Center for Strategic and International Studies Bob Schieffer’s “About the News” with H. Andrew Schwartz Podcast Subject: “‘Tweets Are the New Press Release’ with New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Elisabeth Bumiller” Speaker: Elisabeth Bumiller, Washington Bureau Chief, The New York Times Hosts: H. Andrew Schwartz, Senior Vice President for External Relations, CSIS Bob Schieffer, CBS Political News Contributor; Former Host, “Face the Nation,” CBS News Date: Thursday, January 19, 2017 Transcript By Superior Transcriptions LLC www.superiortranscriptions.com (Music plays.) BOB SCHIEFFER: I’m Bob Schieffer. H. ANDREW SCHWARTZ: And I’m Andrew Schwartz. MR. SCHIEFFER: And these are conversations about the news. We are in the midst of a communications revolution. We have access to more information than any people in history. But are we more informed, or just overwhelmed by so much information we can’t process it? MR. SCHWARTZ: These conversations are a year-long collaboration of the Bob Schieffer College of Communication at Texas Christian University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. (Music plays.) MR. SCHIEFFER: Elisabeth Bumiller, the Washington Bureau chief for The New York Times joins us today. After college at Northwestern and graduate degree from Columbia, she started her career at the Miami Herald, came to Washington as a party reporter for The Washington Post style section, which is a great way, I must say, to learn Washington. She married New York Times foreign correspondent, Steve Weisman. She’s lived in India and Japan. While there, continued to work for the Post. Wrote her first book along the way. Came back to New York, where she joined the Times in 1995 and covered city hall. In 2001, she became the Times’ White House correspondent in Washington, went on to cover the McCain campaign, wrote a book about Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, covered the Pentagon from 2008 to 2013, became a new editor in the bureau, and then in 2015 was named the bureau chief. I have to take a breath, Elisabeth, just to run through all that. But you certainly haven’t slowed down anywhere along the way. And my guess is you’re not going to be slowing down anytime soon. ELISABETH BUMILLER: No. (Laughs.) MR. SCHIEFFER: (Laughs.) So what’s The New York Times doing to prepare to cover this very new and different president? MS. BUMILLER: Well, we’ve greatly increased our White House correspondents, for starters. We went from four to six. It’s a fantastic lineup. It’s Peter Baker, Glenn Thrush, Julie Davis, Mike Shear, Mark Landler, Maggie Haberman – who’ve I left out? I think that’s it. Is that six? Anyway. They have – I think they have maybe 100 years of experience between all of them. Peter’s covered three different White Houses. Glenn Thrush we just hired from Politico. MR. SCHWARTZ: Which is a real steal. MS. BUMILLER: Yeah, it’s a – yeah, great. Landler has covered the Obama White House, has written a book about Obama and Hillary Clinton. Julie – they all have a lot of experience. They’re tough, fast, really smart reporters, great writers. And Maggie Haberman will be in New York at what we call White House north. We expect that Donald Trump will spend a fair amount of time at Trump Tower, even after becoming president. Many weekends there, we’re expecting. So it is – as I’m sure you’ve all seen, the scene in Trump Tower. You know, people come and go through that lobby. And a lot happens in that lobby and unfolds upstairs. So we’re increasing – we’re at full mobilization, I would say, in the Washington Bureau. There’s about 80 people in the bureau, just a few blocks from the White House. About 50 of them report to the Washington Bureau as editors and reporters. And we’re adding reporters. This is a full-time, 24/7 White House and administration. MR. SCHIEFFER: I was going to suggest that whoever you put on the lobster, the overnight beat – MS. BUMILLER: (Laughs.) Yes. MR. SCHIEFFER: May get the – that might be the prime thing, because they’ll get the tweets. MS. BUMILLER: Well, what we’ve done is we now have an editor up at 6:00 a.m., you know, fully caffeinated, in the chair next to the computer – at home, to be honest, he doesn’t come to the office at that hour. And we have a reporter on duty starting at 6:00, a White House reporter, because as we’ve seen, the president-elect starts tweeting, usually about 6:15, if he feels like it, sometimes earlier. This morning there were five tweets between 6:00 and 