Citizens on this panel called for journalists to have an intellectual knowledge of their subjects, an open-mindedness, a "fair approach to the topic," a passionate sense of mission and to offer straight factual reporting. In their minds, journalists have been failing to meet these accountabilities, especially in television news. So much so that they have lowered their own expectations of what the media can give them. One step that they and the journalists agreed might improve the situation was more openness with the public about the process of reporting.

Mr. Bob Steele of the Poynter Institute, who moderated this session, asked how journalists "prioritize" the various stakeholders to whom journalists are to be accountable--the public, the stockholders, the story subjects, the sources, ourselves. Does the strong spirit of independence the journalists of news organizations so cherish undermine in any way the principle of accountability? Is independence compatible with accountability? Dr. Osterholm, what's the expectation that you have when you deal with a journalist either in your professional life or when you deal with journalism as a reader, a listener, or a viewer?

Dr. Micheal Osterholm, State Epidemiologist and Chief of the Acute Disease Epidemiology Section of the Minnesota Department of Health, has lowered his expectations of journalists because he feels their general knowledge level has sharply declined: Well, I don't want to start this panel off on the wrong foot, but I expect a lot less today than I used to. And I don't mean that glibly. I think in the 25 years that I have been in this business, both in terms of print and audio visual media, I've seen a substantial deterioration I think in what I would term from a scientific perspective as the quality of the reporting the actual understanding of the issues, the completeness with which the issue is covered, and some kind of prioritization of how that issue fits into all the other issues that we in the medical science and the sciences in general have to deal with.

So today I think that I am looking more for just someone who has what I call a fair approach to the topic. And by fair I'm talking about the relative sense of balance because I think much of the media is out balance. I think if Christopher Columbus today was trying to suggest that the earth was not flat and somebody else did, we would actually have to find an article that had half the column inches that said the earth was flat and half that said it wasn't. And that's unfortunate, because it doesn't always portray the actual amount of information that supports one side or the other.

Mr. Steele: So I hear you say that fairness in many ways is a product of knowledge and lack of knowledge gets in the way of the ability to be accountable in terms of fairness?

Dr. Osterholm: I think so, yes.

Mr. Steele: Dick Mallary, how do you respond to that challenge? Are we smart enough as journalists in what we do and what we report on?

Mr. Richard Mallary, Senior Vice President for Gennett Bradcasting, explained that as most local Gannett stations determine their own hiring practices, staff quality varies: To respond to the specific question I think fairness is always an issue and I think you shared with me an article that had to do with a specific Gannett station where the question of fairness or accuracy was brought up. There is no question that we make errors of that sort regularly, far too regularly.

Mr. Steele: [But], are we smart enough, does Gannett television hire enough of the best and the brightest so that when they go and interview the Dr. Osterholm's of the world they are well enough versed on the issues?

Mr. Mallary: [T]hat's not a yes or no question. I would use our station in Austin, Texas as an example, where I think every time somebody joins the broadcast staff in Austin, Texas they have gone through a more rigorous interview process than most employees at most television stations have gone through. Within our company what I will make sure is that that interview process is exposed to all others who are in the hiring positions in other stations. We will not mandate that that same hiring practice be done in other places. So I guess my answer is, as I sit here right now I have greater confidence in some of our stations than I have in others. But I think it's also evident in my answer that there isn't a corporate mandate here as there are not corporate mandates in a lot of areas that certain procedures be standardized. There is respect for the hiring policies and procedures of the local managers. Do I always agree with them? Absolutely not.

Ms. Jan Morlock is a resident of St. Paul, Minnesota, and has had a career in community development work. She expects a certain amount of openness from reporters: Well, unlike with Dr. Osterholm, it's not important [to me] for a representative of the media to be scientifically smart when they're talking with me. But what I do want from them is for them to expect the best out of me and out of the community that I am representing In other words, not to arrive at my door step with a world view already locked up and expect me to corroborate it.

Mr. Steele: Do you feel that happens? Do you feel a lot of journalists start out with an agenda or a particular view on a story that then takes a story in a certain direction?

