Fine literary skills. Its hard to find four or five books from last year that into the moral issues that we engage in. Witthe full disclosure david who isnt here who is attending his daughters graduation tomorrow at the university. I know how much he wanted to be here and how much he enjoyed being a part of the panel. One subject thats very much part of my life now that im at columbia trying to the 300 selfselected graduate schools to turn up every day. Its all the evidence in journalism. And also try to connect one or two thoughts about that. We are journalism situated in reference to public corruption in the country. We are entering into an era in the last five or ten years it seems to me the award is also trying to reflect on and which we require journalism to renew its engagement and the accountability of the politicians to take what would now be increasingly large sums of money from the private interests. The journalism is obviously in the period of the great disruption and change reshaping the possibilities of journalism. That has had a very powerful effect in the watchdogs who turned up at the meetings. Asking the routine and informed questions about how these decisions that affect so many lives are being made and how the pythons threaten the old forms of journalism and the old Business Models of journalism. In order for it to play that role i think that we can us our journalists are required to really interrogate this technology to ask how it can advance the purposes of journalism and society. The purpose of writing the code as a journalist can always be to make better maps those could be a valid and explanatory role. It has to take us to the hard subjects the journalists confront. To document the atrocities of the power to tell stories about the communities that are not heard from to tell stories that are memorable and change the way that we understand our shared community and public square. We have the institutions and the space into the research culture. We are working on a project about how things are journalism can allow for realtime documentation. If you want to try to measure claims that are being made about the degree of the air pollution caused by say an obscure and rural area how could you possibly challenge the various claims and audits you could play sensors out there and pull the information in realtime and write news stories about it if you wanted to. You have to interrogate the drone and thats what can you do for me that a photographer in airplane can do and there are answers to a drone can do that a photographer in airplane cant do. It isnt a matter of restructuring and moving from point a to point b. But its good to be a process of continuous engagement with the democratic purposes of journalism and the question of how technology can serve those. One other thought about this algorithms are designed to question out into a complex field and come back with insights they are also a source of power if they are a journalist trying to hold them to account. How can you do that if you cant interrogate the algorithm itself if you cant write code. To adapt the sciences which is to interrogate them and ask them hold them transparent before the customers and the public. The commitment to th confront tf corruption but im hoping to think over the next few years about how to apply the framework that i just tried t try to skete subject of public corruption and the reason is that Citizens United and the two recent Supreme Court cases that have essentially lifted the lid on political donations in this country are going to change the relationship between money and politics at the time when professional traditional legacy newspaper reporting about the conduct of local politics in particular is still to recover from the loss of employment and the loss of the sustained Business Models that it had in 2005 and 2006 to consider our friends across the river in new jersey that have made some news through the traffic and bridges and the question of whether or not some of that was related to the Real Estate Development deal for other kinds of questions. The reason these cases have been successfully sort of brought forward by the ideological camps that support the capping Campaign Contributions and turning off the limits resign in an argument that have become jurors put into the country which it has to do with the relationship between money and corruption to the original caps on the Campaign Contributions were rationalized in the belief that if you were a private corporation and gave an elected official a great deal of money to help them run their campaign you didnt have to have a quid pro quo exchange of criminal favors to the corrupt. You could be influencing them and buying access and buying an environment of access and the exclusion of others that was in and of itself corrupting. Now we have created a new law of the land that the Supreme Court level said there is nothing corrupting about the collation between largescale political donations and political decisionmaking. You have to prove the quid pro quo. You have to see the particular cases where this kind of oldschool corruption occurs. But i think that we would probably in a democratic context and in a context where journalism operates common sense be just a different definition of corruption in the public sphere to push back the large political donations dont correlate is to document by telling stories, by digging and asking questions. But the nation wathe donation wd what interest do they have better before the recipient politician and where does the politician go on vacation, what plane does he write on, who pays the bill . These are the kind of questions the 100 plus reporters in the bureau used to get up every morning and ask and they are not asking in the same frequency and confidence five or ten years ago. Thats something that should concern us very much. About six years ago when the change was developing, john kerry who was then the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee called the most improbable public hearing that im aware of in washington which the future of newspapers and journalism was called as a witness and alongside me were very on the huffington, Melissa Mayer come sundacomesto me from the newspar Publishers Association and among others david simon, the genius who created the wire that i also have to spend time with. He was a former Baltimore Sun reporter. In the course of the hearing, Claire Mccaskill who was the senator from missouri intervened to make a remark and she said when she was the u. S. Or District Attorney in st. Louis for she became a senator she said something to the effect of that was a really complicated office. There was a particular st. Louis reporter that had covered the office for the last 20 years and anytime i had gotten to the threshold decision i visualize ten in my mind and im reminding myself that he would find out what i did and i asked myself what did he think, what have i done and she said he was gone now. David simons that you all should be very pleased. Youve taken this office in the golden age of the corruption. Enjoy it. So i think sadly that he was right and the problem is grave now even then it was six years ago and thats only the kind of reporting and commitment thats reflected in these books and finalists are going to see us through but we all share the responsibility to figure out how to spread we are all required to ask the questions. [applause] thank you for that and for all of your great work and training the next generation of the folks that will try to live up to exactly the charge. Next im going to ask james to join us here at the podium. James is the Senior Adviser to the intelligence as we all know he was the editor of the Foreign Affairs. During his 18 years as the editor of the Foreign Affairs doubled circulation to an alltime high of 161,000 launched additions in spanish, japanese and russian. As putin rating Foreign Affairs . [laughter] the magazine was founded by the council on Foreign Relations to educate the public on the Key International challenges and to enrich the debate on the policy choices. Prior to joining the Foreign Affairs commission and spent three decades in the newspaper journalism as a washington correspondent dan editor and publisher of chicago suntimes and of course finally as the publisher of the new york daily news. Hes been a fellow at harvard john f. Kennedy school of government, the Freedom Center at columbia university, and on the american Political Science associations congressional program. As a former chairman of the International Center for journalists and members of the Advisory Board of the center for Global Affairs at nyu and the Watson Institute of brown university. He served as the chairman of the Human Rights Watch from 2010 to 2014. And we are of course proud to have him as a member of the library family. [applause] well thank you tony and steve those are terrific remarks. A quick note on the Foreign Affairs addition. [applause] we started taking out a number of things a couple of years back in i got concerned that maybe we were going to end up sort of censored one way or another. I called our editor and assess whats happening, how much pressure on you under. He laughed at me and said pressure fixed he didnt read us our intellectuals. They hate putin and putin hates them. He could care less. So weve gone forward running the piece after piece that is critical and he doesnt care. I want is to say a special thas to the five finalists will move looks superb but last night they gave us the time and attention to do a Panel Discussion on longform journalism. Whats it about and where is it headed and i wont get that far but to say that journalism in books is one of the current most potent forms of longterm journalism because others have contracted the newspapers and they are not as prevalent as they once were. We had a lot of people there last night and i want to thank them very much. I also want to thank one of four journalists who couldnt participate this year. That shows good judgment i think. [laughter] lets get on to the business of the evening. [laughter] starting with science and salvation and the publishers of random house. Over decades controversy was transformed from a sleepy small town into a toxic chemical dumping ground with air, ground and Water Pollution into the gloriously high rate of cancer among its residents. They discharged the billions of gallons of toxic wastewater into the river. To unmatched the Shocking Stories took a combination of investigative skills and scientific knowledge and then they provided both along with the very lucid prose. One of the largest settlements in dumping history. He records the chinese activists are now identifying cancer villages and where in china like baby where a number of Chemical Companies have transferred their operations. This story involves her ocean and its one of its elements and several others here and i just mention that because what steve said tonight is so important as to one of its functions of journalism as a monitor that our societforsociety and its public. Next is the insurgents David Petraeus and the plot to change the american way of war. The United States military was never more powerful than at the start of the