the program still exists as a possibility. when they closed down or transfer of the population from the present sites, vice president cheney in particular made a point* to say we have to keep the capacy running. that is where i think it is, it is in limbo >> thank you. . . >> i h an interview with chuck at one point. i asked him about these issues. he said people don't care about them. and he represents, you know, a liberal district in new york. and he has a safe seat. but if he teals that they don't care and it's not worth speaking out on because people don't want to hear about, then i have to believe that that's a lot of people on the hill feel. >> chuck schumer might be right. i want to say i have a military background. it was heartening toayhe least to learn that not only do our enemies d this, but find out what we've found outn the last few years. my question is you talked about it's become the consens among experts that torture is in fact not that effective. and thingsike bribery and things that are so much easier are. how much of it just a step inside of the mind of dick cheney, which is frightening, you tald about the beginning how his world world that arica had gotten soft, that's why we were attacked. how much of it is regardless of the results of the interrogations just that we looked tough to people in the u.s. and to the world. how much of it? >> i think that is a big part of why countries are government torture traditionally. if you look at the banana republics, it's not just to get information, it's to intimidate opponents. and, you know, i'm unable to interview vice president cheney and ask him these things. i tried and tried, and was not given access to him. and i think it was probably was component. there was a certain amount of thinking that this is the kind of things that arabs understand. so it was sort of a, you know, a cultural thought. and they did right after kr-9d 11, the ci@ called up a number of arrear lab allies and said what works wh your people. and so we kind of turned to the wrong places for advice sometimes. thanks. >> yeah. i remember reading your story about alberta in the "new yorker" o of the things that struck me of that story and other stories i've read since is the amount of deception that went on. [phone ringing] . >> excuse me. the amount of deception that went on to keep him from kngwing where things stood with the policies that rumsfeld and haynes. >> it was incredible. he felt the policies were wrong. so they d @ washington thing. they had a study, and everybody participated. and he was under the impression that they weretill studying years later or a year later wn the grave photos came out. and then he learned that, i fact, from opponents that a policy had beenecided and his own suggestions had more or less been disguded and nobody had told him or the rest of the miliry leaders who had protested. this is high level, high ranking military people. they had no idea. >> i couldind of argue against a good faith sort of protecting -- simply protecting america. >> yes. yes. theres the -- that's aood point. and i think that if you read jack goldsmiths book, he writes about how he thought at fst l of the invocations of national security, reasons for keeping these meetings tiny and hardly telling anyone had to do with national security. and he came to the conclusion that it had to feel like there would be descent, some of it was to make sure that nody found out. you're right. that's a good point. >> i've r numerous times that extraordinary ambition of terror suspects began under the clinton administration. and suspects were sent to countries that sanctioned torture. >> it is true. the first one was egypt. what people tell me who has been involved i this program was that it changed in come fundamental ways after 9/11. they claim, and, i can't really test this. they claim that before 9/11 the suspects were reered to justice of some sort. they were peopl from whom there were warrants and they were ceain they were people that were serious suspects. after 9/11, supposedly, it became so willy-nilly that they were literally doing some people by mistake. and that they also stopped just instead o rendering them to some sort of judicial process, they were just rendered to a dead end where they were interrogated in brul ways and some disappeared. so supposedly the word that i have to quote from john adson in the book, not handling the issues, but certainly follow itin them closely. and he said it became a nightmare after/11. i'm not sure that was exactly a good dream before 9/11. it got much worse, i think. >> wther bush and cheney and those people are pardoned or not, in this country there is something called jurisdiction of prosecuting war crimes. and i believe that torture is one of those crimes that can be universally proseted. >> uh-huh. >> i want to know whether or not you've heard in your reporting if the's anything afoot, abored anywhere in terms of discussing this, whether it's at high level officials or high level government levels or just throufh the grapevine whether you've heard any steps. >> well, you know, there is a trial ongoing in italy of several dozen cia officers for a rendion of a muslim radical named abu omar. of criminal repercussions.e kind most of the governments of our allies, look at it as a headache. they don't want be crosswise with america. but the human rights cerinly are trying to see if they can't get somebody to arrest sebody whether it's one of our officials when they travel. and there's a lawyer named, and a human rights, named felipe sands, saying that rumsfeld might not b able to travel aboard as comfortably as he could not past. >> i know the center for constitutional rights filed something a fewears ago in germany. that case was thrown out. for reasons i'm not sure of it >> i'm told spain is the most likely bet. because there's a prosecutor there who is very interested in these issues. and so i just, you know, i don't know. it's someone who covers politics, i find it hard to believe the leaders of our country are going to be facing those kinds of prosecutiofs either at home or abroad. you know, again, i think it comes back to the political climate. it's the political climate here that matters. thank you. >> first of all, jane, and dana, thank you very much for all of the work that you have done. it's really outstanding for the united states and the world. and c and barbara, thank you very much for having this and many many other important presentations. it's very, very valuable. i have a question