>>Male Presenter: Welcome to the Authors@Google
series.
Our guest today is Brooke Gladstone.
She's probably best known as the co-host and
managing editor of WNYC's "On the Media,"
distributed by NPR.
And if I may add, it is available as a downloadable
podcast for free, if you can believe it, on
OnTheMedia.org.
And Ms. Gladstone has served as NPR's media
correspondent, Russian reporter, and senior
editor of both "Weekend Edition" and "All
Things Considered."
She has two Peabody awards, a few Murrow awards,
the National Press Club's Press Criticism
Award, and was the recipient of a Knight Fellowship
at Stanford University.
She is also most recently the author of the
edifying and entertaining book, "The Influencing
Machine," illustrated by Josh Neufeld.
Please join me in welcoming Brooke Gladstone.
[applause]
>>Brooke: Thank you.
I am mic'ed up.
Does this sound OK?
I love these.
It makes me feel like I have to go out into
the audience Phil Donahue style, which I don't
intend to do.
But I was trying to figure out--.
I've done a lot of talks on this book and
I was trying to figure out what would make
the best sense for people at Google.
And it struck me that it made sense to focus
on the parts that have to do with the history
of communications technology, how we perceive
it, and how we've reacted to it through the
years and why the general panic that has ensued
in the last decade or so is completely predictable
and has happened many, many times before.
I also wanna talk about the notion of the
quality of information, the fear of echo chambers,
the notion of objectivity--these kinds of
things.
One thing I said at the start of the book
was that "we all hunger for objectivity, but
increasingly, we swallow news like Jell-O
shots in ad hoc cyber saloons.
We love to marinate in the punditry of people
with whom we agree, with people whose facts
we can digest without cognitive distress.
And sometimes, we feel a little bit queasy
about just consuming the media that agrees
with us, but we don't blame ourselves for
that.
We tend to project that nausea back onto the
media and blame 'it' or 'them.'
We don't really get truly agitated, however,
until we uncover the other guy's media.
Those guys are consuming lies.
Those guys are getting juiced up.
Their media diet is making them stupid.
So, what if our choices are making us stupid?"
And, of course, there was that famous question
you may have heard in an Atlantic article
a few years back, "What if Google is making
us stupid?"
I'm not going to address that too much.
I think it's been pretty refuted, but I will
get back to it because we need to consider
first of all, our history.
And after every new technology, panic has
always ensued.
Back when there was the creation of radio,
people said it was creating nightmares in
kids.
Now, we think radio is the good technology.
The one that forced us to use our imaginations.
Of course, there's tremendous panic over what
television has done to us.
And there's actually a fair amount of decent
data to suggest that too much TV-watching
causes obesity.
And that's a serious problem.
So, I'm not gonna dispute that every single
technological advance comes with unvarnished
wonderfulness attached to it, but the fact
is you get something and you--there's this
bug that's really after me.
You get something and you lose something at
the same time.
Socrates disdained writing because he said
it hurt the memory.
There are lots of people who talked about
information overload practically the moment
that movable type was invented.
There's this guy named Conrad Gessner, who
tried to put together a list of all published
books.
And he talked about the harmful and confusing
abundance of books.
So, he decided to leave out anything that
wasn't published in Greek, Latin, or Hebrew.
So, Dante and Chaucer didn't make the cut.
This was the only way he could assemble a
library of rational proportions.
This goes on and on and on all the way through,
which then brings me to one of my favorite
quotes, which is by Douglas Adams.
I'm gonna make sure I get it absolutely right.
He said, "Anything that is in the world when
you were born is normal and ordinary and is
just a natural part of the way the world works.
Anything that's invented between when you're
15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary.
Anything that is invented after you're 35
is against the natural order of things."
[audience chuckles lightly]
This is what we see over and over again.
And to continue with the wisdom of Douglas
Adams, of course, he offered the best advice
for these terrifying times in 1979, when he
described his then imaginary Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy.
He said, "It had about a hundred tiny flat
press buttons and a screen about four inches
square on which any one of a million 'pages'
could be summoned at a moment's notice.
It looked insanely complicated.
And this is one of the reasons why it had
the words 'Don't Panic' written on it in large,
friendly letters."
And so, I think a lot of the thesis of my
book involves we've been here--at least the
really bad parts of here-- a lot of times
before.
Don't panic.
The difference is the new responsibility that's
placed on the news consumer.