7:00 – actually, five tweets between 6:00 and 6:30. You know, our readers say why are you – why are you paying attention to these? Can’t you just ignore them? He’s the president-elect of the United States, is about to become president, and we look at the tweets just like we look at White House press releases, which are of another era, right? We evaluate them. Some of them we ignore. Some of them, we realized they’re news. And this morning, Donald Trump, you know, said Hillary Clinton was guilty as hell, revisiting a line from the campaign. So what we do with that is we – Jonathan Weisman, who’s our fabulous transition briefing editor, who will – you know, who will become the editor of the inaugural briefing and then the White House briefing. We have a running feature online. And Jonathan takes those from reporters, writes them very quickly, takes in other items from reporters, because things unfold very quickly. And we put that online. And we’ve found that it’s extremely popular with readers. MR. SCHIEFFER: How many newsletters, as it were, are you now putting out? Because I know at The Washington Post that’s a big part. They’re not just a newspaper anymore, they’re a media company. MS. BUMILLER: Right. MR. SCHIEFFER: Certainly the Times is doing the same thing. Are you putting more emphasis now on your digital product than you are on the – what comes in the paper newspaper? MS. BUMILLER: Well, we’re putting a lot of emphasis on both. The growth, of course, is in digital because right now our digital audience is daily 1.5/6 million. And this – the audience for print is about 6(00,00), 700,000. Those are more or less the right figures. So you can see the difference, right? I mean, together it’s a huge amount of readership. But, you know, in a very competitive environment. And we certainly put our huge amount of – we are putting enormous amounts of energy in digital, because that’s where the growth is. On the other hand, we do not want to abandon our print readers. They’re very loyal. They spend an enormous amount of money for the paper every year. And we are – we’re doing some special things for them. You’ll see some special sections. MR. SCHIEFFER: I asked Jerry Seib, your opposite number at The Wall Street Journal, how many platforms is he now providing information for? And we counted it up and he said, maybe seven. Seven different platforms. And I would guess you’re somewhere in that neighborhood. MS. BUMILLER: Well, right. Well, it depends what you mean by – you know, we provide for the website, for mobile, and for – mobile is the phone. Again, the huge growth is on the phone. And so, you know, we’ll write a story for the web, and it goes onto the homepage and it goes onto the phone, you know, it goes – plus, there is – there are newsletters. But we have found that the big growth is in – how do I – you know, these briefings. We call them briefings. But they’re basically running online updates on what is happening in Trump world that day, or this week, what’s happening on the Hill in the hearings, the confirmation hearings. I mean, there was – what day was it – it was Wednesday? Wednesday was the Trump press conference in New York, right? So that day we had a running live chat, which is a chat with reporters. And they say, hey, that’s an interesting thing the president-elect just said. That is running live. We had a running transition briefing which was, you know, nuggets from the press conference. And we had a running live hearing briefing which was running updates from a number of confirmation hearings on the Hill. I mean, it was like a three-ring circus. This is a newspaper. It’s what used to be newspaper. (Laughs.) It’s now, as you point out, a media company. And it’s almost like you need a director in the middle of the newsroom when all this is going on. And then, at the end of the day, we take a big, deep breath, and we prepare for the print product. MR. SCHIEFFER: Let’s bring in Andrew. MR. SCHWARTZ: Thanks, Bob. And Elisabeth, it’s great to be here with you. I get to pal around with your husband, Steve Weisman, who’s one of my heroes and mentors all the time. And so – MS. BUMILLER: And a former Times White House correspondent. (Laughs.) MR. SCHWARTZ: And a former Times White House correspondent. And, you know, of course, I worked with both of you for years. You mentioned before we even came on the podcast that people who used to cover the White House, you know, almost can’t believe that there’s now six people covering the White House now.