Ms. Morlock: In my experiences with the media that's been true about half the time. And somebody earlier was talking about a sense of powerlessness, that's a real sense of powerlessness. I also expect them to be ready to listen and that means that they are open to hearing points of view that are outside whatever framework they arrived with. And also that they understand the locality that they are working in well enough to be able to process the things that they are learning and to understand the community. I think that that's really important.

Mr. Steele: Ka Vang, are those realistic expectations for journalists ?

Ms. Ka Vang, a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and a member of the local Hmong Community, felt that journalists need to take time to get to know their community and its issues: Well, I think they are realistic expectations, I agree. I think that a reporter should do the research and the background to know the community that they are covering better. I think that especially with the large Hmong population that we have here in the twin cities, I think that often times there is a real fear in the Hmong community that reporters don't know their culture, and don't know the language, and that's correct most of the time. So I think the reporter has a responsibility to know sources in different communities, whether that would be the medical community or in the Hmong community, and to know issues that are arising in those communities so they don't just parachute into situations

Mr. Steele: In the helter skelter world of journalism with all the pressures that play in terms of complex stories and contentious issues, do you have the time to learn the community?

Ms. Vang: Oh, definitely, you have the time. Reporters have the time. That's, well, that's taking one source, in the medical community out to lunch one week or just getting to know somebody in your local church group. [I]t doesn't take a lot of time away from the reporter to know your sources, to go out for lunch, for dinner. To volunteer somewhere reporters have an obligation to do that.

Mr. Steele: Do you get the support from your editors to do that?

Ms. Vang: No, not exactly. Though he encourages it Is it a realistic goal? Yes, it is, you can do it. Do you get enough encouragement to do that? No. Do you get enough time? No. But that's when you take time from your own schedule to do those things.

Mr. Steele: Dick Kovacevich, what do you expect from journalists and from the news media?

Mr. Richard Kovacevich, Chairman and CEO of Norwest Corporation, is looking for the facts and feels too often he is disappointed: Well, to me the media is a source of information that I cannot gather myself or do myself. So I want that information to be accurate, to truly reflect what's going on in the community because, again, I can't know that myself. I do not want opinion, I don't want impressions, I want the facts, and I will read editorials or some other sources if I want someone's opinion.

Mr. Steele: How often are stories about your world, your financial world accurate in your opinion?

Mr. Kovacevich: I'd say usually they are not. It's a very technical part of the world. Most journalists are not knowledgeable and its very difficult for them to be knowledgeable of the wide range of companies that they must follow. And most companies' accounting and so on are very technical, difficult things. So it could be because of lack of knowledge or it could be in a way intentional. I'll read a statistic that was in the October 19th issue of the New York Times that said that a poll found that 60 percent of [the public] thought journalists often or sometimes invent stories; 76 percent thought they often or sometimes plagiarized; 87 percent felt they often or sometimes used unethical or illegal tactics; and 86 percent believe that stories often or sometimes have factual errors. The only statistics I know worse than that are bankers.

[W]hen you read about your field and see the enormous inaccuracies in it you get these kinds of impressions. Your field might be a community activist. Your field might be a business. Your field might be medical. So you then say if that is what I'm reading and I know how inaccurate that is, I must have the same opinion therefore of everything else I read. And that's why I think you have these kinds of statistics.

If you think about it, the incentives for accuracy, fairness, and balance in the media aren't there. [I]t's an investigative report that wins you a Pulitzer Prize. I mean, how many Pulitzer Prizes were based on -- this was a very balanced accurate description of the earnings of Norwest last quarter. I mean, it's not going to happen. It's got to be sensational, it's got to be something that no one else had ever discovered I think we have the wrong incentives to accomplish the objectives that we are talking about hereÑof balance, accuracy, fairness and therefore it is inevitable that we have these kinds of disconnects. And until we solve that issue it's going to continue.

Mr. Steele: Gary Gilson, is the gap as wide as it would seem to be between what the public expects of journalism and news organizations and what is provided?.