Up until the mid-Century, mid-20th Century,
every new development in technology made it
cheaper and more democratic, even though it
was still insanely expensive and not very
democratic.
But there was one development that made it
enormously expensive and reversed the trend.
And so, while all of our technology, starting
from the Penny Press and so forth, made it
cheaper and cheaper and really directed itself
towards more and more fragmented audiences.
By the time we got to mid-20th Century America,
we had a revolution because there was the
invention of television.
And never has there been a medium more expensive,
more demanding of enormous audiences.
And, of course, that became the norm.
We had a peculiar period in American politics,
which was the Cold War.
A time where no fragmentation could be tolerated
and we're all outliers.
We're marginalized.
This is what we have come to call the Golden
Age of Objectivity.
And I just wanna see if---.
I meant to put all of these numbers in the
book and I didn't.
So however, I can probably do it from memory
at this point.
When we had the telegraph and the steam rotary
presses, they were serving an exploding population
of immigrants at the very moment the fractured
political culture was engaged in a furious
argument over what America stood for.
When TV came along, the networks had to rely
on broadcast licenses and for most of the
news.
Also, they had to comply with a new regulation
that was enacted in 1949 that required them
to set aside time to present all sides of
the controversial issues they covered.
This is called the Fairness Doctrine.
A lot of people miss it.
But the fact is, is what that did has caused
television not to cover controversial issues.
Controversy was bad for the TV biz.
And that, of course, was very good for government.
The result was symbiosis.
To wage the Cold War, the government needed
political consensus and ideological conformity.
To be profitable, TV needed appeal to the
American mainstream.
Both thrived by narrowing debate and bottling
up cultural and political outliers.
So, you have the 1950s.
The nation's living rooms had a TV set, which
served as a kind of national mirror.
And what it presented was a populace that
was white, Christian, middle class, no accents,
no vowels at the end of the name.
It defined normal.
It defined America.
When Walter Cronkite used to end his CBS newscast
with the rock solid assertion that "that's
the way it is"--for those of you who are too
young to remember, that is how Walter Cronkite
ended his newscast.
"And that's the way it is."
It sounds astonishingly arrogant today.
Then, he was regarded, at least in one poll
in the 70s, as the most trusted man in America.
His nightly suppertime slice of reality, facts,
unseasoned and served deadpan, was the standard.
Now, a lot of people miss this period of objectivity.
They think all this emotion roiling the media
landscape is coarsening the culture, is making
us stupid.
It's not the emotion that's doing that.
It's the lack of respect for facts.
And that's an issue we can get to.
But it never seemed to me, looking at the
history of American letters and literature
and especially journalism, that you needed
to be in an order of passionless priests in
order to do good journalism.
Some of the nation's best journalism was done
by activists in the time, say, of the muckrakers.
Some of the best columns, some of the best
reporting is done in columns today by people
like Nick Kristof, who frequently ends his
columns with calls to action.
Here's a place where you can support this
charity, for instance.
That doesn't mean his reporting is bad.
It simply means we know who this person is.
We know who he cares about.
We still trust him to good information.
It doesn't mean because he cares about something
that he's going to edit to win the argument
and that he's gonna ply you with lies.
That's not what happens.
And another thing is when you say you're objective,
how do you know?
It doesn't really exist.
My favorite discovery, probably, in the course
of writing this incredibly dense two millennia
of media of history in 160 pages, is when
I looked the famous editorial in 1896, when
Adolph Ochs bought the New York Times.
He wrote what is regarded as the single best
statement of journalism's highest ideals.
He wrote, "It will be my earnest aim that
the New York Times give the news impartially,
without fear or favor, regardless of party,
sect, or interest involved to invite intelligent
discussion from all shades of opinion."
Well, that without fear or favor cut, is probably
something many of you are familiar with, that
you've heard before.
And that is where people usually end the quote.
But he wrote a whole editorial.
And he went on to say, "Nor will there be
a departure from the general tone, unless
it be to intensify its devotion to the cause
of sound money and tariff reform and advocacy
of the lowest tax consistent with good government.
And no more government that is necessary--."
[audience laughs]
In other words, what he regarded as absolute
fact, after impartially reviewing the evidence,
was a kind of bedrock belief in a very limited
role for government in local affairs.
And yet all around him, there was grinding
dehumanizing poverty at the end of the 19th
Century.
There were--.
You could see it in the eyes of the people
who were selling his paper.
