Tomorrow, a discussion at that defense spending in u. S. National security with a keynote speech by the pentagon comptroller. The Brookings Institution host the event on cspan 2. What i like about cspans coverage is they are very thorough. A Steady Program i want to watch is available. What i enjoy mostly is coverage that you have on the floor, the debates on the floor, as well as the hearings that you cover, the subcommittees and Major Committee hearings. She watches cspan on comcast. Cspan created by americas Cable Companies in 1979. Brought to you as a Public Service by your television provider. Now, a look at the history and future of the New York Times. Daniel schwartz discusses his latest book, covering the decade from 199 to 2009. This is just over an hour. Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. It is my honor to serve as a Deputy Director of the museum of the city of new york. And my greater honor to welcome you here this evening and to thank our speaker, david schwarz, for being here as well. As many of you know, the museum of the city of new york has a wonderful job of investigating and interpreting this city its past, its present, and its future, and our job is to explore what makes new york new york. It is appropriate tonight that professor schwarz will speak about one of the citys iconic institutions, one that carries not only the news, but new yorks own name, its brand, its identity, throughout the world, the New York Times. He will talk about what has been a decade of crisis, a question about whether any newspaper can survive. From my perspective here at the museum, this is a critical question. Not only because of the iconic nature of the newspaper, which i just mentioned, but also because their role of the newspaper itself here in our mission of document link the citys history. The times is the citys newspaper of record, the way in which we document the stories we see here at the museum as we look across this archive and the vast decades of more than a century. It is more than that. The challenge is what to me the times and the print industry is facing. One of the things we are committed to documenting, something that is so characteristic of new york, the theme of perpetual transformation of the city. We here at the museum are not ourselves immune from this, and we, as i think about the stories that the professor describes, we ask many of the same questions today about the nature of physical artifacts and the printed word in an increasingly virtual world. And so the story of the New York Times has a broad resonance. Professor schwarz has said the worst newspaper in the world, except for all the others. I have a few brief announcements i would like to remind everybody to turn off whenever you might have that might be interrupting the program. As you have noticed, we have copies of the book that is the subject of todays Program Available for purchase and we will continue to sell them at the end of the program. Now it is my great pleasure to introduce daniel schwarz, professor at cornell, recipient of numerous awards, including the distinguished teaching award. His poems, short stories, essays, and articles have been published widely, and he has authored several books including broadway boogie woogie. He is currently working on a new book entitled reading the european novel. Please join me in welcoming him. Thank you so much for that generous introduction. What i am going to do tonight is talk about the New York Times past, present, future, and then we will have questions and comments and bring up anything you wish. In part, the times has been the paper of record for a very long time, and we should think about what the paper of record means. Sometimes it is called disparagingly that gray lady maybe because it was kind of drab and colorless. What the paper of record means is that it was the repository of the names of the cabinet members of various countries, at least the summary of the major bills and decisions from congress and the supreme court, and it was the place people went for the historical record. In fact, the times was the daytoday evolving history of this country, and its role for historians was to tell us what was going on in the country. But the paper of record, as some people noted, could be colorless and drab. Let us think about some of the things the paper used to do when i first ordered reading it. Number one, if panama changed its cabinet, every single day for a week they would repeat each members name. If there was one different name, they would do the whole thing over and over again. They even on saturday had a column called incoming and outgoing ships. When people said they read the times from cover to cover, when it was a twosection times what they met was a scant thing that they had read yesterday. There was a great deal of admiration in the times. Iteration in the times. It was the reliable place to go, all the news thats fit to print. In its heyday, it was a very important part of history. Thehe 1940s, lets take normandy invasion in june of 1944, a major historical event, well, most of us did not remember that, but if you think about it, could you show the maps of the allies progress on radio . No. Television was invented, you might remember, at the end that of the 1930s, but it was suspended for the war effort. The times was the source of how the allies were doing, and i use that as a point of departure in my book. They had full reporters, but the most accurate news wasnt really in the newspaper. The great News Reporters like cronkite could do so much. It really was the place where people went for the news. I want to stress something else, because this is a kind a point of departure. At that time, the government and the media were aligned. There was not this assumption we have now. There was not fox news, for example, fighting a democratic administration. There was not this gap. It was going to come to that later, but i want you to be aware that the media and the administration was very close at that time. For example, why is the times paper of record . People could trust it to tell people what they needed to know, and one reason they could is the president would call in people like major columnists, and the president