The New West with Will Hearst: Phil Bronstein Video Lecture | Shaping the Future: The New Western World - Personal Skills

hi I'm will Hurst welcome to the new
West today our special guest is going to
be Phil Bronstein Phil has been the
editor of the San Francisco Examiner and
the San Francisco Chronicle
he is currently running the Center for
Investigative Reporting which is the
premier organization that does
independent third party news gathering
and investigative reporting and we're
going to talk a little bit today about
journalism and what's happening in that
world today and what is possible and the
new kind of journalism that Phil is
doing at Cir please welcome Phil
Bronstein
now investigative reporting is one of
the things you don't get as a commodity
which is why I think it's interesting
that it has kind of in a new form
continued to find support both readers
support and and I think you have a lot
of a lot of your customers for Cir for
the center are our news organizations
that are kind of outsourcing the
investigation to you right but they're
also news sources that are themselves
crumbling so our clients for a long time
people who were paying us organizations
were paying us money for our content
yeah are no longer able to do that
because as the sort of old media is
dying out or I mean we used to talk
about newspapers like the guy in the old
Henry Africa's bar which is one the most
popular bars in San Francisco dying at
10:00 p.m. but he doesn't fall over
until 2:00 a.m. when everybody leaves
you know it's like newspapers are dead
they just haven't acknowledged yet and
they just haven't gotten to the you know
point where they're falling over so we
had to look at Cir we had to look at who
are the new customers who are the new
partners because we partner with
everybody and the new partners I mean
it's emerging because you're going
directly to the reader in some cases
right and well you know you're not
wholesaling investigations to news
organizations you're what we were
selling it yeah we were both I guess we
were and then you know it was our view
that we should have an identity of our
own that we should have a product that
was uniquely ours but available to a lot
of people so we have a radio show pilot
now called reveal it's on 170 public
radio says you're doing multimedia
you're doing video and audio and
packages and yeah and and I think that's
one of the things that differentiates
we're also doing things like tech rake
which is a combo of journalists and
technologists who get together it's
whether it's SoundCloud or Twitter or
Google and think about how can these
technologists help us solve these issues
of journalism
I do think that we don't want to ignore
the public we're supposed to serve and
so you want to have so if we do a story
that is about state hospitals and abuse
of this of the state police force of
patients in state hospitals which you
did which we did do and then we had
follow-ups that included town hall
meetings in Sonoma and Southern
California which were directly affected
in which we didn't want to tell people
here's what you should do because that
is advocacy but there's a sort of
activist journalism yeah right no what
what actually your grandfather called
journalism of action yeah and he made in
his view that may have been you know
invading Cuba but we take a slightly
liberate liberate in Cuba liberating
everybody in the jails over there but in
our perspective you know we took we
borrowed the phrase journalism of action
to mean we help people because if you
write a really good story or you
broadcast a really good story you're
gonna move people right they're gonna
want to do something about it and if and
if the motive your motivation is to make
people's lives better that's the general
sense of investigative reporting you can
fix things that are broken right
the role of a public official is not
just to serve the public oftentimes not
looking to Rob Ford Oahu aren't serving
the public but to create mythology
that's why their press conferences press
releases press secretaries they spin
everything yeah and then they sell it
and they're really good at it so our job
is to pull back the curtain their job is
to off you skate a little bit and make
sure that the news is the way they want
it so that's a relationship that should
accept reading something the other day
where I think it was the Obama
administration was doing their own press
conferences and issuing their own
photographs and not letting reporters
into certain meetings and this seems to
be a trend because the technology of the
internet and mass communications is now
being adopted by press agents and public
relations actions as it should as it
should the which was an inevitable
development inevitable and the Obama
administration of course has been worse
in terms of going after the press and
its sources than all previous
administrations combined they've taken
more action under Eric Holder in the
Justice Department and Obama so you know
this idea that journalists lean to the
left by nature and in general you know
if that's true then Obama is a
disappointment to journalists for a
whole nother set of reasons
he'd they've really been what if it was
reasonable it seems to me for Snowden to
say there is no whistleblower protection
if I surface this information to the
press because he never got to our
knowledge paid by a foreign government
or paid by a press organization so his
motive had to be in his own mind you
know exposing information that was in
the dark yeah I mean the conundrum for
journalists with with Edward Snowden is
you know is the whole traitor issue is
it appropriate and you know we take a
sort of snooty position in a sense but
appropriate one with a lot of these
leakers that like hey if the information
is good you know we're not going to care
where it came from and the reality is is
that without Snowden the reality is that
without Snowden we would not have had a
national debate and policy on the NSA
and secrecy and collection of data has
changed as a result no quest
about it
I can tell you that as a newspaper
editor and you should say what what your
perspective is as a former editor and
publisher my view was there were three
things that I would care I would three
circumstances where I would consider not
publishing something one if it had to do
with minors Yeah right
two if it had to do with eminent
potential harm to people and people were
going to die instantly if you put
something in the paper number three were
you know national security rias national
security issues but I would I would be
reluctant to publish the names of agents
who are undercover well I think there
have been instances where the press has
has held a story well an operation was
in progress so that they wouldn't ruin
the operation of the operation wouldn't
fail and there are people who will push
back even on that standard well you've
had your own anonymous source in the
shooter series that you did for Esquire