Those boys were really miserable.
There are pictures and pictures of them I
saw online.
And it was stunning that he could come to
that conclusion and yet, that was his conclusion.
His grandson, who in a recent commencement
speech, bemoaned the fact that our social
safety net is shredding, that we aren't taking
care of global warming, that women's right
to choose is being threatened.
The whole litany of liberal issues was a sorry
state of affairs for this graduating class
to be inheriting.
I think he would be in profound disagreement
over what the true facts are with his own
great grandfather.
Or maybe grandfather.
I can't guess.
So, let us assume then that objectivity is
impossible.
What are we left with?
Well, we're left with fairness.
We're left with transparency.
We blame the media for hobbling our judgment.
We project that out.
But is it really, purely the problem of media?
I mean, media in this country is run by money.
I was recently on a panel at the Brooklyn
Book Fair.
And I found myself in a really weird situation.
I was on a panel with people at Fair and Democracy
Now, among others, who--.
And one of the women there had written a book
about reality television and she said that--.
She basically called out corporations for
the nefarious agenda of generating and reinforcing
negative racial and gender stereotypes through
these reality TV shows.
And I certainly wouldn't get up there and
defend these shows as being paragons of good
social, progressive social ideas.
My question was simply about the agenda of
the corporations.
These corporations have an agenda to make
money.
If it doesn't pay to make women look like
idiots or to "keep the black man down," if
that's what they're doing, then they wouldn't
do it.
Another thing is that she had the idea that
things were getting worse.
And Amos and Andy was raised.
Amos and Andy, of course, was at one time
the number one radio show in America.
They would stop fights in Madison Square Garden
when it was on just to play it, or delay the
start.
There is no single image of anything today
that conveys--.
I mean, we don't have a Cosby Show that's
overturning a lot of popular notions 'cause
we don't have that kind of mainstream media
anymore.
That mainstream media no longer exists to
set the agenda.
I think that's where I really ran into problems
at the Brooklyn Book Fair.
My feeling was that, and is, that increasingly
with every passing day, that agenda is our
own as news consumers.
And that is where Google comes in because
as Clay Shirky said in response to all of
those people who say we're suffering from
information overload, what we really have
is filter failure.
We all know how to negotiate a bookstore.
But if somebody took the contents of a bookstore
and dumped it out onto the street and you
went there, you wouldn't be able to find anything.
Same thing with a library.
If you didn't understand how a library worked,
you wouldn't be able to find anything.
Well, there is an unbounded universe of information
out there online, obviously.
And the problem for many of us is we don't
know how to find what we want, except through
Google--most of the time.
Google--always regarded as the demographic
way to sort information.
You have a question, figure out how to answer
it, put it in there.
And whatever other people thought was the
best answer over time, comes to the top.
At least, that's the simple way of understanding
Google.
I know you have all dealt with Eli Pariser's
concerns that Google may be reinforcing the
media echo chamber by using our own behavior
to serve us better.
That's appalling.
How can you do that?
Using our own behavior to serve us better
eliminates the possibility of serendipity.
The more and more we get answers based on
our past behavior, the less likely we are
to encounter information we otherwise might
not encounter.
And if people are paying less attention to
newspapers, certainly paper newspapers, where
you might see an article on Zimbabwe and you
thought, "Well, I never was particularly interested
in Zimbabwe, but this looks interesting."
And then suddenly, you're reading Zimbabwe--accidental
encounters with information, serendipity.
What happens in a world where you can tailor
all your information precisely to where you've
been before?
This is a problem that concerns me as a news
producer because a lot of times I get asked
the question, "Why don't you just poll people
on what they wanna know about and then give
that to them?"
And I thought, "Well, because I felt part
of my job was to give people stuff that they
didn't know about, that maybe they ought to
know about."
And so, the need to preserve serendipity in
not just my production, but also in all news
production, is something I'm very concerned
about.
I do think, however, that people need to be
responsible for their own behavior more than
they ever have before.
This is a caveat and mature world.
Our parents didn't have to pick their own
health care.
They didn't have to pick their own pension
plan.
They didn't have to pick paper or plastic.
And they only had three networks.
We are used to choosing.
And we choose in weird ways because we have
to function according to our biases.
There's a really fascinating study that was
done.
There was somebody whose brain--who had some
injury that affected the part of the brain
that dealt with emotion.
So, what you had was a kind of de facto Mr.
Spock, you would think.