Mr. Gary Gilson, Executive Director of the Minnesota News Council feels that one step in the right direction might be for journalists to react more positively to public complaints: I think it is and it's aggravated by the response that people who feel aggrieved get from news organizations when they question them. I think what people expect and I as a life long reporter expect is a passionate sense of mission on the part of the news media to inform the public on things that are vital. And that it ought to be accompanied by a willingness to be open.

Geneva talked about arrogance and about closed mindedness toward complainants or questioners. What the news media really could do, I think to improve their relationship with the public is to relax a little bit between the shoulder blades. And to endorse a concept that one of the most valuable members of the Minnesota News Council put forward and that's Ron Graham who just retired as President of the Better Business Bureau he said, instead of stiff arming complainants, regard the complaint as a gift. If you were in the restaurant business and complaints remained suppressed you might be out of business before you ever knew that they existed. People in the news business could embrace the complaint . [w]ithout admitting to anything that could bite him in the fanny in a courtroom. But just being willing to listen and saying that I understand that you're upset. Most people will go away at that point. They will be thrilled that you listened.

Mr. Steele: Gary, let me ask you a question about the notion of watch dog [in a] just completed but not yet released a national poll. Is it a legitimate role for newspapers to use their power to protect the interest of the under dog? Forty-seven percent of the public disagreed with that, forty-seven percent. Say half the public basically disagreed with the notion of the role of the newspaper to protect the underdog. What does that tell us about journalism?

Mr. Gilson: It tells us that our education system needs a lot of help. If people aren't taught media literacy and some sense of social justice by the fourth or fifth or sixth grade then we're in a lot of trouble.

Ms. Morlock: I think that journalists and people who ride the media horses have a fairly privileged position in the sense that they see, digest, hopefully understand news in a way that the rest of us don't have the ability or the time to do. I think the responsibility is then to provide us that information in such a way that it does help us see a larger picture. [W]hether or not that's protecting the underdog, I don't know, but what I do know is that I expect a good journalist to help me see the forest as well as the trees.

Dr. Osterholm: Can I add something to that? I'm not surprised by that and the reason I'm not surprised by it is I think the question sets the journalists up as a father figure or as a parental figure. And I don't get the impression that the public is looking for that from us, they're looking for facts. They are wanting us to be fair, they are wanting us to be accurate. They are not asking to shelter them.

Mr. Mallary: I would say the same thing. I think it shows how smart the public is. The public doesn't want protection, they want accurate, fair, balance. They want what is really going on. I don't have time, I don't have the knowledge to understand what's going on. Just give me what's really happening, don't give me opinions, don't hype it. Don't try to protect the underdog or anything else. Why should the media be the protector of the underdog more than the reporter reporting fair, accurate, complete news? Now, again, editorial page or somewhere else... But when you ask people what they want from their media, the underdog has to be a very minor piece of what you're asking it to do.

Mr. Steele: There is an old saying in journalism going back to the turn of the century, that the role of journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable

Dr. Osterholm: [Y]ou've exposed, I think, part of what I would call the underbelly of modern journalism. You've made a decision that the underdog somehow is a good thing. Terrorists will tell you they are underdogs, is that a good thing? And I think the part of what Dick just said is a very key factor: put the facts out there. I have been involved with a number of scientific issues, but I will tell you the apparent underdog I don't believe had either the entire population's best interests at heart or had the scientific facts in support of their contention, but they sure looked like good underdogs

Mr. Steele: Ka Vang, are there underdogs in the community, are there people or groups who deserve coverage?

Ms. Vang: I definitely do think so, especially coming from a totalitarian state where you don't have the freedom of expression and you definitely don't have the freedom of press that, you know, a lot of times people in this country take for granted. I'm very disappointed to, you know, to find out the results of that survey. And I think my [Hmong friend] of St. Paul who lost her 13-year-old daughter last month when she was slain in Brooklyn Park would be disappointed too because when I spoke with her last I said to her, you know, of all the negative things that you heard about your daughter in the media and things that you felt were misinterpreted, did anything good come out of this and she said, yes because my daughter's story and my story was told. It brought up real issues in the Hmong community such as, you know, physical discipline, teen runaways. These are things that would have never been heard if her story wasn't told. She does feel like she is an underdog in the society. So I think it's, I think that the media does have a role and a duty to not only, report the stories of the underdog but report it with sensitivity and accuracy.

