Lesley Stahl interviewing Jill Abramson

What a privilege to be in the assembled Women’s Media Group event at Barbetta restaurant to hear a most compelling conversation. Lesley Stahl spoke with Jill Abramson whose new book Merchants of Truth was given to each attendee.

“Is this your good side?” Stahl asked Abramson as they took their seats at the front of the room? She was channeling Mike Wallace who’d asked her a similar question allowing the female to have the preferred lighting. Turned out he wanted every line on his face to show. Talk about gender differences!

While much of the conversation focused on the chief media maker, Donald Trump, and his impact on the news in general, a good part of the discussion was about the impact of Facebook on newspapers and the ‘almighty algorithm’ required to get attention on that platform. Ms. Abramson referred to FB as the ‘great destroyer of journalism’ and the advertising model which used to be the main revenue source sustaining print media. She also referenced Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, for destroying classified ads.

Jill served as the Executive Editor of the New York Times from which she was fired in 2014. You’ll have to buy her book to find out the sordid details of that dismissal, some of which we were privy to today.

Although the program ran longer than scheduled, barely any of the 100+ in attendance budged. Since I’m not a journalist and am feeling self-conscious about my reportorial skillset, I’ll simply share bullets for the parts I found most interesting and informative.

• Lesley Stahl expressed her sentiment which is “extremely pessimistic about journalism.”
• Jeff Bezos and other mega-millionaires can save newspapers as they have historically done (Hearst, for example)
• The Washington Post, thanks to Bezos, has been restored to the Ben Bradlee era model.
• The rhythm of the internet does not allow for ‘slow journalism’.
• Early wisdom shared with Lesley during her career: “You won’t make it as a journalist until you can ask an embarrassing question without feeling embarrassed.”
• Although both of these women are proud to vote, Lesley Stahl told us she does not vote in the primaries in order to maintain her political status as neutral.
• “We were nurtured,” Stahl said of her coming up in the tv news industry.
• “People will always want reliable information and a good story” which is the heartbeat of journalism when asked if this was the death knell for news.

One choice tidbit Jill offered was that when she left the Times, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. “handed me a press release announcing that I had decided to leave the Times.”

Then I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Arthur, I’ve devoted my entire career to telling the truth, and I won’t agree to this press release. I’m going to say I’ve been fired.”

She asked herself what she was feeling after that happened, did a scan of her body and came up with the word: relieved.

What an extraordinary event to attend! In the muscial Hamilton there’s the song “The Room Where it Happens”. Today felt like I was in the midst of that room.