Somebody who could function entirely according
to logic.
But what happened with that disabled emotional
center is that he couldn't function at all.
When asked, "Do you want the black pen or
the blue pen?"
He went down a rabbit hole of "Well, the black
pen is good for this.
The blue pen is good for that.
The black pen--" When faced with the choice
of a mate or even a breakfast cereal, forget
it.
The person was incapable of making a decision
because there was always a countervailing
bit of information to take into consideration.
And that is why we rely on our emotions, our
biases, to help us order the world.
We order the world with our emotions and our
biases.
Otherwise, it's way too complicated.
And we use our media consumption to help us
solidify some kind of rational notion of how
the world works.
Back before World War I, when everybody was
reading Horatio Alger novels, they really
believed that it was a level playing field
and that if you worked hard enough, you could
pull yourself up by the bootstraps and be
a successful American.
Later on, that view was mediated by subsequent
events.
Nevertheless, it was a comforting view.
It seemed like a fair view.
It was a view that you could certainly anecdotally
draw from what you saw around you.
Well, now we live in a world of data--data
that is presented visually, data that Google
has become better and better at presenting
to us.
But what is your responsibility, if any, to
ensure that people get--since Google is run
by an algorithm--you don't have to build our
biases into those search results.
We may like it, but you don't have to do that.
Do you serve us better by--?
Eli Pariser offered in his book the example
of somebody, two different people, searching
BP.
And one of them found all sorts of stuff about
the environmental damage of the BP oil spill.
And another person found its stock ranking,
its balance sheet, and this kind of thing.
Supposedly, in a purely democratic Google
world, [chuckles] they would've gotten the
same results based on results that other people
found useful.
Later on, Jacob Weisberg of Slate tried to
reproduce this experiment and found that there
weren't differences in the searches.
So, I don't know what's true and what isn't.
And Google doesn't really wanna talk about
it.
I don't know whether it's part of the secret
sauce that Google doesn't want anybody to
reproduce, but it would be interesting to
know how much our behavior is getting built
into those searches.
We know that it helps us with our spelling.
And we also know that Google Translate is
able to correct for things.
The more a language is translated online,
the better Google translate becomes.
If you're speaking in a less-spoken language,
then you're out of luck.
But, and that's a kind of democracy, too.
Fundamentally, and that was the final analysis
of this book, "The Influencing Machine."
Let me hold it up for all those people on
YouTube.
"The Influencing Machine's" final conclusion
is that ultimately, we get the media that
we deserve.
I just wonder whether Google, given our built-in
biases and our desire to stay in groups with
which we agree--what they call homophily--birds
of a feather flocking together--whether you
can give us better than we deserve.
Anyway, I think I'll stop there.
Thank you.
[applause]
I have no idea how long I talked.
Alex, do you know?
>>Male Presenter: If anybody has questions,
you can--.
>>Brooke: Yes, thank you.
>>male #1: Fifty thousand dollar question.
>>Brooke: Oh, good.
>>male #1: The number 50,000.
>>Brooke: Oh, yeah.
>>male #1: Which is like a threshold, I guess,
in current media.
Is that--.
Do you have any evidence that that's scaled
over time back when you were reaching audiences
of hundreds of thousands with newspapers?
Did it take less ridiculous numbers to get
people's attention to make you panic?
[Brooke laughs]
In the future, is it gonna be 30 billion people
died in car crash?
>>Brooke: Well, you're referring to the chapter
in the book where I trace, I talk about the
odd use of numbers by people in the press
and how somebody can come up with a weird
number, it's on a TV show, it gets picked
up by Congress, then it bounces back.
And we found that 50 thousand was a number
that was particularly durable and used because
it was what one FBI agent--former FBI operative--called
Goldilock's number, neither too big nor too
small.
It was just right.
And so, at one point, somebody came up with
the idea that there were 50 thousand predators
online, trolling for kids.
In the 80s, somebody said--and it got bounced
all over the place--that there were 50 thousand
human sacrifices a year in satanic rites.
[laughter]
>>male #1: Actually, I encountered this number
once, which is why it stuck in my head.
I had a house fire and I remember the police
telling me, "There are 50 thousand private
insurance adjusters just waiting for your
business."
[laughs] Wow, really?
In a city of a million?
>>Brooke: Yeah, you know.
That sounds like a fair number.
The only way you can fight these numbers,
obviously, is with data.