about accountability tt falls on some of the others. first of all, number one, there is my knowledge the very first hearing in the judicia in the house committee tomorrow on the impeachment of geor w. bush. and he -- there's going to b-- i don't know who the testifying list is. but i would encourage anybody interested to attend. i think it's very important. i think the high crimes and misdemeanors have been committed , sanctioned, by the predent of the united states of america. i think that's dangerous. secondly, chuck schumer isust nuts to say that people don't care. absolutely crazy. i just think that's nuts. and i think my question f you is this:do you think and i guess you might hav answered this previously, that there is any possibility at all that this could be taken to high -- to the house of representatives? >> i don't think so. i don't see it's happening. it's interesting you bring it up, john, the lawye memos who made the foundation. i remember saying to him that he's argued that torture, if the president orders it, that it's legal to have tture. and i said wl, so what's the -- what kind of accountability is there? he said, peach people can impeach him. that was the only process he invoked. i think nobody really expected it or expects it to happen. >> i thought we could get to two more if we were quick. [inaudible question] >> okay. thank you. wants to tryne last question? >> well, i've seen you tv, so that's why i came to see you here. you talked on the real reason from all of this. i'm in england, and there was a scandal in england about torture in ireland. now what's striking is the torture and occupation for 3,000 years. this is the first administration starting to be thoht about it. but in israel at happened is it become known not because of the photographs because of the serious of marshals about jews in israel being tortured. when everyone realized what's going on, and military officer saying this, they say the point of torture is not what you do to people in prison, it's not intimidate people not in prison. and that's the reason for doing these kis of things. >> it's interting. rather than intimidating our enemy, we are spurring them on. there's been no greater recruiting tool than the photographs of abu for al qaeda. so anyway. but -- are we? one more. >> after tt we will be signing books. there you go. >> thanks. >> you mentioned that there -- you saw that there were no instances of ticking clock of the united states being saved through torture. >> i'm told, yes. >> have you found any instances of attacks being or americans being killed through the programs that has actionable intelligenceeen gotten? >> i'm sure there's been some. and certainly i know of an instance where it wasn't americans who were ing to be attacked. it was an instance where there was going to be an attack abroad that was stopped by grabbing abu, and making him speak about it. it was an attack on a school abroad. at the same time there haseen many attacked stopped just by interviewing in people in other ways too. agn, it's, you know, i just feel tt the from a journalistic stand point, my interest is in getting more information. i think that we don't have to just go on the word of the people who werenvolved in the program. soothing. [applause] pull lit where are >> thank you for coming to the discussion of pulitzer gold. i came from st. louis where joseph pulitzer and say politwhere are. it's just something you have to adjust to. i'm roy harris, i the author of the book. and i am really truly learned to have two journalist and sasha pfeiffer to my immediate right. part of our goal tonight is to ok a b at the powerful contributions of this century-long body of work. it was 90 years when i started work on it. we're now upo almost a century. the prize started in 1917. and we're going to look at the powerful ctributions of this work, this body of work that is represented in the bk pulitzer's gd. but also exam the degree to which that type of reporting, that level of reporting is threatened. reporting of public service nature on which democracy depends, and that's where the future of journalism element comes in tonight. i wish i could tell you that the past is prologue having studied over these wonderful stories. but i'm afraid this maybe one of those cases where that may not apply. toy far right is elizabeth meen, he's former national correspondent and her writer maybe found in the "los angeles times" today. >> you can't take the newsroom out of the girl. >> she's also been an editor. the "l.a. times" it one of the three newspapers that has won the pulitzer prize on five occasions over the 90 plus year history. most recently in 2005, lthough it was a very different "l.a. times" in 2005. a cal bkeley grad, he's the author of "born to soon." and "after the darkest hour." and she's the coauthor of "overcoming infertility." her son, sam, is a journalism aalcoholic, and a student at hampshire. m glad to find him into journalism in his 20s. >> it's a mutant gene. >> after reporting for the boston globe where among other award winning stories, she played a key role on the spotlight team investigation that won the three public service pulitr gold medal for its stories on sex abuse in the catholic church. she was a night journalism stanford, and after returning to the "global," she is now a professor and coauthor of "betrayal." the crisis in the catholic church. you've heard her reports on the environment, and maybe a few new things this week. and she got her start in journalism at the bookly times moving to the "global" in 1995 a. so as for me, i was in fact a reporter at the wall street journal and i spent most of my time in los angeles where ias deputy chief of the los angeles bureau. and i cered aviation and the defense industry. i moved to boston in 1995 to work for the economist group which owns cfo magazine and later the online cfo.com. in 2002 i began reseahing the stories behind the stories mf the public service pulitzer prizes, which as i mentied were first awarded in 1917. and i did that because i found that there really was no good report of how that award winning work had been done. and i found that a lot of reporters really knew nothing about tt heritage of great reports. i wanted to write it for journalism students, but also i wanted to write it for general readership, the same people who might have enjoyed all of the president's man, who loved the idea of finding out how newspapers and how journalist work at their very peak. what i found as i menti was that very little