where the soldier the Navy SEAL who
actually entered the room with Osama bin
Laden and fired the fatal shot yeah
has his name has not been disclosed
although all the facts of the story have
been disclosed and you've put your
reputation on the line that you're being
told the truth and you're printing
accurate information such as it is read
our disclaimer well I mean we had that
so there's information that you would
choose not to publish or that you agreed
not to publish well I think that there
was an anonymous source or is that the
issue was he's not in the service
anymore right and he's not under car you
wouldn't be disclosing someone who's in
imminent danger or do you think no I
mean he the shooter had to think about
the fact that he entered into certain
agreements with the US government mm-hmm
when he became a Navy SEAL right and a
member of SEAL Team six about disclosure
of information as all specialist in the
armed services yeah I mean he's a Navy
SEAL right and so he had to make a
determination I mean technically you're
supposed to submit anything that you put
you want to put in writing that publish
to the government for review so if
you're you know Adam
ol Casey you know you're one of these
guys your general wants to write a book
I mean the government can keep that
under review for years and so the
shooter made a decision that most of the
story had already been told much of it
by the Obama administration and much of
it to the filmmakers of zero the dark
thirty that's a bright yeah
and so he felt that he was not
disclosing any anything that was still
secret yeah
now the government could have decided to
go after him and may still go after
technical reasons before but not balance
I think he's right yeah I think he's
right too
at one point someone who runs of who now
runs a major news organization was
actually talking about what we're
actually to do is get rid of all the
journalists and we're just going to have
news organizations that will service
other organizations and our sales people
will be experts in selling search engine
optimization and search engine marketing
and so everybody's like panic this is
the panic moment where everybody's gonna
like oh my god we have to grab onto
something
oh it's clicks well guess what it turns
out it's not really about clicks or
maybe it is I don't know is it I was
went to a conference over the weekend
where the reporter who was works for the
Orange County eternity press was saying
that he that he's asked to do listicles
which are kind of clickbait where you go
down and you click different I hear that
and I think of something else entirely
okay yes listicles but why I don't think
that's an enduring idea is because I
think it's a commodity and if the top 20
places places to buy ice cream is a news
story then everybody will do their own
top 20 ones and why does BuzzFeed which
makes the apparently is profitable made
hundred twenty million dollars in
revenue last year why is BuzzFeed
continuing their listicles and hiring
serious reporters to create a serious
news organization how is that well maybe
they're onto something well but like
what do you think I mean is that does
that fit together I just don't know how
commodity information in a world where
you can get it from so many different
places can be an enduring business
advantage right I think you have to
specialize and you have to have
something as nearly unique as you can
that's kind of my business view I could
be wrong all right so so then in the
from the business perspective if you
think of Twitter lost I think 500
million dollars in the last quarter of
last year is occasionally be profitable
for like a day or two I mean how how do
you imagine these things evolving well
the theory of those things was in my
mind best articulated by the node Khosla
why was we were partners in a venture
capital
partnership and a guy came in that had
phenomenal traffic and somebody around
the table was saying well what's the
what's the profit plan you know how is
this thing going to become a business
and four notes that if you give me
enough traffic I'll figure out some way
to make it profitable and I think that's
kind of what's driving some of the
internet acquisition prices if you give
me this firehose of traffic and behavior
I will eventually figure out some way to
do it right so Google figure it out and
it was about search and it was about
advertising yeah you know how my friend
John Doerr said that all internet
success stories are based on finding a
needle in a haystack and if you make a
list of the successful companies a lot
of them are like that not all of them
Twitter for example is not about finding
a needle in a haystack
I I do think it is an open question to
what degree Silicon Valley is going to
step forward and play the role that
their that their predecessors played
it's starting to happen
I see the names of some of these younger
people now showing up on not-for-profit
boards and I think they're they're out
of interest as well as generosity so the
jury's out but for the last decade
they've had you know deep pockets and
short arms but but I do think there are
people whether it's B's or Marissa Meyer
or other people who really Eric Schmidt
who really do care about these things I
don't know exactly what they're all
doing but I sense that their interest is
genuine and their desire to make a
difference is genuine in this sort of
famine that we're experiencing because
it used to be as you pointed out earlier
today that there were hundreds of
organizations reporting from foreign
capitals and you know the number of news
organizations that had Washington
bureaus was in the dozens right now it's
very very different you know a lot of
television news is b-roll shot by
freelancers a lot of the commentary is
to experts not to newsmakers there's not
much anymore that isn't in this sort of
opinion format so if that's your source
of news you you have to be aware that
you're getting very digested and so what
happens what typically happens is you
say well I'm I'm conservative so I'm
just gonna listen to Fox cuz that talks
to me the way I think the world works
and if your progressive then you say
well I'm gonna listen to MSNBC and
Rachel Maddow because that seems to me
the way the world works and I'm just not
even gonna tune in Fox all right so we
getting to the point where but that's
not news we're we're billionaires very
wealthy people are the sort of saviors
in this time period before we discover
what is the business model that involves
original there's always been wealthy
people that have a clause that they're
promoting right you have the Koch
brothers doing one thing we have Tom
Steyer starting his own green fund I
mean they will disseminate information
but those are news organizations those
are public advocacy groups like the
Sierra Club or the hare
but you they just send our news that do
reports they hire people but it's very
much slanted to the House sponsored
content it's sports content okay
you