What was your first journalistic experience . Susan i remember being 10 years old and handing out copies of the newspaper that my parents founded, the legal times, at the Aba Convention in washington. And probably ever since then. Brian how long did they own legal times . Susan they started in 1977 and their Company Owned it until 1986. Brian who is the first person who tie you would journalism is all about . Funny. You know, it was there was a famous teacher at the high school i went to. Tom lyons was the supervisor of the newspaper at andover. He was also george w. Bushs favorite teacher in high school. Many years later he was still around, a very, very older statesmen at the school, and not only was he a great leader in journalism but also in the role of a free press. He taught constitutional law as well. My junior year in high school. It was incredible experience. Brian your husband is with us today. Peter baker. Before i go to peter baker, what were the circumstances where you met him . Susan people used to say i got my job through the Washington Post. I was lucky enough to get a job at the Washington Post and to find and meet my husband. Say that Monica Lewinsky was the thing that brought us together. So there was some good at least they came out of that side of. I was an editor at the Washington Post and i would oversee investigative reporting for the national staff. I started in january 1998 one week before the monica story broke. Peter was a White House Reporter covering president clinton. That is how we met. Brian we have some video from 1998. Actually, right after you started. February 6. This is your husband, peter baker, when he worked at the post. The president gets home from his deposition on january 17, having just spent six hours with lawyers from pollen jones and going through all this reported sexual encounters with lawyers repeating questions. The one that stuck in his mind was Monica Lawrence go. Monica lewinsky. He gets home at night and because of betty currie and asks her to come into the office the next day. So they can talk about it. That sunday in the privacy of the white house and they went through his testimony and he tried to see if his memory matched her memory. Prosecutors are very interested in that because her version was somewhat different in that he says i was never out of earshot. He and lewinsky were never essentially alone, he claims. Betty kerry said yes but later told investigators that in fact she had been the outer office on a number of occasions. Brian what are you thinking . Peter my taste in ties hasnt gotten any better. That was a long time ago. The issues were so extraordinary. Never repeated since, thank goodness. Were young journalists trying to figure out what the story was. Was it about politics . Was it about accountability . It was a really extraordinary time. It was a stew of all these things. Brian what do you think is the residual of that time. On our politics right now . Peter it was part of a continuing than washington that became increasingly corrosive over time. We had a hard time figuring out what are the right boundaries. The ways even hold the president accountable. When does become partisan . You can trace back to all sorts of events in the previous 10 or 20 years. And then extended through today. You see an evolution of how politics has grown harsher and harsher in washington. Brian you were able to find your spouse at the Washington Post. Peter she was my boss at the time. We were spending a lot of hours together. Late at night. For about 13 months the story was allconsuming. One day we discovered completely by accident friend al kamen that we lived on the same block on the same street. We didnt even know it. We never saw each other they are because we spent our time at the office. That told us there was Something Real here. Monica lewinsky brought us together. I grew up here in washington outside fairfax virginia. I went to Public Schools all the way through. My High School Journalism teacher was a man named stewart held was very influential in encouraging me. Susan technically president clinton might say that was not the controlling legal authority. There are many bosses in a big newsroom. I have been really lucky. To be able to have professional and personal partnerships over more than 15 years is a very unusual thing. He was terrible on deadlines. And he is terrible now. What is the last possible moment you can turn in a story . There are a lot of procrastinators who gravitate toward journalism because only the force of a gun to the head will get things done. Of like those Old Newspaper deadlines, what is happened in those 15 years is the absolute proliferation and explosion, we are all wire service 24hour deadline people. He was one of the very first people to write a web story for the Washington Post. We wanted to have a midday update on impeachment. Just 15 years you go from the print paper and waking up in the morning to a fresh set of news and headlines. Now this rolling world in which the New York Times and the Washington Post and politico are all filing all the time and we expect sophisticated not just commodity news versions but a complicated breaking stories almost instantaneously of them occurring. In our living memory of covering the scandal he was the very first guy to even write a web story for the Washington Post. Brian you are going to jerusalem together. Peter tuesday his departure. R 11yearold son will go with me later. Susan is going to finish out the election with politico. She will join us a couple of months after that. Brian what is your thinking about being the bureau chief of the New