Conversation with Gay Talese and Peter Kaplan

Good stuff in here on the future of the biz, electronic media and this gem of a back and forth:

GT: I remember reading the apologia from the management of the Times with regard to Jayson Blair. If I remember, one of the mid-level editors, Jon Landman, who has now been elevated, was on the same floor as the then-executive editor, Howell Raines. And Landman sends an e-mail, something to the effect that we must stop Jayson Blair from writing again for the New York Times, after he'd done thirty terrible stories. Isn't this crazy. What would I have done if I was that mid-level editor? I would have gotten up from my desk and walked across and knocked on the door and said, "Mr. Raines," as I would probably call him, "Look at me. I have something to tell you. Look into my eyes. I am not going to have this man on my staff, and we're going to get rid of him. And if we don't get rid of him, we'll get rid of me. Now, which is it?" That's the way you talk about things that matter. You don't use e-mail in

a city room! Do you know what would have happened? Howell Raines would still be the executive editor at the Times. And Blair would have gotten out of there sooner. You don't use e-mail when you can walk over and hit the guy over the head with a newspaper!

PK: I will say, parenthetically, Landman is one of the best at the Times now. He's superb. But, of course, you're right. The virtual world, or e-mail, or whatever you want to call it, is a kind of restrictive tyranny. It passes for information, but it's not really information. It creates a closed, weirdly elitist society of people who are speaking the same language instead of putting journalists among new subjects.

GT: It diminishes passion. You see, it brings a kind of civility, or a kind of mellowness, instead of being really passionate or more, even disrespectful at times. That's very valuable, to know how much ire we are capable of. Sometimes it's wonderful to lose it.

PK: It's true. And it has degraded writing. But I do want to say that e-mail and the Internet are also, on a certain level, the greatest democratizing factor in journalism in my lifetime, because everybody has access. People in Eastern Europe can find out exactly what we can, as fast as we do.

GT: But I think there's something inherently undemanding about it. Reporting, communicating, sometimes if it's difficult, it's even better. Sometimes, in the hesitations, you hear a harking of reticence and confusion, that you can draw out. There's another language besides words.