Mr. Kovacevich: I totally agree, I don't see it as an underdog or not, it was absolutely what people should want to know that they wouldn't have known unless the paper reported it.

Dr. Osterholm: I want the distinction between the facts and someone's opinion or impression of those facts. I think the context of the facts is what's critical. You asked a question earlier, are we hiring better journalists today? I think you may be hiring very well educated journalists, but they can't have unique knowledge if they're covering a different story every day on a different beat every day [T]hat's one of my concerns about journalism. The amount of background education [of] the people I deal with today is so inferior to what it was 15 or 20 years go. I welcome the very hard reporters that ask me the hardest questions. Some of them harder than I was asked by my colleagues. But that's because they had the background and training. I deal with so many reporters today that sit there and say, now, how do you pronounce that word that I'm going to report on tonight. And that's the kind of thing that I am having a real concern with and that's where you lose.

Mr. Mallary: If you use the African-American community in Washington as an example, I have spent eight to ten nights sitting with members of that community in the last ten years. And if I use the word underdog I would be booed out of the room. I mean, the idea of them feeling second class is just absolutely not in the room. What they're asking of us is that in editorial decisions, that people who are sensitive and interested in them participate in the editorial decisions, the selection of stories, the coverage of the stories. But they are not asking to be treated any differently than anyone else. And so that the whole concept of underdog has all, all bad connotations

Mr. Gilson: I think there is a false issue here. The use of the word underdog as you put it and as I put it is newsroom short hand for doing stories about abuses of power. It's not going out and trying to uplift the American Indian. It's doing a story about people who have been ripped off by a home remodeler. There should be a high value in journalism on doing those stories. The irony is when the institution that is doing those stories, the press, or broadcast news media, are themselves under scrutiny for an abuse of their own power. They are so resistant to listening and responding without running behind the First Amendment. We're not talking about a group of irate citizens in Transylvania with spears, stakes, and torches screaming their way up the side of the mountain to get Count Dracula and the First Amendment. We're talking about people who feel that they don't have as much power as the press or the broadcast news media who would like to know what the standards are and who would like to go beyond the codes of ethics that do exist and say, you know, that paragraph about that kind fairness doesn't seem to us to be a high enough standard, let's talk about raising it. That's all we're talking about. So it is an irony when the news media are unwilling to be held to the same standard that they want to hold home remodelers, banks, medical departments or anything like that.

Mr. Steele: Do any of those [19 Gannett] stations have an ombudsman or a viewer's representative?

Mr. Mallary: All of them are talking with the public with general frequency. [S]everal years ago there was discussion at a meeting that some of the Gannett newspapers had groups of the public who would actually come to morning meetings, to editorial meetings, and participate. A couple of our stations tried that. We found that fairly ineffective just because of the nature of the meetings and trying to actually let them invest in a meeting that was already rolling with a lot of people that knew one another. We are working in one way or another to keep in touch with the viewers, but it is not in the classic sense of an ombudsman.

Mr. Steele: Jan Morlock, what would you think if local television here in the twin cities, the Gannett station opened itself up in terms of revealing more about how it does and what it does in covering the news? Told you more about when and why they use confidential sources in those cases where they feel it's necessary. Explain more about why they use certain video tape covering a tragedy and so forth? What would you think of the station if they did that?

Ms. Morlock: Well, first I would be surprised. But second I think that gets back to my point about having purveyors of media expect the best of me. That is that I will be thoughtful, that I will be questioning, that I will want the truth in however many forms that it appears, and that I will want to know, want to understand how those decisions get made. I would welcome that and I'm sure that every other citizen whether they considered themselves or were called an underdog or not would want to take advantage of the same opportunity.

Mr. Steele: Ka Vang how would you as a reporter feel about it if more often you had to talk about the modis operandi of your reporting. Had to explain how and why you talk to the people you did in the story?