iraq and afghanistan engagements. The u. S. Naval and air capabilities outstrip those of any combination of hostile nations. In short the United States was superbly trained and equipped for poker three not for the insurgencies and terrorism. These new conflicts proved expensive in casualties and resources with a victory in sight. Fred kaplan post the story of how a group of highly educated and fresh thinking officers struggle to transform hardened cold war strategies into flexible counterinsurgency doctrine. They found many insights by returning to Strategic Thinking of the past era and they stressed the importance of understanding alien cultures. If the group David Petraeus was the most indepth and wielding power, personality and politics to overcome at least for a time the old guard. Modernized military strategies can offer some success but they cannot do it fo pick up for poll decisions to engage in conflicts that should have been avoided. We have five days of memorial, life and death in the hospital. The author sherry fink. To tell the story of a hospital trying to cope with hurricane conditions, sherry fink brings to bear the full range of her talents as they investigative reporter, medical doctor and experienced relief worker. She chronicles the horrific challenges confronting new yorks Memorial Medical Center during the five days surrounding the hurricane katrina. Floodwaters cant power failures, extreme heat and exhausted staff created multiple emergencies that prompted innovations and ultimately agonizing choices. Including who should live and who must die. The mercy killing decision to fatally inject some patients who were on the brink of death than to the grand jury investigation but no indictments. Sheri deals with complicated ethical and legal stories with great understanding. All told its a dramatic story peopled by unforgettable characters and compelling lessons being picked for the future natural disasters. Thank you for your service, publisher for our straus. David embedded the Infantry Battalion during the surge in iraq. His bestselling book the god gd soldier was based on that experience. David created an intimate at times thrilling depiction of the life and death on the battlefield. In this book david has again and did with veterans of the same Infantry Battalion but this time the whole field is the home front and the challenges are the damages done during the lengthy campaign. We see the soldiers trying to put their lives back together. Many suffer from traumatic brain injury and posttraumatic stress disorder. The lengthy and conclusive were produced and array illnesses from suicides to alcohol addiction to domestic violence, unemployment and longterm disabilities. Equally compelling story is the healing efforts of families, medical professionals and friends. But try as they might, they were not always successful. Davids extraordinary reporting makes it clear that the bones will be with us after the purchase of iraq and afghanist afghanistan. Wounded warriors are something that cannot be allowed to continue since the Wounded Warriors will be with us for many years. The big truck that went by and the author. They killed several hundred thousand. Today he is still devastated this time by a failure to rebuild. This is despite billions of dollars of pledges, special attention from United Nations and ongoing engagement of notable such as president clinton and sean penn. He was the only American News correspondent living in hawaii at the time. And that major unleashed on the four community. He recounts the best and worst of Human Behavior that is brought forth by an epic calamity. He includes the incompetence, the wastefulness, the production and unfulfilled pledges that cripple the relief and reconstruction efforts. Team except clear how much is too remained on to have a Brighter Future than it currently is looking at. Well, thats it for the fact that the fabulous books but one of them has to win the bernstein award. [applause] all right. Longform lives. [applause] longform lives because of people like the burn dvd bernstein family. Thank you very much. People care about what it is in this world is up for thi with td of work and especially because of amazing books like david and jonathan and fred and sheri wrote. And as far as im concerned we are surrogates for a much Larger Population of people that do this work everyday. This is an amazing thing. This is an amazing thing. Truth matters and when it stops mattering thats when democracy dies. Its hard to tell the story of three audi. There are many barriers in all of the people i just mentioned starting with the bernsteins and new york public library, they all are helping us tell the story of reality. For other finalists along the road, fred kaplan. [applause] jonathan katz. [applause] sheri fink. [applause] and brian is here to run away with a check for david. [applause] congratulations to all the finalists for the great work that youve been engaged in today. Thank you again to Helen Bernstein and her family. It is an honor at the library. Thank you all for coming please stay and enjoy yourself. [applause] up next week to give the personal papers of William Elliott cofounder of watching to university. The University Archivist we are a mediumsized independent university in one of th and onee worlds leaders and Academics Research and care. We have 14,000 students undergraduate and graduate and we have seven schools including arts and sciences, art and architecture, business, engineering, law, medicine and social work and public health. We are our own library which is the main library on campus. There are also nine