had been written about these prizes. and it's interesting that you would expect the pulitzer prize wod be well known. but the stories of how these articles were written basically is not well known. and all the president's men is the exption that proves that rules. everybody knows a lot about woodward and bernstein. i got to spendome time with woodward and ben bradley. basically, it was the lesser stone stories where i found the real treasure. these were bases through the years dating all the gay back to world war i. that showed how newspaper journalism had increasingly been playing a role of exposing local regional and national problems. in those early years that was very little of that. and theyould do this in the early years often again great odds. and in a very early years in 1920, pulitzer winning stories exposed, for example, charles ponze was exposed by the "boston st." but other stories helped midweste farmers learn to deal with the dust bowl, they reflected southern leadership workingor peaceful school integration in the '50s in little rock, and they took on just as one example out of the left field, a viciousalifornia cu in the late 1970s. for the stories from '30s on, i was able to find journalist o had been involved. i was very fortunate to find even journalist from as far back as 1936. all of those journalist from the '30s he since died. but it was truly wonder to be able to get their stories. they felt like many of the other journalists, their stories behind the stories had never been told before. well, why coincidence while i was working on this project starte about 2002, there were two extraordinary cases of journalism that were occurs in our backyard right here in boston. one the winner in 2007 was my old paper, "wall street journal" which one the first prize in 2007 for its discovery of how coanies were improperly backdating the stock options. the other of course was the 2002 work of the "global" spotlight team to expose the years long church cover up of how young parishioners were acured b prie. that story became center fold. i was amazed to find that no one d really told that story behind the story. it gave me a great chance to meet the spotlight team, including sasha. that story, however, was, as we'll hear a little bit about tonight was rudely interpreted by yet another story that w to win the public service prize. and that of course was 9/11. the "boston global" was churning away on that story when september 11th happened. that was aery local as well as a regional story, internaonal story. and it washe "new york times" that won the next year for heir coverage for their creation of a nation challenge, the section that they invented really to help hdle that issue. and within it, the ptraits o grief. thetudy of terrorism victims. so just very briefly, in researching the globe stories that where i met sasha. and i discovered her amazing contribution to the reporting. each team o reporters is -- has an amazing blend in it. i've dealt with a lot of teams. many of them were reported by teams. and one of sasha's functions there was to interview the victims. an really made those interviews come alive. these were victims who in many cases had never talked about what had happened to them years and years before. so tonight i think our discussion will indeed turn to the question of the future of journalism. it will be a natural function i think of looking at some of these great stori and the great public service tradition of the globe and of "los angeles times" and other papers like this. that was a subject that i did not consider at all when i began researching. in 22 it had not even occurred to me that newspapers were doing to be entering this slippery, slippery slide. so i've had to kind of reinvent the book as i got closer to writing it. i had to rewrite certain sections of it to get a sense for what was happening in journalism. so i'd like to turn things over now to elizabeth for some thoughts on the pulitzer winning legacy, and pulitzer's goals and what is becoming of public service in 21st century. it's not a totally negative prospect, is it? >> no, it's not. i want to interject quickly one brief note. i was lucky enough to write about pulitzer's goal for a magazine at harvard, it's a college across the river, you guys may have heard it. i think we should do some full disclosure and state that roy has aersonal connection to this whole story. this book is an extraordinary labor of jrnalism and research. and it's really, it's a gold mine, bad pun, for journalism junkies. >> i like it. >> it was really fun to read the early stories about how these things were done. could you please mention you father? >> my father was involved with teams that won four public service pulitzer prices back beforehey were slices young, what it was and isn't? one of those stories was one he had broken himself. >> they were really important. so the book is both the labor of wonderful journalism research and history of which i think we don't have enough. most of us who are practicing journalism, do it at a break-neck pace. her and i both got phone calls, 3 in the morning, me at 2, after senator kendy died. we don't stop to think about the history. thought roy's book was both the labor of research and a labor of love, which is prett nice too. so i think it comes back also to the -- the lies behind the sort of motive from any of us to becgme journalist. i think i probably thought i was going to grow up to be, oh, a don't know jane austin. but that didn't work. instead i became lois lane. i always had a formal, which is a very operative formula in newsrooms. especially internet news room now. it was four for them and one for me. meaning i did four stories which they assign to me or which are kind of the stories to feed the engine. and the fifth one washe one i cared passionately, deeply, and it was always about the underdog, starvation, digng up especially shining lights on injustice. you know, that's the part that keeps us going. that's the fuel for all of us as journalist, i think. at we are always looking for the other side. that's whyt' not going to go away. to quickly answer the future of journalism question, there is a future. it's maybe not a healthy future at this moment. journalism is alive it's just not as well as we'd like it to be. but we are in the state of evolution, sta of flex, things are changing. as i said to roy earlier, we're kind of like those creatures emerging out of the sea. we haven't decide. i said earlier to someone in the audience, i really do