Walter Isaacson talks 'The future of media'

Walter Isaacson, CEO of Aspen Institute talks about the future of media in an exclusive interview to CNBC-TV18's Anuradha Sengupta. The former Managing Editor of Time Magazine and ex-CEO and Chairman of CNN is best known as the biographer of Steve Jobs.

Below is an edited transcript of Isaacson’s interview on CNBC-TV18. Q: It has been a year since your book was published and Steve Jobs died. What would you say is the most enduring story, that you have helped write for the world? A: Steve Jobs had a real passion for making great products with an intense personality. He was always driven to perfection. It was almost an artist’s sensibility, whether it was the original McIntosh, iPod, iPhone or iPad. He was able to connect beauty. This notion of connecting beauty to technology made Apple standout. Q: When he asked you to write his biography initially you did not want to do it. Why? A: When he first asked me, I had done Benjamin Franklin and Einstein. I thought was he in that sequent. And I said yes, it would be great to do your biography, but let’s wait 20-30 years until you retire. I did not realize he was battling cancer. Once I focused on that fact, I realized that he was a great entrepreneurial creation myth writ large. Somebody had started a company in his parents’ garage with the kid from down the street and turned it into the most valuable company in the history of the planet. So I was very eager to do the book once I reflected on it. Q: In your book and in all the conversations you have described lots of different traits that he had, like imagination, artistic sensibility, quest for perfection and wanting to keep control, etc. If you were to identify one single trait that CEOs and business leaders should pick up, from what went into the making of Steve Jobs, what would that be? A: Yes, when I asked him that he said many CEOs have a passion for making profits. But Steve Jobs always had a passion for making great products. He said if he cared too much about making profits, he might cut corners on making a great product. But if you really care about a beautiful product you will be contributing something to the world and the profits will follow. So don’t get distracted, from caring deeply about how great your product is. Q: You have spent about two years on the book with about 40-50 interviews and interactions with him. I believe you met him 2-3 weeks before he passed away. Is it essential when a biographer sets out to write a story do you need to like your subject? How do you ensure that you retain your journalistic objectivity to the subject and yet do justice to him? A: I ended up liking, admiring and respecting Steve. Although, I knew there were lots of quirks and flaws in his personality. Overall they were connected to his passion, intensity and creativity. He can also be tough and unkind at times. He said I have always been brutally honest to people and I want to write an honest book. There will be parts of this book I don’t like, but it was important to show that he was a human being. A guy made of flesh and blood, who had some personality traits that may not be admirable. But overall he was a true genius and a great innovator. So, it was for people to see the whole picture instead of me just whitewashing it. Q: You are a career journalist and interesting thing is that at Time Magazine you were perhaps the first new media editor, and that was in the early 90s. What is your say on that? A: That was when the digital age came in, the early 90s. When we first got web browsers and I realized what a difference it was going to make. Deliver the magazine electronically, to do it new forms with hypertext and everything else. So it was a great exciting period. Q: How has the challenge been? Or where is it shifted on the digital platform for magazines and big publishing brands? A: I think the biggest problem is that the business model has fallen apart. We as journalist have new ways to distribute and convey all the wonderful stories we report. We can do it electronically; on iPads. We can make it interactive and also add a video to it. It is a wonderful golden age for readers. I can read papers in Mumbai, Jerusalem, or Munich just by going online. The problem is for the moment we haven’t figured out a good business model. People don’t usually pay for online content and news. So, you tend to be advertising supported, but that doesn’t really cover the cost of doing a great magazine. _PAGEBREAK_ Q: This is a problem that the print media has been facing online for almost 20 years now.  You also wrote a cover story on the Time Magazine, where you talked about how you attract online revenue, micro and iTune’s payment method. Why has this not taken off?  Do you see Wall Street Journal, which you quoted as an example? Do you see that model being followed? A: Yes, the Wall Street Journal has people subscribed to it. What I hope will take off eventually is a simpler model. Something, which Steve Jobs did with the iTune store, on one click you get something for 99 cents.  If one is buying Time Magazine, it is a click and you pay 25 American cents. So, you pay just a few pennies for a newspaper or a magazine. At the moment, we don’t have a very easy technology to make a simple payment without putting in passwords and credit cards. I hope people will come up with an easier, simple, small online payment system. Q: But do you think it is a technological a mind-set block because people have just got so used to getting content online? A: I think that is mainly technological. I don’t think most people would worry about paying a few pennies for a newspaper or a magazine. It is the mental transacting cost, in other words it’s the difficulty you have putting in your name and password. So, the people want everything to be free. I think just like we have learned to pay for music. People used to share and get music for free, online. Still a lot of people share and get it for free, but most people say it is easier to get it at the iTune store. Also one gets it legally for not very much money. Q: Do you think that magazines and newspapers will be able to monetise this and create a new business model? How confident are you as it is really taken long? A: I am not totally confident because you are right. It has taken a long time and it hasn’t happened. I think that it is not really in the interest of internet service providers or cell phone companies to make it easy. They would rather make everything free online and you would have to pay for the timing. So, I think we have to find an easy payment system. It may not happen. This is a problem, it doesn’t mean there will be a solution right away. I think it is a bad idea to have all journalism only supported by online advertising. I think it is better to have both advertising and to beholden to your reader for a little bit of revenue because that makes you honest to your reader.
Q: The fact that social media is here to stay, is undisputable. Its impact is clear but do you think sometimes that we are over estimating its impact? The PIU centre has put out some data’s which says that while the consumption of news in mobile devices has gone up, only about 10% of Americans access digital news through recommendations and shares, which is via social media. Do you think that’s good news for news companies? A: Yes I actually do think it is. I think that it’s important for people to get information by sharing it on social network. It’s also important to have journalists and outlets that you trust. E.g. I have written a story, now let me tweet it and put it on my Facebook page, and then hoping that people share it on their Facebook pages, I think that’s a bit overrated right now. I think in the end there will be certain reporters, certain news outlets you trust. You will go to that rather than having everything be sort of crowd sourced by people on your social network. Q: Do you think that there is a case for not for profit news companies and news gatherings for instance the pro-public model? Do you think that there is merit there? A: I think there is a small place for publically supported media. Whether its NPR and PBS which are in United States publically supported media or the type of reporting’s, things like Pro-Public. I don’t think we should take journalism completely out of the market place. I think even though one wants few places that are publically or government supported one also wants to have journalism be a normal business. Which is responsible to its consumers and tries to make a product that people are willing to pay for. There's a discipline that comes with making a product whether its newspaper or an iPhone that people say that’s cool I am willing to pay for it. So, I don’t like the fact that maybe people are saying we should produce all those journalism but people should never pay for it. I think it ought to be up to us journalists to say I am going to produce something so valuable that people will pay a little bit in order to get it. _PAGEBREAK_

