>> hello, i am llewellyn king, host o"white house chronicle." i'm inan francisco, ahead of the hearst buildg, once the headquarters of willi randol hearst, newspapermen exaordinary. a monster to some, but a hero in

jourlism becausee was so pioneering heuilt a great change, and to me, san francisco not just the cityhere cable cars climb to the stars. it is also, for me, the cenr of a kind of energic journali pioneers in this buildingehind me. and inhis tradition, we have the honor of talking to phil bronstn, who is an editor at largand a great cruding journalist with a reputati up and down the country foris unique juggler >> "white house chnicle" is oduced in collaboration wit howardniversity television. and now the program, hoed by nation columnist lleweyn ng and co-host linda

gasparello. ng and co-host linda gasparello. >> we are back, and i'm happy to be joined by phil brstein, one of ameri's great journalists, knownll around the cotry and eecially no to thpublic on the wt coast. he has been a journast in the bay ar, san francisco, and an editor f many years. would you like to run or what you dohese days? >> i think running or is a great phrase f my career. i started out at kqehere in the 70's, and ty had an interesting nightly news sw, a semiprofessional operation made up of old newsper

reporters, and went to the examer in 1980, became an investigativ reporter, a really the first full-time foreig correspondent maybe ever when i was in the philippines, and then i went to el salvado central america, peru anthe middleast. in 1981 i beme the editor of the "examir," and in the merg in 2000, i became edito of t "chronicle." i am now editor at large, encompassing many things, incling figuring out this inrnet phenomenon. >> one thing you are doing i to try to bring thdisciplines of journalism together, throu the tdency of the emphasis to hold up per and say, who wrote this?

we have all eerienced that. i did. how are you making out the newspaper ople, myself being onof them -- how on discipline and evethe best of the inteet is. thrown together. >> it depends where u look and what you're looki for. the ternet is an open pipeline. that is whatt is. the water st rushes through it. information, the people -- will give you an examp. tom has beewriting about the bay area forhe paper for cades. very well known,e writes a lot of books you will find in

bookstor and supermarkets about fishinand so on. he wote a blog, one of those messy things in th messy media about a gentleman who fell inosemite and died. on tt blog, he received 500, 1000 -- lots of mments from people. so there you have the msiness you're taing about. a lot people commenting and commenting but if you look through the comments, people saidhey would have bn eyewitnesses to this. they were either climng above where heell or below, and you had in there a lot of discsion about what kind of things yosemite and e park syst could do to make us a safer route to climb. u have these comments where people can say anything, and you could as a reporter xtended store significantly,

you would have first nd knowledge and eyewitness accounts, assuming you verify them, which we assume you did. you cod use your verified es and ears of people you wod not normally have aess to. one thing we feel in washingt, a lot of things have just spun away. the san diegoaper was one of them. san diego brought the downfall. not have haened. national rorters in detai with a member of congress, the local paperand the world. is?

>> i think you bring up a critical poi. it is the watcog role we perform. it is esntial, a part of t fabric of the history this untry, and certainly part o the fabricf politics in this country. we have thomas jefferson saying he was not treated well the press but derstood the value of having an unfettered prs. i think the adtion of obnoxiouwashington bureaus that will say because we're in calirnia, the capital bureau has been a devastatinghing for journali. i do think thathere are oer media cropping upnvolving profession journalists. we are not makinany money.

so it is not barrier. as an exple, i'm in the board of the senatenvestigative in rkeley, and we have started and ve funding for ornizations for the historical oject, and the function is t hireeporters, which wear in the process of doing, cover cafornia from an investigative standpoint to fill in where -- i amo confused about o is shuffling, who is buying, who is selling. but still mcclaty with the "los angeles tis," which is in bankruptcy, and the "chronles." we no loer have peopleo cover these storie so we have

someing that is now a nonprofit ganization, a privately funded, tfill that gap. >> tse become pressure groups nd themselves. they had a mission, defined mission, with a prrietor with their own mission, andhey can counterbalance that toome extent. and professionism. we took it very serious. weo. >> fst of all, the historyof wh we might like to call objective journalism iactually quite sht because a lot of newspapers were vanity publicatio and this was never at way until recent history. they wld have imposed -- and