believe community journalism is not going to go away. and i think probably it will be a long time -- some of these web sites do not work t same way or even some communities that people have that people want to read about themselves. there is a very good example here in boston is the bay state banner which is the african-american long-time publication which has been floated alone by the city. that's how important it is. an i think that's unprecedented region. a word we are taught very carelly never to use. because the moment you say it, someone is going to come up. just said it. don't tell my edito. i want to report some good news. and that is that -- now i'm goin to put my prophet hat on. it's weird as a journalist. you think of yourself, we're kind of scribes, we're working stiffs, we have -- i always have ink stains on everything. i never buy anything white. this whole professor thing is like who? anyw, very high and young people's interest remains high. i think this is a very positive sign. robert mcneill recently is speaking at the cronkite school of journalism in arizona described a journalism degree as sort of the new liberal as or all-purpose degree. why is that? because the foundation, of course, of all journalism is curiosity. that's what keeps us going. and a big question of somewhat of the older children. he was sad. the ones you want to slap. soe' teaching inquiry alleges to fact, of course teach very, very deep research skills which is what happens when a team gets going. we do prioritization of events. we've had to figure out what is the most important effort. we teach clear writing. so much so the ones i le to writ uh-huh, this is uncreative. that's kind of what is in a way. but it can be more so. so -- and we tch a way to funnel, a way to esent truth and a way to find it to identify it and to put it forrd and defend it. afterall the only thing we have it our own integrity and truth. that's it. that's pretty impornt. but turning to investigative journalism and to the public serve which remains the gold standard to use the pun again. and so it is. i also have been lucky enough to be par of a pulitzer team. and that was in los angeles from rodney king. it was - we've all worked on them. we all know how important you are. when you're doing the work, you're thinking this is a hot story. it's really important. it's very interesting to me. this kind of reporting. that's one reason it's in jeopardy. and it's very expensive because it's time consuming. the notion is growing rar in newsroom. instead we are seeing hybridization, which is actually pretty exciting. we're seeing, well, actually in journalism i used to work with right out of journalism school i worked with a photographer named joe rosenthal which you may know took the famous photograph of the flag in heir regime ma. he used to come in running say stops he presses this just in. stop the presses, this just in. iulled this off the web today. this is an example of the gup of reporters from the san diego union tribune who have watched the watchg institute. it's a group of reporters who are forming investigator journalism organization nonprofit. and the heartening thing is the biggest funder is they will be oviding stories for various outlets withithe communities. we focused on that particular area. similarly, in none other place than the virgin islands. the reporters working there at the virgin island daily news so a pulitzer prize service winner. an you know, here it is this gorgeous pair dice of a place. and they are digging up ambitious projects with titles ke contracts and cronies. showing how the island's government had created sham company to award contracts. these are really, really important subjects. the public foods to know this information. must have this information. how else? nowhere else. so no more seeing the organizations where reporters and committed journalist who maybe are being marginazed from their own newsrooms and are setting up their own outfits it's a big group out of new york, which has some of the best repoers in america. a wonderful thing. we are now seeg a lot of parker in universities. b.u., where sas and i teach, and also our instructor charlie. we have the negligee center for investigator journalism which is representing again a partnership of practicing journalist, student journalist, and the university. so it provides a kind of win/win thing for everybody. my alma mater, you see berkeley as a really excellent program going on. essentially many, many of the universities except harvard, which has a few draws back. so and although it's true that -- they are probably onehe hottest a best known. how many journalists got to be played by robert brad ford. -- bradfd. the kids do learn these stories. the good news is they want to become these journalist. and knots just -- i mean, you know, my students look at all the president's men. and it's stories not dictated. but they do not want to look like those guys. or anybody else in the newsroom. so it's not about becoming those specific pple. they want the hard work. they see tt it's not an easy job. but they want the glory too. we're all glory hogs. we worked so hard. but they want to be these people. so thether element to note thoughs the form of delivery wi be changing. and is changing now. because many newapers and newspaper chains are outright vanishing or -- which is tragic. we all worry about the hometown paper here in boston enormously. i don't think it's going to go away but we worry. or our cutting back so much on staffs. the tribune corporation which is the corraon now on "los angeles times" basically has eliminated all correspondence except staff. the form of delivery will be anging. we will be seeing much mor team work such as we're describing from theseroups in san diego and elsewhere on the web. there will be dedicated web site. if you google web sites now. the downside is there's no way to monitor them. unless you have the university unless you have journalist -- who knows we're getting wikipedia. we don't know. it's in a state of evolution. we will be seeing more. and for that reason i think we're going to see the pulitzer committee itself having to make some evolution of its own. right now pulitzers are completely print centric. that's it? >> it's pomping. >> it's morphing it. but soon or later they will have to admit it's web or internet specific. they will have to broaden. i think all of us are going to be going. i know there are web web sites that i read daily. particularly investigators. it's all changing. we