Q: So, you are saying there is a place for all of it but you don’t feel that for profit media and journalism should be a model that needs to be questioned?   A: Right, I believe we should have a for profit model, we should have journalism that people pay for, we should also have public media and government supported media. I think you should try many different things but I don’t think we should get totally away from the notion that a person can go into business by creating a website or creating a news service or magazine or a TV station and they can make a profit by selling advertising and getting revenue from the people who use it, that’s not a bad business model. I kind of like the marketplace.

 Q: Do you think that good journalism is popular journalism? Does good journalism and real investigative work sell? Is it popular or does the latest nude pictures of the Dutches of Cambridge make more money?   A: I think that’s been a question ever since the penny press was invented century or two ago. Probably, before that you had built a popular and a serious press. I think there is a market for both. There are times when I want to read about celebrities and there are times I want to read serious good valuable information. Believe it or not there is a market for that.   Q: But does that kind of journalism make money?   A: I think it will make money. When people realize it maybe hard to get reliable information, people will say I value that, I’ll pay for it.   Q: But with the kind of pressures that big media houses are in when it comes to revenues, whether its television or newspapers or magazines, do you see investments being made behind big investigative teams and journalism of the old fashion kind?   A: That’s being cut back and it’s because as I said in the past 10-20 years the business model got broken. The business model of having subscribers and people pay for the publications or journalism. I am not sure how we fix that but at the moment with that business model broken you see magazines cutting back on investigative reporting. You see newspapers and television networks shutting down overseas bureau and that’s not a good thing.