they would impose their own perspective and would say that thawent through. >> i would agree with u, and i think what happened and wt was terribly benefial from th public point of view was the eitlement to a byline. when i started inournalism, a byline was handed out grgingly because you might build up a reputation of followers and wha more money. buthe bylines, i think, did much to prove the quality of journalism. the individual autr. >> what is intesting is tat we have the film festivalhis

year and robert redfo was one of the people ing honored. i did a qution and answer with him on stage as parof eestival and asked a question about "all th president's n," which he was strumental about. he workewith woodward and bestein. you look at tergate, which encouraged a lot oyoung people to become journists, and it also raised t specter of celebrity journalm. >> i think it did. i worked with the po and knew carl bertein quite well. i liked him a lot. but the thing about waterge was that suddenlyou had kids want to learn their lessono bring downhe government.

>> i will takehe content. i will takthe motivation. you n craft that and start somebody out over in pice, and if you still get that lel of passion, you ve got somebody y want to keep. but the issue of celebrity journalists, and have had my own brushes, i thi it is something at has not been good for the prossion. >> i do not think that eitr. people are cing out with the sole intent ofbecoming colonists, becausthere is more glamour, you t on television, psumably to make a lot of money. steve lopez in the "los anles times" does not only wells a columnist, but he is

being madento movies all over the place. lopez is a talenteguy. >> it was also an explanatn ofhow dedicated journalist can change things. >> i loved the movie "the paper," a romantic comedy. not for the romanticiece, but because it ge a great picture of the chaotic nature, and w were talking earlier abo the quirkyersonalities of people who inbited them, and i think thats something that has been helpful to journalists. >> but what about when everye

is a journalist? where willhis stakeout? >> i think people willontinue. as lonas the self-published, people will. there is aego attractionhat will be overwhelming. buin terms of those things that bome successful, if i knew what the model once, i uld probably be heralded i media all ov the world, because nobody knows what the answer is. will it flat screen readers th mimic paper but are not paper? >> always felt when this began that the bk could not be cnged.

i trd to reinvent the book. a friend of mine was the habit of tearing the pagesut of book. but old laes would come up to him, someroducts of the hitler youth destroyi books. so i thoughtwell, the book h not changed in ma llennia, reall >> i think wn they come out with tse tablets that are not thick and bulky bu are literallas thin as a magine she or can be folded up andre in full color,nd presumably all the electrics work, you will seeubstantial portions of print-dedicad people. momen

"aan in seoul" - i am readin tom wolfe, a m in full. am reading it as a book. is too heavy. what story that you ve done>> i wod say marcos in the philippine i had gten to know some people center for assiance t government w. and some storiesarly for when they were not paying attenon. and they wenstraight through. they had to know aquino, they were invited back wh you shop the tarmac. -- when he was shot the tarmac. i got a call at 3 in e morning teing me to get on a plane and i spent pretty mu from that moment until he w thrown out of thcountry in 1986, d it was a circumstae where you could really -- tt first full day i was in manila,

andractically never been anywhere million people in his funeral march, which laed an entire day, and monsoon's we hitting,t was 110 degrees, pouring rain and lightning, but you could also feel the histo of the pla moving beneath you. as mig be happening in iran righnow, things werehanging that might have substantia consequences. and to be able to go and b sued and threaten byhe chief of sff and then get an interview and spend moreime than i ever nted with imelda rcos, and getting to know that culture, which is one of the great gifts joualism, that you t to be nosy and find things out and watch thaconspire, and ha aeynote take over as the

great hope of cnge and not been to ange people needed. that was the story. >> comebk to obama, e present and his press relatis. what impressesou? >> they said abouteorge bush that he neededo -- when he ran for president fir time, the issue was, this a guy you wanted to have a br with. that washe question. at t time, a sufficient number people said yes. with oma, the feeling is, want this guy to wanto have a beer wh me. you want him to like y, an interesting shift in dynams. he seems very laxed, mostly extraordinary call, and he h goa great seductive quality

out him, is wife, his famil the new yo times ispreading loving pces about the perfect to date night. is an inspiration to our cuure. things are better olooking at them black-and-white. the reason for that is because the wars not go the way you ink they are going to go. i had a job a while ago as an assistant editoro i went to theditor, ben bradlee, b i

took t precaution of in another job firs just in case the negotiatiodid not succeed. d he said no, i do not have anything for you, and i sai i had been invited to the oer job, and he sd, "you would leave the washington po for nuts and bolts journism"? i said, not if youould make an offer i can't refu. he didn't, and i left. but then ratr deprecating things were saidbout my trade. i ought i would end my days to inform correspondence wk for -- or woing on movies.