have all had morning papers delivered well into the great next century, whenever. we'll have them in the next life. >> i think the mention of what's going on in boston does creat a huge issue of all of us wondering about the amazing reporting that went on in 2002 and whether that kind of reporting can still continue. i hope you will at least kind of attahat one. >> sure, when i was reading roy's book it reminded me of a story the whole spotlight team. we mentioned this. at our business you do go as speed. and the great part of the job is it's interesting, and it's hard to be board. the hard part is you can't control your schedule. you lose a lot of control. i had a friend at the globe who just decided she couldn't make any weeknight plans ever because she had to ccel them. i'm a reliable personho's job makes me unliable. it's crazy news. the story that i mention is i had been covering courts. i was asked to joi the spotlight team, one of them said enjoy your early retirement. because the reputation has been they do one or two projects, they are going to work a very 9 to 5 life. well, in my case it turned out exactly oosite. we did do one project that we spent a few months on. the typical pattern was a three-day series, and then y write about that change. when we begin to write about the story and publish, it became a daily beat for the globe. and it then became a national story. we felt we couldn't let ourselves be beat on a storye had started. in my case it was not an early retirement at all, it was pretty exhausting. it was a real privilege to be able to do that kind of work. it's fairly private a hard to get to. that was done by design. what we were working ocould be done in private and even within the newspaper very few people would know. we basically wanted to get so far ahead that no one else could catch up with us. in m case, the brief historx of this project was that in early 2002, the globe got a new editor. it was a classic case of fresh eyes on annealed sry. many of youemember john, here was a lawyer who diligently would file lawsuits alleging swale -- sexual abuse. former glnbe worker had written a file. all of them were sealed. they had requested that the courts seal them. saying basically the privacy interest outweighed the interest. they got their privacy reque which means that most of them were not available. so marty, new to the globe said why has no one issue he asked the "globe's" lawr to go to court and overturn it. the "globe" lawyer went to court. they were revled. wh don't you try to figure out how much was known? the church always said it was a few bad apples. we had a sense that there were many more priest. and the church had known that it was happening. and we began to do that. we found out the problem was much more widespread. there was incredible documentation, the church had known, people had gone to pch -- bishops, and people would be shipped elsewhere. the sou shore would go to the north shore, if a priest was shifted, you'd never see them again. we h one parent who had taken her kid on a ski trip that sh had complained about. she disappeared, and she found out she had been sent to another parish. that was really crushing. we were on it for a solid year and a half when we decided it was time to move on and let them take over. it was interesting reaction. there were readers who felt like they were tiredf reading. we also heard from people who felt the spotlight team let them down. the reality was the was a time we had to hand it off and start a new project. it is as i said a privilege because you are let to be on your ownnd take as much time as you need for big story. in the newsroom there's incredible pressure to be productive. people sometimes ask me whether i've ever had a quote toe but i think ever reporter has an internal sense of when you are or are not producing enough. so you have to do a lot with wanting to do meaningful stories that are going to take lot of times. we had this expression of bigging dry wells. if you have a good story. spent lot of time. maybe it isn't as good as you think. suddenly you tell your editor you don't think you can deliver -- oronr. you have to go sometimes down the road for a while until you figure out it's worthwhile. in the casef investigator team, it's four or five people's time for quite a while. so that is ihink is the big concer now is newspapers are i a lot of trouble. and how long can they continue to fund that kind of project where you put off for quite a while when you're trying to do as much work. can you afford to let people work quietly on something you hope will have a lot of impact. the "globe" still have the health care series, very in depth and detailed. so up to know, the job is committed to that. it has one the countries longest investigator teams. so i think that's areat sign. as liz mentioned, some reall really incredible innovative programs. a lot of these are nonprofits. a lot of these are philanthropy funded. there's a different kind of risk. if you are not self-sufficient, then you are vulnerable to market changes tt can hurt the deep mket pockets. we hope as newspapers try to figure it out, they don't lose that piece of it. we have given up a lot of national and international reports in many cases. hopefully we can do the deep dig-in local story. because the one thing i tell people, and i learned, is you have to question authority. because if you don't, this is wh happens. and i think that that's why you need these teams who dig around and ask a lot of questions. so that,ou know, so the bad ings don't hpen. basically. >> i think there's one piece of this that i want to bring up. that is that an organization that comes into you community and will do a story if they see a story that nee to be done. so often that kind of reporting dependent on things bubbling up from the beat. and this is one of the pieces that's missing here is that when publications, whether they are web sites or newspapers, when they begin to look at things as i can bring in the reporters to find out about our problems in a community, the history of the public service prize in most of these cases the story originally comes from the reporter. whether it's the religion reporter or the court reporter, certainly the base of watergate for those of you who remember the movie or book begins to bubble up for wha is said in the courtroom. >> or the offhanded remark. tell the philadelphia story. >> i will tell one. i have a better reason nor telling phidelphia. i want to touchn the stories so you know where