would tell them what he was planning to do. And the newspaper, sometimes they would say the highest identified source. What we have here is really a kind of mutual relationship, and that is part of its being the paper of record. If people did not like what the times were printing, they would call them up. It is interesting that even in those days the times somewhat that the government control sources. Some of what goes on now was going on then, but the thing is there was an alignment of interests that does not happen now. I think it is important to sort of understand what times was at to understand that there was not this difference in the country. We were much in a very different world. You have to look back at what the times was, we have to a knowledge we lived in a divided country. There was a much more vigorous and angry dialogue in politics than there were at this time, that i use as a point of departure, ok . It is interesting, too, that arthur salzberger recruited eisenhower to run for president. What we think about is a point of departure. In my book, i go back even more. Even though it is dated from 1998 to 2009, those of you who know it know i go back to the bidding is, and i will say a little bit about the beginning sprit the paper that was bought in 1896 by adolph ochs. They did not want it to be too jewish. He bought this paper that were originated in the 1850s, but was a nothing newspaper. There were many in new york, and theres nothing special about the times. He transformed it into what it is today, a place that people go to to find what is going on. As were going to see, the newspaper outranged gradually from this time when it was a historic source. One thing we also should point out, and that time we are talking about, the time of the normandy invasion, there were not really an obstreperous, negative press. There was the republican paper, the heraldtribune, but the differences were in degrees and not any kind. People were on minor radio stations. You would not have people like Rush Limbaugh on a major station. There was a kind of neonazi, but these people were not part of the public discourse. That is important to understand. What changed . When it did the discourse become somewhat more angry . You can trace that to some extent to mccarthyism in new york, where people were being accused of being communists and being russian sympathizers after the war ended and during the cold war. This could be something that you could attribute to. Even then, most people made their peace, and mccarthy backed off, eisenhower did not support him, and we got through that period. Does anybody want to guess when the press began to doubt the presidency . It might surprise you, but it is the cuban missile crisis. In those days we did not put everybodys private life in the newspaper. Even though they did that, still, it was a time when we began to become suspect. That became more and more until the publication of the pentagon papers. That was a gradual growth come a difference, between the media and the New York Times and the administration, and that continues until the state. There is an oscillation between the administration and the times depending on the administration. That difference opened up cordially there, and it continued to. The skepticism to the vietnam war, and watergate, which is mostly a Washington Post story, increased to where gradually we have what we have today, an adversarial right fox, adversarial left msnbc, and cnn, which is trying to be the New York Times, when nobody wants to see anything non adversarial. The times is a twosection newspaper, a term that the times does not like anymore. The editor when you use in it, they get a little bit squeamish. Some of you i should probably say, one of my sources it took a great deal of reading the, and interviews. The times is generous in giving me access, letting the interview them. Mostly, i got this through approaching them and asking them, and one led to the other. Most of the masthead figures in the 1999 a good many of them and all the executive editors. I never got to interview him. Keller jill abramson, keller. The book does have a lot of very good source ing. One time when i spoke somebody when i said somebody spoke anonymously. I give them a name and attribution. I say that because i think that is very important in american journalism today. One of the embarrassment of the time is they have often printed articles without adequate sources. The times is partly under siege because of the number of crises. The crises include accusing someone of being an atomic spy when they did not have sufficient evidence. In other words, they really did not know what they printed. It gary malam well maybe this is a compromise figure, but you cannot go around accusing people without having evidence. What else . What are some of the other embarrassments . Anybody . Jason blair. Jason blair printed the story is about what was going on in washington during the crisis. The only problem was he did not go there. He was both inventing things and plagiarizing things. That embarrassed the times great deal. Anybody else remember . The blair situation led to the resignation. It should be said, i it address this with in more detail in the book, if some of his predecessors had been in charge at the time they would not have had to resign. A lot of the staff hated him, so it was used as a fulcrum does anybody else know we are talking about now about what undermined the times as a doublurepart of it was that their reputation was diminished by several major mistakes. What was the major mistake . [inaudible] right. Judith miller printed stories, anonymous sourcing that is where i wanted to put that on the table. She never said were for information was coming from, that there were weapons of mass destruction. Of course, hussein, the leader of iraq, encouraged that. It was Something Like putting up a sign, beware of the dog in your apartment, but there was no dog. There were no methods of mass destruction. But it gave cover to the moderate democrats to vote for war. In some ways, the times bear some responsibility. That was a major embarrassment for them. Possibly the most important one. Because no one ever knew where this came from. It