it is interesting the world's an intriguing the world some

issues he got there first and i think that was part of their their reasoning behind it is up how time somebody tried this all out on the grand scale and that is for the difference here is stephen king commands attention in a way there are hundreds and hundreds of novels that have already been put on the internet or were written for the internet just offer electronic reading but this is the first un sourcing prescribe to to do such a thing right so is elevated to a whole nother level will certainly elevate the attention of the popular attention that jack no matter how are frequently as is going to become i mean i think the future for cell only offers do you think will be there it's hard to say it is they just go back and sutherland said that it is a what we've learned here this week is two things one that steven king is an incredible brand in the

war we live an end and i don't know that a peace prize to find that out it but what i think ross surprise a fan of his how many people appear to be willing to read in a paperless environment than half a million people is to shocks us we would've been amazed that we had a hundred thousand so what wheeler there is that there is the foundation for some kind of a publishing business and there were not finish it this happening could be a million by the end of the ride do you have any sense of how many of those people paid for now many simply saw something that was for free and took it in our show i don't know i don't have a sense of it now but i think it had to yawn fifty price point price was really a factor in the response here let what you think this does to two readers and i'm reading that the act of reading will get i'll i think that the interesting thing out i wonder if i

know that jacques renault's was talking about i do think that it would have been more interesting if it had if amazon dot com and barnes and noble dot com had not given out for free at a greater measure you mean a lot of many people are i think so but having said that you know there are a lot of people out there using internet for a lot of different things and these numbers are phenomenal no question about it if you take something though like of the kenya dot com now which basically shows scantily clad supermodels they get about three million hits a day and on and people are downloading pictures of those folks and the numbers are incredible and that is of course why some issues for another publishing companies are intensely interested in this budget and there many more reasons than that but it is a very quick way to get the reader and does it affect at the act of reading the event to see it done on a screen rather than a piece of paper what we're already reading an awful lot on the screens a lot of

ross who worked with word processors or reading a lot we'll see and ultimately i think it's a little early to call about that i do think that books are going to go through a grandmother more this is what we think of those books and once we are reading on devices are reading on laptops are reading on personal digital assistants or the refrigerator or whatever were reading on i think that when riders begin to write from those devices it'll be a lot different than writing different from writing for a boat ride jack do you agree with that our books and undergoing a fundamental change but i think so i think what us military the future of maturity that he's ready to do that now but it there's a lot of options that are suggested by what's going on right now it's possible that we've has gone through something equivalent to the paperback revolution back in the

sixties where we've discovered a format for the content we create and now publishing a traditional way which is to appeal to an audience that hasn't been showing up to read books it in the paper environment i think the kids at the teenagers who we've been struggling to bring into our world end and i believe we've been losing to the computer screen and large shapes and sizes and england's right that the idea that we have already embrace reading on a screen is reality and most of our lives with his toes use of people who would withstand into reading for pleasure and an aunt for length on a computer screen or on a hand held reader so whether or not this is just an incremental format for us to take what we do now and broaden the audience were in fact it's a whole new a whole new way to publish for example non fiction that is topical me the best published in electronic form at first and in a hardcover and then subsequently

renditions a second third because we can bring it to market so much more quickly so we the short book is now much more possible that was in the traditional sense as a whole lot of options that we really get a sit down digest and basically come up with a business model for so this sounds like a real revolution it's an incremental one but a revolution on the last years i agree with jack it's so it's probably a lot of folks in your introduction you mention gutenberg a lot of people draw comparison than that it's probably not unfair comparison when one always said and done jet strike that certain books it's a farm some issues for as they said no our and other publishers of set the fall sports figure dies or a political figure dies and they want to do a quick e book this is the ideal way to do it are of course it affects a whole range of

people in the economies because a former bookseller i wonder about those soil it effects distributors it effects on where immobile warehouse people odd effects on all kinds of folks including some issues drama to some issues just don't have been some soul searching about how how they're organized enough if this takes off by jack romanticism right in and let me ask you this could hurt an offer as as popular as stephen king and essentially cut you are not good at all for his work directly to the reader on the internet charge of price and received a chilly kid and in fact they haven't mentioned earlier many authors who are not seem to need in that now from bikers would be why the mike white the why they would want to do that if they also then expected the war to be published

in a traditional sense and he has a similar our job in addition to helping them create the best product possible is to create a market take it to the widest possible audience and in theory that the sheer number of people that will be able to reach it we should mention a global basis because right now our business is pretty much a domestic business with language being that the largest restriction but we were selling books all over the world today's result of this ebook test you think you're reading your own young in a sense in terms of the printed book now not all but in no way do i see this as a replacement in our lifetime to the printed book it's it's it's a compliment a believer sales we will get will be incremental if word of mouth which is a huge driver in our business is as important as we think it is it should make the the incremental sales on the subsequent publications even greater see is a situation where everybody wins okay and final word that

doesn't is there is there an a loss here is something lost in the process we i think something is lost on that i'm not a sentimental us about the book but there is a sense when you read a book that you're basically taking a chaotic world a chaotic life and bring some order to it yes indeed this evolves into something else that's full of video images and sounds and who knows what i could be we begin to render chaos chaotic way right i'm not sure that will be a book a television has been again the major stories of this thursday the dow jones industrial average had its biggest day biggest one day gain ever it rose nearly five hundred points an increase of almost five percent and president clinton said he's working on ways to deal with higher fuel prices will see online and again here tomorrow evening with shields and he'd go among others i'm jim lehrer thank you and goodnight

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