Ms. Vang: I think that actually it would be good. Not only good for the larger community to give them a better understanding about what my job duties are and how the newsroom works, but also for me as a reporter to stay more connected with the readers. If we're going to really solicit the views and opinions of our readers then the readers advocate would be the best way to bridge between the newsroom and the community.

Mr. Steele: So if once every couple of weeks you were chosen as the reporter at random that the readers advocate or somebody assigned to that duty explained how you went about your reporting of the story, who you called out of your rolodex, how much time you spent on it. What kind of discussions you had with sources when they asked for confidentiality? What your struggle was over using a certain word or another word in terms of describing somebody? That would be okay?

Ms. Vang: I think there is time once a week for the whole newsroom to rotate into Nancy Conner who is our readers' advocate and to bring people into the newsroom and invite them into our news meetings which is what we do. And to tell them exactly how difficult it is to call a source five different times and not have the source return your phone call Or working on deadline and, you know, trying to craft a lead and things like that. I think it would make the readers appreciate my job more. And make me better understand where they are coming from too.

Mr. Gilson: About a year and half ago a man broke through a window in the IDS tower and plunged to his death through the roof of the atrium. And it happened at the noon hour and there were kids parading down the street and it was a story that KARE TV did and announced in doing the story that they were violating their own standard of not covering suicide cases because this was impossible to ignore and they weren't there when the body came flying down and they said if they had been they wouldn't have shown it. So they explained their standards and why they were going against their standard. And they also said, here is the number you call, the suicide depression hotline and they did some other public service things. To me that's a thing that distinguished that station and any station that would be frank in not only covering a story, but explaining the nuts and bolts and the philosophy of it. Now the public knows that

Dr. Osterholm: I think the reader representatives or the ombudsman are very nice things, but it's almost trying to fix the problem after the fact [Reporters today] don't have the time, they don't have the ability to do the kinds of in-depth stories that they once did. And we put the same pressure on the newer reporters. If you have a reporter who has a detailed understanding in the background, the topic they're covering, they're obviously going to do a better story whether you agree with them or not.

Mr. Steele: Let's talk economics. realizing I'm asking you to generalize, Dick, the average profit margin in your industry, the banking industry?

Mr. Kovacevich: [A]s a percent of revenue it would be about 15 percent pre-tax margins.

Mr. Steele: Dick Mallary, what in the business of television news is the average profit margin for stations?

Mr. Mallary: Probably somewhere between 30 and 40 at least, yes.

Mr. Steele: Is there in that significant difference a challenge that is so great and some might even say irreconcilable in terms of going back to these issues we're talking about here?

Mr. Mallary: You know, I think, there is no question that is one of the pressure points. Where I start to have a problem is when it appears to be the only pressure point. Do I feel that the news directors are under greater pressure in 1998 then they were in 1978? Yes. Do I think that profit margin is the primary reason for the change? No. I think it's the existence of CNBC, MSNBC, CNN. There are an awful lot of pressure points that have an awful lot to do with why a news department does what they do. So I recognize it as one, but I often pick up articles that would suggest that it is the reason we are what we are...

Mr. Steele: They're related, of course, in some respects, aren't they? The competitive nature of the arena now because there are so many more outlets not only for news but for other programming combined with the desire to make significant profits on a continually increasing basis?

Mr. Mallary: I think, I think there is no question, you couldn't find anyone in our business who expects the profit margin to get bigger than it is right now. It will get smaller and smaller as the Internet and other forms of communication continue to grow. And as a result of that, yes, there is a lot of stress, as there is in any business. It just depends. I'm not sure that the stress is any greater in our business than it is in others, because our profit margin is larger. I think every business compares itself with its previous time, in time and space. And, yes, it is unquestionably a pressure right now, but I just think that it over simplifies the issues related to how you improve television news or newspapers to suggest that it is corporate pressure on the bottom line and it can't be fixed unless somehow that's addressed

Ms. Voss: I'm Melinda Voss coordinator of the Association of Health Care Journalists, which is a newly formed group designed to help journalists do a better job covering health care. [W]hat percent of newsroom budgets do you think are spent toward education and training of journalists? And do you think that is less than or more than most industries spend in educating their work force?