turned out the person was once a figure in the iraqi government, but the trouble is, it was not true. If i point to somebody and say this person has a contagious disease, we all have to leave the room, i should know what im talking about, right . This is an example of a major problem. This diminished the prestige of the times, and there are the things we could mention also. They had knowledge in 2004 of government wiretapping of private citizens. The government said, do not release that. By not releasing it, is helped george w. Bush get reelected. These are important things that happened. I talk about each of these incidents and this is what i mean by crisis in turmoil. These are really important issues, and gradually, they lower the temperature of the newspapers credibility. Does anyone else remember others . There was this notion they released this story that john mccain was having a relationship with a woman. They had heard in a very sexually provocative dress on the online edition, and a dress her up for the next one. This woman was a kind of lobbyist, but there was nothing in there that never proved that mccain was compromised. If mccain had a relationship with this woman, it was between him and his wife, and there was nothing he had not touched on anything that was politically important. They sort of backed away from that. It just lowered the temperature, again, of what we might call their bodily communication wait weight. There are other cases, the duke across scandal was another embarrassment. Lacrosse scandal was another embarrassment. They did not cover themselves in glory, but the woman who claimed to be rich was not raped. It goes on like this. They also had a story about why Caroline Kennedy did not get the nomination, and that is when they also mentioned that she did not pay her taxes or something, but nobody put any records down a unattributed sources to back this up. This was a problem for the times. Lets go back a little further back in time to when they gained credibility. The publication of the pentagon papers was a very important events, not only for the times, but for the first amendment. They really risked going to jail. The publisher at that time was arthur. Maybe we need a brief review course. It is hard. It is like sesame street when everyone is named oscar. How do you keep them apart . A brief family history. Ochs was succeeded by his son inlaw who was named arthur ochs sulzberger. Then there was another son named dreyfus who succeeded from 1951 until 1961 excuse me, 1961 until 1963. He was succeeded by another sulzberger, the son of arthur hays sulzberger, known as arthur ochs sulzberger. Now we have Arthur Sulzberger jr. This is not easy. There will be a quiz at the end of the elections. So, the sulzbergers basically own the newspaper, or the family. We will come to that in a minute. If you guys want to sit down, there are plenty of seats here. So we are talking about the sulzbergers, and they own a newspaper, and went on to be a public newspaper under arthur ochs sulzberger, who recently died. That became not a privately owned company but a public company. This is interesting because it is now a public company. One of the things people are wondering is why, if the times is having a financial crisis which is my next subheading how can they survive . The answer is, how can the times survive . We will talk about that. Maybe we can talk about it now. Will they survive as they now exist, can it, financially . The times is in great trouble in a chilly. Financially. The sulzbergers made a lot of money when they went public. They bought up a lot of properties, they have the Discovery Channel for a while, and at the time of optimism they built an enormous building which they own for a short amount of time and now they lease it, sold back. So the times is having a great deal of trouble. Why . The world is different. As a news source, they compete with the internet. You say, well, they are 24hour internet, and this is true, but there is one big problem. For every 25 lost in print advertising, 1 comes back in internet advertising. This is not good for the newspaper industry. The times can not really replace this revenue, as hard as they have tried. Why is that . It turns out, print advertising is more expensive. If we can buy internet advertising cheap, because the market is different it used to be the times lived on fullpage ads, double page ads, from all the department stores, the very ones that were lit on fifth avenue and are now obsolete. They do not exist anymore. Of course, people do not want to do this anymore, pay those ads. And car companies, not just the general motors, but their subdivisions would take a page ads. That is not being replaced. I have talked to a lot of people about this and there is not really one answer. For a while, they would produce these wonderful, optimistic reports and they would say things like internet advertising is up 40 and print advertising is down 2 . Well, you do not need to be a mathematical genius to know if something brings in 100 is up 40 and something that brings in 10 million is down 2 you are in trouble. They cannot replace this revenue. I can go into this further in the questions period, if someone wants to know why who will can make money and the times cannot. Part of it is that google is a consolidator. They get 10 for the ads and then they pay the times for us. Basically, a lot of money being lost. Basically, internet advertising is cheap. This is the big problem, will the times survive . That is the present question. One thing we should also say, because it is part of the puzzle, when the times went public, all of us bought shares. You may not know that, but your pension fund may have some shares. All of these shares that everyone owns, there is actually a capitalization of 144 million shares. All of those 144 million shares get to approximately five members of the board of directors. The numbers vary but the precautions are the same. Who looks the other eight . Elects the other eigh . That is the b shares. Those are owned by the family trust, yes. They own the b shares. Now the question is, will the times go the way of the wall street journal and go bankrupt . It used to be thought that it was imposs