where your professional life tang you? where do you expect to ? >> i did not expect asuch of an interest and curiosityith e intersection of all of thi tenology and the practice of urnalism. so i'm acally going to srt print columns. i d not had one of those for nine years. i will start them a few weeks. but most of my time i that dealing with, is there and wher is there -- h does it work, a nexus for theechnology we hav ailable to us and our desire to do the craft weave done so long intersect? d how do we get there? not even how do we impe our traditions on the ternet -- that is the wrong way o looking at it, b how can one helphe other?

so i thinkhat is the mt interesting thing that is going on, and'm happy to be mainally involved in that. >> how do you feel aut the newspaper ga? >> nervous. >> it is the same thina lot of people have done. you cannot reay attack on the and the way we do in television rerting. the challenge facing t governmennow is that the administraon will have to decide. >> i have to have facts in my column? >> a w would help. >> iidot mean to cnge you totally. buof course youad ts novel reignorrespondent thing, all

due. ople of this not been cering politics. you uld notet back on the campaign trail fast enough. and with that. buthat part of world would you ke to go to now? buthat part of world would you ke to go to now? i not know whatbout the payments are. i have not tald about it. my visit to chin which was fairly brief -- i was staoned here, and h would i get the news? i would have to learnhe langua, which i probably would

not have been very good at. >> i think that helps. i was lucky inhe philiines, because moeople spoke english, and i lrned spanish enough to go to central america to g byhere. i think pershing is a dangeus thing. -- pachuting is a dangerous thing. bill keller from the "new york time got a danrous perception going thereut i was ltle surprise to learn that bill had never been there. i was not sure i w comfortable ving someone, i do not care if i'm the editorr not, writing front-page stories about a country they have never beeno. >> i attendeis interesting that they writ stories about countries that have n been to they see it all the time -- i think it is interesting. the ultimate queion heres, thiss "the new yor times." they have a correspondent

captured in ira then in ghanistan, held for seven months. they asked other paper not t write about it, they did not. this is an traordinary thing, that this was kep. more than 40 newspapers were involved in aode of silence. we never had a de of silen thatxtendedcross newspapers, lots of th. >> it is unsettling. >> i find disturbing. >> one does not want to argue against the savingf a life. when i was an editor, there were always thr standards where i said i would continue holding a story r publication. one was if it involves children. another one is if somne high up theadder could inform me it was a national surity issue. thether is if it was someone

high up the ladder. it is hard to be criticalf whathe new york times and other pple had to do, because i'm not sure. bui find itisturbing that people want keep ituiet. it did not amounto anything, because you nev saw t story. >> i finit disturbin because it's ju one rule for us and another rule for eryone else. >> this is the qstion. how we kuz called last weekend and he was doing a story for a comment. i sai, look, i'm just curious as to whether the paper -- >> yes. >> i wasurious as to whether e paper would extend the same courtesy when other people in other albums have comeo a them to ke things quiet.

i'm not sure about that. >> and it could be egg on the faces or worse. newsweek had the scand story, matt drudge ran a that, and is a wll-knowfellow. >> and the nationaenquirer broke the john edwards ory, which was very legitimate. >> i go back to a newsper i worked on in eland. the largest sex scandal that britain has ever see it involved the most beautiful girl ever involved a sex andal in britain. but the newspaper worked for did not blish it. it leak out in ameca, they lood stupid. >> yes, y hold those stories anyour own risk. >> holding any story. >> christopher hitchens on

said thathe convergence of sex and politics has been of interest for fivdozen years or more and will always be terest. the ideahat this is not a subject want to touchs siy. >> i agree wit you. its a pleasure. >> likewise. >> tha you for coming in. we hope thatournalism continues. >> joualism will contie. we just do notnow exactlyow. >> thank you very much ph bronsein, one of amica's most distinguished journalists. weill see you next week. >> "white house chronicle" is produced in collaboration wh howard univerty television. fr washington d.c., thihas been "white use chronic," a eekly announcement with insight and a sense of hum.

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