cohen. >> i'll let you wave to the fans and we'll go inside. >> hey, guys. you here to get your book signed later? okay. thank you. thanks for coming. side pony, cute. i see you. >> how did he become such a pop icon? a conversation with the brains behind bravo. while diane, charlie, barbara, ted, robin, and george were in front of the camera, david weston was running abc news. we'll have a candid chat about the way he dealt with major mistakes, political pressure and painful layoffs. and new orleans is becoming the largest american city without a daily newspaper. as the times pecayune cuts down to three times a week. is this a death spiral for the daily paper? i'm hourt kurtz, and this is "reliable sources." it looked like this was a garden variety political flap over cory booker, the new york mayor was saying on television that he didn't like the obama campaign's ad against romney's tennesseure at bain capital or an aaborted plan to rip the former president's pastor. >> the last point i'll make is this kind of stuff nauz ating to me on both sides, and it's gnaws oughting to the american public. enough is enough. stop attacking private equity and jeremiah wright. >> within hours the booker released what joe scarborough said looked like a hostage video. >> let me be leer. mitt romney has made his business record a centerpiece of his campaign. >> the liberals went off on booker, especially at msnbc, especially chris matthews. >> i want you to just hold while we watch the president now do this very intricate response to what the mayor of newark said yesterday, which i think was an act of sabotage. whatever the intention was, he was trashing the entire obama campaign in one appearance on "meet the press." >> are the media bringing more heat than light to the debate over romney's business record? joining us here in washington ann, deputy national political editor of the washington post, and roger simon, political columnist for politico. roger simon, why do liberal commentators complain when a politician like cory booker actually says something interesting as opposed to towing the party line? >> because it's off message. >> how is it our job to enforce politicians being on message? >> it's the exact opposite of our job, but whenever we see a politician actually getting off message, we say, oh, my gosh, that campaign has screwed up. he is making a mistake. and, of course, the white house didn't hope by publicly taking cory booker to the wood shed, which it's done a number of times in this campaign, and forcing cory booker to humiliate himself on national media and twitter. >> ann, we in the press, it seems to me, often complain that politicians stick to the talking points. they're so predictable and don't deviate from the script. then we take their heads off when they do? >> do we that i their heads off or relish in it? i think there were other liberals and democrats who were the ones who took his head off after the fact. not to mention the white house. >> chris matthews said it was sabotage on mayor booker's part. >> that's a certain perspective. i think what we all revelled in was the fact that it was dissinges among the ranks. we haven't seen that very much from either side. after a long season where the republicans were all disagreeing with each other, to see a little bit of daylight, which at the end it was just a little built of daylight between a few handful of democrats and the administration, and not much, i have to say, over private equity and how it should be treated. we got pretty excited about that. >> you have gotten to the broader point, which is after the initial flap over cory booker and ed rendell and who didn't like the advertising attack, we kind of waddled into a broader debate which is what we call broader takeover artists, but it seems that tv seems more interested in the soundbyte warfare. >> it is really difficult to explain exactly what a private equity firm is versus, let's say, a venture capital firm on tv, which needs good pictures and snappy soundbytes, but often conquers that. what it did lead to after the initial mish-mosh, it led to a number of serious stories, however, on what i think is the central point -- one of the central points of the campaign. did romney devote himself to creating jobs, becoming the job creator in chief, as he said, at bain, or was he devoted to maximizing profits? and, as president obama retorted, that is not the way to be a good president. it's not about maximizing profits. i think the media used this flap to get into some more serious questions and did it quite well. >> i would say that was true of newspapers. i think some papers, including the washington post, have done a good job of running piece that is explain that it was not romney's job to create jobs. it was his job to maximize profs for himself and his partners, and explaining there were some successes and failures. looking at the whole question of what these wall street companies do, but the media in general, i guess i'm indicting television here, maybe it's something that's too complicated for 1:45 piece on the evening news. >> well, it's complicated. it's not unlike the debt ceiling talks. money, numbers, this is not what good television is made of, but it is the kruxz of it, and that is to great frustration to both campaigns really where they've wanted to try and have the substantive conversation and they have felt like little things, what they would say are little things like cory booker's one remark getting blown widely out of proportion. s on the other hand, it does lead to what -- it has to inevitably be a more -- it doesn't stay silly the whole time. that conversation led for a conversation about whether democrats have had their own issues of private equity and whether they've been funded. >> they like getting the money