the bk heads. but the case where the story comes from a beat is the one thing i tnk we reall hav to worry about when mainseam media begins to decline. we're not going to be able to cover the beat with amateur reporters in the way we can do rightow. there's nothing wrong with amateurs. it's just what we have all of these trained reporters who do know how to get a story, how to work on a team, you have this blend of the young reporters who can work 24/7 and the experts who will come in and spend out that time with the story as a family. it's -- i think it's still a very necessary commodity. and it's one of the things i think we forget when we think blogs can handle this. a group of experts can handle it. the reason elizabe mtioned philadelphia, i was going to bring it up. it's just one case from the book that has a couple of things going for it. one it's easy to tell because it's a fairly short stories. some of these stories you get into how a tea works. as you can tell from what sasha was saying, it gets to be detailed. i think it's fun. sometimes it's hard to relate especially in a microphone. the other nice thing about the uirer" story is it can be done by any reporter anywhere as long as they had the support of the editor to say go bring me in story. the reporter now writes for the "washington post" at the time he was at the "philadelphia quirer." heas cering medical business on the business page of "it felt -- philadelphia inquirer." while he was sitting there he thought to himself, you know, i really don't know what happens to this blood when it leaves my arm. put it in a bag or btle and somehow it becomes i guess a commody. something happens to it. and it might make a good little story to do. a medical business reporter, why shouldn't i look into something like this. he went into his editor who was a blood donor. come to thinkf it, i don't know either what goes on. he puts down his notes about the first thing you do. you go to the local red cross, set up an interview with the guy who hits. and he went to the guys office and sat down with him and said i'd like to do a story. i was giving blood, and i figured out i didn't know anything about wherehe blood went. what happens to the blood? and for example, what kind of price do you put on a liter of blood. and the director looked at him and said, why a you asking this question? we don't have to tell you anything about this. >> this is called aed flag to a journalist. >> gill referred to it as his antenna beginning to with the the. and that was the beginning of his decision that he needed to spend some time with this. lucky, he had a great editor, gene roberts, who is the legend, and was one of the truly great editors all time. and hisditors just told him go for it. you have the time too this. now that of course is an expense for the newspaper. that person who'supposed to be covering the medical business no longer can do those spot stories because he or she has to go out and now follow up on this story. and that's the expense of an investigator team that we kind of lose sight of. newspapers first cut back on the most expensive thing they have, foreigneporters. almost all gone now. then they started cutting back on investigative, and beats will come soon. >> one of the luxuries or advantages you mention, it can be risky to have a beat reporter do a controversial story. you can end up torching bridges. we when did tt story, at what point you bring in. he's going to need to maintain longer term relationship than the stlight team could afford to beadown harder. it's ver interesting again what you lose when you don't have that team that can not have to worry about the long-term beat cultivation. >> that was part of the fun of the book. when i disred that no one had come to the reporters and said howid this story evolve? how did you do it? fo me as a 40-year reporter i was fascinated to find out what michl paulsen felt about not being the point person on the story. it was not great that a of this edge reporterring was going on all around him while he was covering the church. by the time it was over he ha written more of the stories, or his name waq on more of the stories. but it took a while. >>nd the beat reporters can get very uet, because in tromping on your turf, some o them is very awkward, when you aron somebody's soi for instance, we don't know as much about the church. we may have used the wrong no, mam n clayture. in seeking the story, we might not have had all the right terminology. as one reporter tried to case all of the catholic ternology was quite something. you had to too, it was like you needed a glossary on just the estimates and stuff like that. >> we reporter knows that a lot of readers don't kno what i hope comes alive in the book. and that is that each o these great stories starts with something little germ. me little curioty and basic question. wen you go back and do the pos post mortuum on the story, i think people take that literally. but there's an aming process of looking hats whether a story started from giving blood in the office, almost all of the stories that i write go back and look at what i call the ah-ha moment when some reporter stud realizes that this story that he or she has been covering every y could the story of a lifetime. and that's what we i think as readers need to keep encouraging. and tt's what the students want to learn. that's what they want to work with. so that's why i was so amazed to fi so few of these stories behind the storying had been told. >>t's one more sort of threat i'd like to bring up, and one reason that's it's important when we talk about the finces and the cutbacks in the budgets and the cutbacks in the number of reporters. and that's also the consolidation of newspaper, and news organization, and sometimes they fall into the hands of dare we say philistine business owners. for instance, the owner of the tribune corporation who has been trying to unload it once he figured out it wasn't fun basically said pulitzer, and i won't used the vulgar language, who gives a blank about the pulitzer. why do we care about prizes? that's unimportant. how do you the -- we don't get much affirmation as journalist. we don't make a lot of money. well, maybe brian williams. but those of us out there at 2 in the morning with phone calls, we do it because we love it an we care about it. and there is a sense of affirmation with a pulitzer prize, who couldn' serve any of them, it is just a delirious momentor everyone. it's a moment when you feel that your entire organization