Mr. Mallary: Again, I will only speak to Gannett Broadcasting [S]ince 1991, I've probably spent about six million or seven million dollars on group meetings of one sort or another. The most recent one would be a group of 57 news managers and photographers brought together in Denver about four months ago to begin to let them author a code of conduct and standard of ethics for photojournalists within our building. I know of a couple of other organizations, Belo right now has just hired someone on their corporate staff whose specific responsibilities are to develop training organization within it. The idea of, above and beyond the money I just spoke about, each one of our stations has approximately $175 dollars per employee. So if you have 200 employees, take 200 times $175 and that additional money is in the budget for training

Ms. Williams-Thompson: My name is Phyllis Williams-Thompson, I'm with the March of Dimes Foundation. And my question is for Dr. Osterholm. How do you respond to critical health information that's reported inaccurately, what's your role, and particularly if it involves a combination or collective source such as the Minnesota Department of Health and Health related agencies such as the March of Dimes and American Medical Association, et cetera?

Dr. Osterholm: I have to admit I've almost become so numb to so many mis-reports that I started to check out. I was much more active probably over the previous five to ten years of trying to get accurate information out there, but they are coming so fast and furiously now that, in fact, I often just, hell, go with it. And that's unfortunate because I think in some ways you're beating us down. We can't respond any more to the flurry of bad information, so in some ways we have become an accomplice to all of this. And that's not good. Maybe this conference energizes some of us to say, you know, you got to keep it up, you got to go back at it, you got to go do it.

Mr. Kovacevich: I'm in the same boat as Michael, you just get worn down and you feel no one is listening anyway. Or, quite frankly, you fear retribution. But for the first time I got a letter the Star Tribune about a week ago saying there was the following article from the Star Tribune, what do you think of it, and there are five questions and so forth. I said, well, I guess, maybe they want to know so I told her what I thought was right about it, wrong about it, et cetera. And then I happen to see the reporter two days ago and she had received back my comments about the article. If they truly then use that as a learning device that's a step in the right direction. And I think most people would be willing to do that if they thought it was wanted and truly would be responded to.

Mr. Steele: I'm standing beside Pam Fine, Managing Editor of the Star Tribune. Why use this device now and how great a learning device is it?

Ms. Fine: Like many newspapers across the country we are very concerned with the diminution of credibility that we have with the public. And this is one tool we're trying to use to assess our own reportorial strength. We're bringing this information back into the newsroom and sharing it with the reporters specifically involved in stories, but also more broadly

Mr. Gilson: The New York Times does editor's notes 12 to 18 times a year. It represents a consensus of the opinions of the top editor's at the New York Times. It is the paper talking directly to the reader. "The other day we ran a story about a business transaction in the Middle East. For our information we relied upon an anonymous source. Further we allowed that anonymous source to himself rely upon a second anonymous source, that's too far removed from accountability, we won't do it again." Now why shouldn't you get that from your newspaper or your broadcast news organizations? They don't have to fill their newscaster or newspaper with it every day. But if they do it from time-to-time, it can only engender trust. But it won't happen, I think unless you ask for it

Mr. Baxton: What kind of risk is there that someone can be too much of an expert or too inside that they can't connect with the public on issues, or that this arrogance begins to show through and ends up alienating the public because I know better than you?

Dr. Osterholm: I think that's an excellent question. Probably one of the single hardest reporters I had to deal with my entire career was Lou Cope at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Lou Cope asked harder questions, more difficult questions, and was not at all shy about asking them in a public setting. Lou Cope spent hours and hours in background often spending hours on the phone He would be the one person who would call at 8:30 in the evening to make sure that the quote that he had and what he had from a 2 o'clock meeting was correct Anyone who ever read his pieces will tell you that his real genius was that he understood how to talk to the person out on the street and they could understand it. And with all due respect, as much as sometimes he got under your skin he probably had a lot to do with making me look a lot better because he made sure what I said was understandable. Now he still held me accountable to the facts.