York Times in jerusalem . Peter susan and i were Bureau Chiefs together in moscow. We have never spent any time in israel. We are looking forward to learning a lot. It could be a real adventure. Part of the world that has so much history and so much of a vital part of todays issues and we spent a lot of time writing about in washington but weve never lived there. Brian you are stepping down as the editor of politico. Susan i will be changing roles and continuing at politico in a roll around helping to lead our editorial growth and innovation. Continuing to expand internationally. We Just Launched politico europe. We are looking at creating and launching new things. I started the political magazine. It has been a really exciting new platform for us. Ambitious longform reporting. The war of ideas. You cant own the washington conversation unless you are part of the debate over ideas and policies. How it connects. That approach is something that can work in europe and other big markets of the world. Both of us have spent our careers focusing on that intersection between washington and the world. One of the things that we learned from our tour in russia which coincided with president putins first term in office. It was after 9 11 so we ended up in afghanistan and iraq. We came back here to the washington of george w. Bushs second term in office. That sense of washington isnt just the capital of the United States, it is the capital of the world, that nexus through which things flow. We are very insular here. Kind of a small village at times. You have to renew your intellectual capital. To really understand the stories and issues. I will be writing a weekly column on foreign affairs. It will appear in politico and politico europe. I am excited about doing that. Also be working on longer form magazine pieces. Probably for the New York Times. Brian many folks hit what you do. Hate what you do. I dont think i can say it any stronger. They dont like the media. What do you say to them when you meet up with someone who is hostile to the New York Times and what you do . Peter you get a lot of emails or communications from readers that are unhappy. The ones that are truly scatological are over the top in terms of hatred. Those, i do not usually you too. Those that are angry, even if they are hostile, if you write them back and say i understand why you are saying that. Heres my thinking about why i wrote the article that way. If you give a thoughtful response that doesnt seem defensive but actually accepts that there is some legitimacy to peoples points of view and we are open to criticism, they almost always say they shouldnt have been so mean. They look at us as an institution. And, when they see us as individuals who can have a conversation with them, it becomes a healthier thing. Brian lets go back to 1992. This is you when you were at roll call. Susan it was the original newspaper of capitol hill. Before there was politico or the hill. It was founded in the 1950s. By a former hill staffer. In 1986 it was purchased by arthur levitt, at the time the head of the american stock exchange, and i think, if you remember, he had this great insight along with jim glassman that rather than just being a Real Community newspaper you could be serving one of the most important audiences in the world. The members of congress and the universe of capitol hill. With original news that goes deep on those subjects, the process and the politics that really mattered. It was always a really Smart Business proposition. The Washington Post had a monopoly market. But of course, people were paying huge premiums to reach all those readers of the Washington Post. In the suburbs and all over. How about to undercut them and just reach this specific, circuited influential audience. And of course, that has given rise to this all industry of targeted ideas and Issue Advocacy advertising. I was unwittingly stumbling into that. I became an intern at roll call in the summer of 1987. I was 18yearsold. Headnote i was at harvard. My dad read an article in the Washington Post about this very interesting media experiment. And, i didnt know these folks at all. I sent them a letter in those days. I think you did that in those olden days. I ended up with this really incredible experience. I came back to work there after i graduated in 1990. In 1992 i was probably the managing editor of roll call. I had this incredible window into washington. As it was transforming. The first postcold war election. Election of bill clinton. And, you know, this the beginning of the transformation of the media. What we did at roll call back then was very much a kind of preinternet kind of publication. Brian everything you to do can be seen on the internet. Lets watch this little clip of you in a roll call editorial meeting. Jim glassman and Morton Kondracke are there. Susan everyone has done their generic story on women candidates. What we should do is a story more specifically about which women. Where are they coming from . How many . And then, the flipside is the results of redistricting and how many new blacks and hispanics are going to be in the Democratic Caucus as a result. Right. The people that we know are coming as freshmen are almost exclusively minorities. Susan these new districts are ones that it is all most inconceivable that they could elect republicans. Brian 20 years earlier you would probably see no women in that room. What was the change like . Susan rollcall was a great place to go after college for any journalist male or female. It was a great window into covering National Politics. At a very young age. Not going that older route of