has been recognized, and particularly those works are. and i'm sure you had the same thing. people are giddy, people are cry. it's a moment. and it's not about us vers them. it's about something good happened. it's really quite remarkable. >> well, i would like to open the floor for some queions. but there was one other pint. kind of the promising things that are happening. it should be encouging to know that young people are still trying to learn how they can serve in journalism whether it's going to be online or print. the other thing is what'salled a news literacy movement. it's just kind of budding now. but i think for all of those young people who don't know the difference between a blog post or something that pops up on their telephone from a friend and a fully-reported story in a newspaper, there is now this movement going on to try and teach students and readers in general how to evaluate the material thathey get. i won't say the news, because it may not be news. hgw do they look at reporter, and it gives them tools. the kind of tools that most of uq learned at, you know, the knee of our father and mother how to read ssibly when you read. and a lot of kids today really don't have that. media is media. if it's flashing, it's true. and this -- >> you mean it isn't? >> i warned you about that. but the news literacy movement is applying theame kind of discipne to this as we in journalism school learned. and i think it's a very positive thing. so you're hearing a lotf positive things. you probabhy when you saw future of journalism, you thought it was going to be people beating it up about how terrible it is. you can do that, youe the audience. are there any questions out there? people always ask me what my favorite story is, i tell them it's like judges children. which is your favorite children? but we have talked about a couple of them that are great? any burning queions? awe, they follow instructions. >> thank you for the hopeful future. but from what i read about the ok, i was expecting to hear the back story of how the pris are awarded. and if there's some controversy, so drama to that. is that in the book or is that the next book? n ht's not book. it wasn't something that was driving me at the beginning. i really wanted to tell the stories of theeporter. but in doing it iound myself getting deeper and deeper into the pulitzer process. and i was writing a lot of that for journalist so they see how it works. what i found was that inhe early days in the middle theys of the prizes, the early days of the prizes really no one knew what a pulitzer prize was. it's hard to imagine tha we have this image ofeople like thorton wilder. in the early days there was no was.e of what is pulitzer price it was jus remarkable that you can find a story that other editors said you did a great job. : who was on the board when he was at "the washington post" coming enduring watergate sure that he was going to have to fight to get watergate to win because those of you who were around at time remember lot of newspapers were not following watergate. they thought "the washington post" was y off on a tangent anit wasn't until people starte confessing that it was clear that they hadeally been on the right track, but in the late '70 there was a reform movement that the ulitzer prize in my judgment is and i try and track this through by talkingo people inside and out the organization, was that there were some very strong leaders who reformed the pulitzer movement to make sure that it was a diverse group, came from small papers and large papers. the juries were also diversified, and what has come out of it is a very pure kind of committee that exist there now i think they have a bit of a problem getting elibeth was suggting getting dragged io the modern world of media but when it comes to the best tories of the year, they are devoted to making sure that certain qualities are recognized when they named the prizes. and i think the book does trace how that changed between the '70s and '80s and '90s. >> you address this abed but from your reporting to what extentid you think the pulitzer infiltrates the process at all and to whatxtent is it just tear merit? i think now it is pure merit. the only place where you are going to have realolitics is the board takes the jury recommendation and they sit down with their 14 prizes, one of ich is public service prize. i am talking journalism prizes. but they look at the 14 stories and they, that they are picking and the juries have picked, and they will throw out what is that they kind of over ruled that the figure do not belong in the best stories of the year. i wouldn'tall that a political decision. i would call that decision of when we have this body of work for the year in front of us we want to make sure that the 14 stories that are the t exprsion of american journalism are the ones that are selected so i think that element of politics is gone but now you have a sittion where they don't worry any more about the publication getting 45 prizes. washington we know in 2003, the year that the 9/11 prizes were awarded thenew york times" won seven prizes and there wer only 14 including the public service prize. last year, in 2008, "the washington post" won the i think five and so you will probably see that more and more if the newspaper really has a ntastic year, more prices will probably be @warded in one publication. >> it is important to say sometimes it isrue that their ses where editors to sit down d plot stories with the hope, with the anticipation/hope there ll be a pulitzer project and i think the "new york times" does that a lot. they have the resources on the team in the scale and the quality and it works. seven pulitzers. >> actually part of what i loved out the book is it gaves such an array of the different winners and the near times covered after september 11 rec jan incredibly, a wderful read and was siri thorough. >> and it was trendsetting sasha. it transcended the way we journalist practice our craft which is very important, the lives remembered. it was a very important moment. >> and it was a great wind. >> on the other se you have these solo efforts that also win and it is a reminder that you don't have to be the 800-lb gorilla. obviously you have a big advantage but it can also be done. >> we always love the underdog as journalists so when the someone wins that we are just like yes. >> there were underdogs that the "new york times" to machen one of the things that amazed me, here was a case where it went to the "new york times" and