Today if I get a call from a reporter at the Star Tribune it's about a story only and it's right now, it's quick, it's in, it's out, and there is no background, there is not understanding of the story, never a call back to see if the quotes were correct or to get the context of it. And, you know, I think, on a whole they do a good job, but it's a different world. If you get "too smart," it doesn't mean that you can't also at the same time get the point across in the layman's language out there.

Mr. Mallary: In sympathy to reporters, though, given this pressure of deadlines and media 24 hours a day now, I often find that even if they want to get background they do not have the time given all the other stories they are doing, perhaps, the lack of financial support from the company or whatever. And, again, I don't know what the solution to that is, but they are under constraints that sometimes, even if they want to they can't get the background and come back to you or get four other sources or whatever because it's got to get out now because of the pressure of the competition.

Mr. Babcock: I'm Bill Babcock, School of Journalism at the U. It seems as if journalistic accountability can start very, very young. I think in the training of journalists the newspaper industry in the United States has had a fabulous record for paid internships where you would get a variety of people, whether or not they were rich, poor, whatever The TV industry traditionally has not paid interns and it seems like only the well off journalism students are able to then get the experience in the industry. With the profit margins that you're talking about, which by most accounts would be excessive in any other industry, why aren't you paying more kids for internships and what can we do to get more people in that pipeline?

Mr. Mallary: You know, we're talking about this right now. We have two television stations that at any given time would have as many as 20 or 25 interns, many of whom were not paid. But, you know, you would walk into the newsroom and you would have a swarm of people who were doing the business that in many ways we were of the opinion that we had too many of them because they were doing the work of paid employees and we were sort of masking what it took to get the job done. So we have, right now we are going back and saying, let's limit the number of interns that we have at any given time and we're going through the budget process with each station for 1999 right now and we're talking about five interns at each one of our stations being the maximum. With some sort of control on what the top side is, I think there is a better opportunity that those five will get paid

Mr. Meador: Ron Meador, Star Tribune. I would like to ask if you would share a little bit of your experience as sophisticated and active consumers of media. I wonder if you could tell us something about over a period of time of your choosing, how your use of media has changed. The sources you go to, the value you get for your investment, the choices you make.

Ms. Morlock: [M]aybe the sharpest trend for me is that, my respect for Mr. Mallary notwithstanding, the amount of news information that I try to get from commercial television has gone way, way down. I'm still saddened and made furious by commercial, local television news. And so I think that I keep digging deeper into print sources for the news, both local and from out of town [for] what I think are reliable sources that have maybe a different world view. I'm increasingly using the Internet more to read media from other places. I think that our local media, at least our local commercial media don't connect us often enough with the rest of the world. And I recognize that that's every day more and more important to me in everything that I go through in my day-to-day routine. So I start reading things like that Economist and other publications that bring me closer to what's going on, connect my local life with the rest of the world more effectively.

Mr. Kovacevich: Interesting, I was going to mention the Economist. I read the Economist because I actually believe that what they say may be accurate. I read a ton of other things to find out what they are saying that I probably don't believe but I better be aware of what they're saying, but the local broadcast media I pay no attention to. For me it is useless, in terms of news. It's entertainment and the same with the network news. The only consistent thing I read that I think is good journalism is the Economist.

Dr. Osterholm: I think just to follow-up on that piece, it's a certain sense of irony here that the one single piece that I read routinely and has a subscription to, that I find good journalism is the Economist. Which I find quite interesting that you've got three different people up here that said that. I too don't watch local TV broadcasts at all unless I have a sense that there is going to be a story on. I typically get up at 5 o'clock every morning and I will go on the Internet and I will scan the New York Times, the Boston Globe, The Washington Post, the Atlantic Constitution, the L.A. Times. And will get a sense of what's going on in the different stories there. I'll often check and do searches for the reporters that I happen to have faith in in different areas. I look every day in the New York Times for Bill Boyd and Judy Miller because those two have done by far the best in the world on the issue of bio-terrorism. I get more selective and the Internet has allowed me to do that. But it's selective in a way of not just going to a print source, it's going to an author print source with the exception really of the Economist. The one station I do watch is PBS. I still find a high value in PBS.