Q: We are talking in the aftermath of the California anti-Muslim hate video and there are various governments in the world. Apart from governments of Iran and North Korea and perhaps even China which look at censoring social media. But even in India which has a completely free media we have had the Indian government make attempts to talk to Google and Facebook and all of them and try and see if they can use filters and do some kind of self regulation. Do you think that we need to have absolute freedom or do you think that, that’s an American way which may not be necessarily workable in countries and cultures that are different and which have different problems because so many people have died because of this video and they shouldn’t have.   A: I think every society probably has to work it out based on their values. I believe in the freedom of press. I believe in the freedom of speech and one shouldn’t try to censor people. On the other hand personally I think it’s odious to put up a video that makes fun of somebody’s religion. I think you shouldn’t be doing things that cause hatred or make fun of people’s beliefs. So, that’s the values I would live under. I think it’s probably a bad idea to force a censorship but each society has to decide what is appropriate for our society.

We were today at the Aspen Institute lunch talking to one of the ministers of telecommunications in India. He was wrestling with, what extent we try to stop videos like this and to what extent is it best to have free speech. There is not an easy answer there, whether it’s United States or India or anywhere else. I think it’s the type of thing we have to wrestle with. It used to be in a big publication like Times Magazine or a network like CNN which say we don’t run stuff like that. It causes hatred. However now with the internet anybody in the world almost can put a video on youtube. So it is a little bit more difficult to control what goes out.   Q: We just saw the first debate Romney versus Obama and it was clear who won that one. How much does TV and the marketing campaign influence voters you think in your experience?   A: I think a lot. After the first debate I heard some half-academic-type person say “oh, debates never affect the election.” It never effect what people think and I said did you watched that debate will affect how the people think and indeed it did. Now it is kind of a good thing that’s the way we have a style, we have political advertising, we have debates, and we have campaign appearances. So, I think people are still making up their minds in the United States. I think either Romney or Obama either one can win this.   _PAGEBREAK_
Q: You are not ready to call it yet?   A: People were saying a few weeks ago that Obama had it locked up and it used to be Harold Wilson. I think who once said “a week is a long time in politics” but in this new media age, a day is a long time in politics. So, I think there will be a lot of twist and turns.   Q: What do you make of all the statements that both candidates make on the campaign trail and all media do fact checks and then on the other hand you have things like the last employment figures that came out, which was less than 8 percent and that was seen as something manipulated, where do you stand on this?   A: I don’t believe that there was manipulation of labour statistics, but I think that’s part of the joy and sometimes a frustration of having hundreds of media outlets.   So, it used to be just a few media outlets that they had looked into and say no those statistics are right. Nowadays if people want to say I don’t believe the government’s statistics you have a TV networks and websites that will report it – that’s good. I am not in favour of censorship, I am in favour of free speech. Eventually with a whole lot of free speech people are smarter enough to come to them. They have opinions and those opinions are probably pretty wide.   Q: How would you access President Obama’s term?   A: I think President Obama has been very effective in foreign policy. It was a very balanced foreign policy. It is easy to try to second guess and say we should have done this in Egypt, Libya or whatever, but he steered a steady course when it came to the crises in foreign policy.   On the economy, he has been good at preventing the nation from going off an economic cliff, a tailspin. Now as you mentioned unemployment numbers are coming down, thing are getting better. But it has not been a very healthy recovery and secondly he has not been able to bring the two parties together in Congress to solve the budget problem that we are facing at the end of the year. I think he could have been a stronger leader, but also the Republicans and Congress could have been more willing partners. I think that in general he has done a pretty good job.   Q: What would be the biggest challenge before the next American President?   A: I think that first of all solving the budget problem which is not too hard to solve. We had a commission and I am sure your viewers know about, it is called as the Simpson-Bowles commission. That’s pretty much where the solution is to raise a little bit of revenue, have a little bit of tax reform, cut a little spending, deal with entitlements and we get a budget in place. I think that the really important challenge is how do we create a society that will be as well-educated and as creative as it has been for the past 50 years. How do we get our education system, especially our school system, our kindergarten to 12th grade system kicked up so that it is one of the best in the world again and those are the longer term challenges that US faces, and India too will be looking at an age of education with digital text books and digital teaching and will all invent new ways to do education. I think India will be in the forefront of inventing new models for education and hopefully United States will be as well.