talk to the itors who had planned and put together portraits of grief and what i found was we essentially have an accidental pulitzer there, that these were mid-level editors who just like all of us when we are pressed on a story are told onef the editors a woman named chris dean who had come over from news dale a few years before was told bring me a treatment of how we handled the victims. on the seconday after 9/11. well, if you remember, we didn't know who was dead. we didn't know who was missing. we knew who was misng but we didn't know anything, whether it was a couple of thousand, whether it was 20,000. you are on the newspaper, the greatest newspaper in the coun trying to fige o how to cover this. heres christine k. this job is tell me how to cover victims. poraits of grief began to evolve because they couldn't ca them obituaries. they didn't know living or dead. althey knew was tt people were missing. it was in fact when i talked to christie and i found where this all came from, it was the flyers' that s began to collect. have you seen myusband? have you seen my cousin? last seen, going up to the windows on the world. d it w those pamphlets that began to suggest to her that there is a way to do this and she began to develop this kind of 200 word pro-file, extremely controversial part of those of us who remember profiles of grave probably remember them as these little jewels that they were extremely controversial including among t families who would callnd say why didn't you say that my son was the hea rotary? th was the biggest thing in his life. the aicle was about how he was a great soccer coach for h kid. those articles hammered away at one little ement of someone's life and some of their relatives, w got involved didn'think that was the case. just amazing stories that came out ofhe assumed the "new york times" is going to handle everything like a military movement, was not that way at all. they didn't know where these things would come from. nation challenge, portered sieve grief kind of bubbled up from beneh and in that some of the things were opposed by the top editors but they didn't know what to do aboutt because they were already in print. yes maam. can you come to the microphone? >> hi. a.u. mentioned that the farm reporters are the first ones to be gotten rid of. do you foresee a new model for reporting on foreign affairs? >> there is a wonderful model coming right out of boston. we are so lucky to have that here. are you familiar with globaled posed? globaled's.com is an exciting adnture in journalism. it is the brainchild of the former-- >> the foreign correspondent from the globe. >> i am not sure. >> he is a wonderful reporter, just a reporter's reporter. i mean he usually writes the story we all wish we would have ridden and the founder of new england cable, which by the way is the oldest regional community, original cable in the country and when he started doing cable news and people started saying what? are you nuts? of course it became-- so it is the web site dedicated entirely to foreign news and international. here iwhat makes it so interesting, is that they have correspondents basing all the countries who are actually practicing journalist in the country, not just as in journalism so it is really exciting. it too because it made its debut in january so it is still new but it is so exciting. my friend actuly was working on one of their love postings ani#ve had a couple of students in turn with them. but it is a really exciting moment. what it does is it eliminates the cost of sending correspondce to a country because they are already there and it also eliminates the response of nature. and other words are right takes place, a coup takes place today, executionsn nigeria take ple. if you send somebody they are they are they are and they already know the context, they know something about the country. they don't have to get, you know, we as journalists, we parachute into this thing and in 30 seconds become the world's leading expert from paraguay. which means we have had to cram our brains with this stuff so these are people who a actual in the community, understand. it is very exciting. >> and they know how to do for reporting. >> verse dealed journalist you know how do foreigner reporting. >> there's a lot of obstacles to just getting your sry. >> it is still on the island of sanity in a gbal madhouse i'm afraid because we have been cutting back so much from the years when t tribune had, the "chicago tribune" had a staff all over the world and the "l.a. times" had a staff all over the world. >> we still have two or three. >> no, five or six or seven i ink. [laughter] >> anyway it didn't used to be that way and i think we really need to balance that out. my former employer, the economists, is in hog heaven right now because nobody is delivering fr news and the economist is growing because it can deliver this in we are getting an awful lot of our news now from the "associated press" and thosere essentially coming through this f reporters out there. >> you see on a really important point because we are becoming insulated in this country. we really don't know much abt-- "we get our tradition stories like oh my-- one of my editors use decollates the mars reporting where you would go, oh my goodness as opposed to someone who actually has some contacts and knowledge, and understands the culture so it is very dangerous i think because we don't get enough from the rest of the world here. >> there also may be a danger that you lack outsider eyes on thosetories. >> that is a danger of course because absolutely and particularly in some totalitarian regimes where you can't cover news very accurately or you will die or be banished. of course that happens it se at the white house. udall literally diana degette spanish, it happened in the george w. bush white house a lot so it is a very good question however you have oversigh from managers in this count who can stop and go what? and, that may be the momt you to send people over to, and charlie did a big tour to go and you know look at the stories from the outsider's perspective. >> you are quite right, that is a good point. >> we can take one more question. i guess we are running a little bit ov an hour. >> i have a? mike paulson story. i got a callrom springfield masshusetts when i was up the new hampshire yesterday a they told me to get the boston globe. there was an article where mike paulson wrote an article about one of the great survivors and is a dear friend of mine. it was about to fold butn