from wall street furmz. >> that's a real conversation, and i think it's good we're having it. >> this has led to what has been increasingly evident is that people want the media not to do he-said-she-said, not to do romney's point of view, obama's point of view. they want us to say this guy is lying, this guy is telling the truth. they say that is the media's job. >> somebody in the media is not getting the memo, and i would quibble with your suggestion that campaigns want to have substantive conversation. you look at the advertising right now of both obama and romney, you have sob stories, individual people interviewed who -- it's heart-rending. people have lost their jobs either because of the last three years, which, of course, the romney campaign blames on the president, or because of the last -- of romney's tenure at bain capital and they're jumping on the companies that went bankrupt. as far as mitt romney himself, he did an interview with the times mark halprin. there's video of that. romney was asked three or four straight questions about bain capital. he managed to dance around every one. let's take a brief look. >> what specific skills or policies did you learn at bain that would help you create an environment where jobs would be created? >> that's a bit of a question like saying what have you learned in life that would help you lead? my whole life has been learning to lead from my parents to my education, to the experience i had in the private sector, to helping run the olympics, and then, of course, helping guide a state. >> so if you asked romney what about bain, and he gives that general answer, what specifically about your time at bain, and he basically doesn't answer. >> it's tricky. another answer he gave at another point in this interview was to say i'm not here to talk about this. let's hear about the president's record, which is fair, of course. >> is it fair to say that romney repeatedly docked when asked to explain and defend his record? >> there's no question there. now, the campaign at other points in time has, many of the, engaged on the bain question and talked about specifics of what the deals were. specifically on the one that is they liked. they like talking a great deal about staples, for example, which is a company that did gain jobs over time under bain's stewardship. we have talked especially about the success story, and they do engage for romney sitting down in an interview that's going to have limited time that's not what he wants to be getting into the leads on something like that. i think he wants to produce a happier sounding and better sounding soundbyte, ultimately one that's about president obama. >> i guess the good news is he is starting to do more interviews and will talk to wall street journal columnist peggy noonan. he hasn't bone the sunday shows. let's go to the obama side. press secretary jay carney, who wrote that the rate of federal spending increase under barack obama has been lower than although predecessors in the oval office since dwight eisenhower, and carney said do not buy into the bs that you hear. to the contrary. doing so is a sign of sloth and lazyness. are you slothful? >> not more than usual. i don't know what that level is. here again is what drives people crazy. they want the media to say no, jay carney is wrong or, yes, jay carney is right. there are all sorts of things now like fact checking things from newspapers, like the washington post and others, who try to arrive at a -- >> are you a columnist, and you can say whatever you want. if you are a strit reporter or editing reporter as you are now, is that the role of the press is that this guy is lying. >> i think that the white house is asking for was to not listen to the other side's point of view, which is never going to happen, and i think both sides in this happens increasingly in a very partisan city. both sides discount the other side's point of view as being in any way credible, and so they're demanding you only listen to them. that's obviously not going to happen. i think any story will have the perspective of both sides, but i think even regular reporters are under some responsibility to try and figure out what the basic truth is. it may not be as easy when it comes to things like -- >> i agree with that totally, and you can't play he-said-she-said. our role is much more important than that. we shouldn't be biassed or take sides. the fact checker column. westerned call our politician whz they misrepresent the facts. when we come back, some sobering news from new orleans which will no longer have a daily newspaper. 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[ male announcer ] you plant. you mow. you grow. you dream. meet the new definition of durability: the john deere select series. with endless possibilities, what will you create? ♪ dreaming of great savings? get them during our green tag event. visit johndeere.com/greentag for details. >> new orleans times picayune said it will publish only three times a week. three our newhouse papers also going back from three day a week schedule, and roger simon, are you an old newspaper guy. particularly heart breaking in the case of the times picayune did tha did such courageous reporting during katrina when some of the editors and reporters lost their own homes. >> it is heart breaking, and it may be a sign of more of the fact that new orleans has not come back from the damage of katrina more of a sign that newspapers are dead. there are parts of new orleans that still don't have electricity. people aren't going to sit at their computers and read it, but if it is a national trend, it's a shame. you know, there's something about reading a print product. you don't have to plug it in. you don't have to worry about the battery. you can put it in your pocket and swat