a distant far out suburb newspaper and then a slightly closer in newspaper. Maybe someday getting downtown. We were very privileged to be able to jump right in under jim glassman. To cover National Politics and learned a lot of awful lot. It was kind of insulated from the society at large. It was a startup. Very young. Not very conscious of gender breakdowns. In 1992 there was the anita hill hearings. Looking back on my very young just out of college self and where women are in journalism today, i think i wouldve been disappointed and surprised at how much we are still having many of the same conversations. That is not to say that there hasnt been a certain amount of progress and many first woman barriers have been broken. The first woman editor of the New York Times, jill abramson, or the year of the woman we were talking about their in congress. Many many more women in congress today. Still only 20 though. The percentage of women ceos is still in the single digits. I think i wouldve been surprised. A much more uniform marched on progress. Maybe that is what you always have a sense of. It is interesting to see the debate this year over Hillary Clinton and what seems to be a generational divide between older women who have a sense of the barriers still existing for women in professions whether it is politics or journalism and a new group of voters these millennial voters, who seem to be bridling at the idea that you should vote for a woman just because of her gender. It is surprising. It is a small number. It is small and political journals and i will say that having been the editor of Foreign Policy magazines before i moved over to politico there are even fewer women in Foreign Policy circles and International Affairs circles than there are in political journalism. Brian how do you view it . Peter susan has been very blessed by having a lot of opportunities and she has made the most of them. Watching her up close has been inspirational for me. She has ended up being the editor of roll call. She was the editor of Foreign Policy. She is the editor of politico. But she is right, not enough women have ended up at that level in journalism. I have worked for women over the years. At the very top levels there is still a glass ceiling. There are different expectations, conscious or unconscious of what is allowed in the course of being an editor. I have worked for some male editors who are pretty tough guys and that was celebrated. And, you know, women, i still think, have a tougher time with that. Brian what year did you leave the Washington Post . Peter i went to the New York Times in 2008 and susan worked for Donald Graham and ultimately helped him by Foreign Policy magazine. Brian you werent very happy with the way susan was treated . Peter that is true. There had been a conflict in the newsroom. I felt that the leadership of the time didnt handle it well. I thought they were very i did not think they were as supportive or loyal to someone who had worked so hard and done so much and accomplished so much as susan did. Brian you said you would still be at the post if it hadnt been for that . Peter yes. I grew up with the post. At my house, we had the Washington Post and the washington star every day. When the washington star died, i got the times. I remember riding my bicycle seven miles to get the First Edition of the washington times. Washington journalism mattered to me. My dream was a waste to work for the Washington Post. Susan there are lots of different answers to what was the conflict. I learned a lot. I was the National Editor of the post at the time. These papers were not where they are today in terms of figuring out to the very uncomfortable digital transitions. Our friends and colleagues had just left you found politico. We were trying to reinvent political coverage. It was a special challenge for me to manage such a large staff of many very accomplished veterans. All of them extremely anxious about what this new era of transformation was going to be like. Not incidentally i would say, the longtime editor of the post was replaced right after that. Brian leonard downie. Susan yes. Think the paper went through a big series of changes that needed to happen. It has been great to see its recovery over the last couple of years. The new owner and an infusion of new blood and new ideas. Brian the two of you were selling a book in 2007. Here is an interview i think at the press club. [video clip] susan very early on in Vladimir Putins tenure we met with one of his top Political Consultants and he said the goal was to and the revolution. What he meant was the revolution that toppled the soviet union back in 1991. Peter the west has to be open eyes and clear id about what russia is. Bromance was fooling ourselves into thinking ourselves that we would be a democratic figure. He doesnt want to be that. Brian when you look back at the four years you spent in russia what comes to mind . Peter that was a period of great transition and tumbled. Everybody thought we were coming in when people were getting boring. Yeltsin had stood up to the kremlin. Who was supposed to represent stability. It was a period of enormous change where Vladimir Putin began to turn things back. Weturned out to be something did not want him to be. Bryan and, what did you think . Susan we found out how invaluable it is to go out there and do reporting on the ground, be openminded, trust your instinct. We didnt come to it after decades of entrenched ideological positions one way the other about the soviet union and what the new russia should be. What we found was a resurgent nationalism. And this fascinating figur