flies with it. >> you can take it on the subway. maybe that's an older person because so many younger people just naturally go on-line, go on the ipad. ann, you worked at the boston globe and "new york times" before you worked at the washington post. i don't think it's unique to new orleans. i don't think it's the last one we're going to see, and it's not good news for the newspaper industry. >> it may not be the last we see. news print is expensive, and i mean, obviously, news gathering is expensive in general, but so is the actual act of putting out a hard copy that gets driven to your doorstep. >> do you mean printing presses and all of that stuff. i mean, i agree that there is something special about holding on to it. i think what we're seeing now is certainly a generational divide, but also people who themselves look at both versions. you know, they look at what's on-line, and they look at the hard paper. it's two different experiences now. whether both are sustainable is the question. >> this is not just nostalgia. it is much harder to make large amounts of money off the web than it is off of a print ad. a print ad makes you much, much more dough than on-line, and that is what media companies are trying to figure out. how do we make dough on both? >> the "new york times", of course, has gone to the pay wall or the partial pay wall, but you have hit on the crucial thing, which is the newspaper stops because a lot of people, i think, out there are 20 years saying so what, let the time picayune become a welcome back site. there is a financial impact, and the paper also mounts severe job cuts, and as it continues a trend where there are fewer reporters at the statehouse, fewer reporters at city hall, nobody checking -- it's one thing to do for a nationalist paper. the local community paper isn't reporting on what goes on in city government. the local tv stations aren't going to do it. it was behind the he-said-she-said. sometimes it takes several days of hardened work by experienced reporters who are getting good salaries, and that usually happens at newspapers more than it does as web sites. not always. >> at the same time the old newspaper model of trying to be a smorgasbord and be something to everybody is clearly broken because you can search on-line for sports, entertainment, and if everybody is -- you name it. that means places like the washington post and others, you worked at the baltimore sun, and you worked at chicago as well have had to adapts because they can't pedal all their wears on-line. >> you would think that that would lead to local papers having a certain michigan they could thrive on, and we thought for a long time that was going to be the case, but it hasn't proven to be that way. there's not enough eyeballs in certain cities or in the case of new orleans people willing to pay for it to keep them afloat. you're right. the public accountability not just in new orleans and the south as you describe but all across the country has been suffering for more than a decade. >> i can't be optimistic at this point, even though i love print, and i think that there is a place in our lives, at least some of our lives, for the newspaper that lands on your doorstep. >> i'm optimistic. we've had print since ancient times and modern print since gutenberg, and let's not forget, there are millions of americans who don't have computers, who don't have an internet connection. >> that's going to change over time. >> that don't have high speed -- >> that will change over time. >> the buy-in is rather expensive to get a laptop. it's -- there is a niche for newspapers. newspapers can figure out how to make it back. >> last point, even reporters and editors who work for newspapers, they're also feeding tidbits on twitter and putting stuff on facebook, breaking stories on-line, blogging. to what extent are we having to work harder? that's okay. giving it away and, therefore, they're needing less reason for people to pay $1 for the local paper. >> it's tough. all reporters have the instinct of wanting information to go to people. that's what we do for a living. professional gossips in some ways. the job of the paper is to figure out how to make money off of it. that's going to be the trick. >> ann, roger, thanks very much for stopping by. up next -- >> so there was me, dan rather, and john mayer doing a shotsky at the end of the show. that's fun tv. you won't get that anywhere else. >> andy cohen dish on his wild and crazy life at bravo. ans... but their shakes aren't always made for people with diabetes. that's why there's glucerna hunger smart shakes. they have carb steady, with carbs that digest slowly to help minimize blood sugar spikes. and they have six grams of sugars. with fifteen grams of protein to help manage hunger... look who's getting smart about her weight. 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[ flo speaking japanese ] [ shouting in japanese ] we work wherever you work. now, that's progressive. call or click today. andy cohen used to come a serious journalist. since joining the bravo network he has green lighted all kinds of reality shows from the real housewives series to top chef and become the star of his own gab fest "watch what happens live." now he is out with a book "most talk tiff stories from behind the lines of pop culture." i caught up with him when he was here for a book signing in bethesda, maryland. >> how are you? >> i'm already feeling overdressed. >> let it loose. let it go. >> i'm trying to feel the energy here. >> yeah. >> i don't want to blow your cover, but you were a legitimate news guy. >> i was. >> you were semi-ridge legitimate. >> you were a cbs news producer. >> yes. for ten years. >> based on what you write in this book, i wouldn't say you were hungering after hard news. >> it's interesting.