The FBI guy didn't know about the predators
online number because they don't do data for
that, but they do for homicides.
And in the particular year in which this 50
thousand human sacrifice number was cited,
the FBI had only counted up 25 thousand homicides,
which meant that there were more than twice
as many homicides of any kind just in the
human sacrifice vein.
So clearly, it was bullshit.
[laughter]
But in terms of your number, are there other
hot numbers out there or has the number grown?
>>male #1: Does it float?
Yeah.
>>Brooke: Well, media itself is, electronic
media itself in the history of humankind is
not very old.
And I do think that our hunger for focus on
love of the illusory certainty of numbers
is not something that necessarily dates back
to the beginning of electronic media.
I'm guessing that because there were fewer
numbers then, there were probably fewer opportunities
to elect a number "most popular" the way that
50 thousand in recent years has been elected.
>>male #1: Thanks.
>>Brooke: Anything else?
>>male #2: I have a question.
>>Brooke: Yeah.
>>Male Presenter: Do you wanna use the microphone?
>>Brooke: Yeah, use the microphone.
>>male #2: So, when you talk about "The Influencing
Machine," I start thinking about media that
has--.
So, we have more people that are making media,
if I can put that in quotes now.
And that can be upward in a lot of ways.
One section that's really intriguing to me
is the creation of silly, little internet
memes.
So, I'm sure you've come across I Can Haz
Cheezburger.
And to me, that is an interesting thing because
in of itself, it's not a joke.
It's not, as an image, as an objective view
of the image, I Can Haz Cheezburger with a
cat's face on it isn't funny.
But ten people in the world decided that this
is funny and then it snowballed from there.
And then the creation of this whole new language,
which all these people came together and decided
this is funny.
And then it kept snowballing.
And that's something that goes on in a lot
of memes online.
Do you have a point of view on where that
fits in in the whole objective/subjective
paradigm and how that fits into "The Influencing
Machine?" if I may put it that way.
>>Brooke: I'm not a hundred percent sure I
understand the question, but if you're saying
that where does this election of certain memes
is being particularly popular or as a place
to land briefly as you go on?
There was a time when people would stand around
the water cooler and talk about the Mary Tyler
Moore show.
This is an environment in which those moments
become briefer and briefer and briefer.
And maybe they're only as big as a single
still photo.
But there is a world of absurdity, or ironic
detachment, that can be conveyed in even a
single still message, or just a kind of mysterious
resonation that just appeals.
I mean, I don't get them all.
I do get some of them.
And I think they're hilarious and some of
them pass me right by.
And I've certainly been guilty of sending
a lot of these things around as well.
And I was an early sender of Pearl on the
Funny or Die, the drunken two-year old yelling
at Will Ferrell.
I mean, I just couldn't get enough of it.
But that was lengthy.
And there are plenty of others that I've sent
around over the years.
I think that they're a way to hook up.
It's part of this global sense of humor that
emerges, not to unite people, but to create
different communities around the world just
as they're created around issues.
They could be created around these cultural
moments and these cultural memes.
This is another way in which a new kind of
cultural arrangement.
I don't wanna say "order" because it isn't
hierarchical.
It's a new way that we connect, which is unfamiliar.
It's new.
It's not how we ever connected before and
has no reference to time or space.
It's part of that kind of community that could
only exist in a world without time and space.
>>male #2: Thank you.
>>Brooke: I hope that sort of got there.
>>male #2: It did.
>>Brooke: Thank you.
>>male #3: Hi.
My name is Trey Harrison.
I'm an engineer here at Google New York.
I loved your book and in July, I was posting
on Twitter and Google+ about the book as I
was reading it.
And this was in the middle of the whole Vivian
Schiller mess and NPR.
And I think a lot of people were just searching
the web for NPR and waiting to jump into things
to argue about.
>>Brooke: Well, thank you for posting it then.
[laughter]
>>male #3: But one interesting, I got like
50 responses to this one post that I made
about the book.
And the argument that people got into, and
I think some of the right wing and anti-NPR
types egged them on, but it's some of the
people who say that they always give to their
NPR stations that got into it.
But they said that they thought that it was
unfair what you were doing with the book.
For instance, the YouTube promo where it had
the "On the Media" music and the fact that
the book subtitle had "On the Media" in it.
And that you were spring boarding off of what
were partially public dollars and partially
pledged dollars to do some sort of self-aggrandizement
between you and Neufeld.
And I just wondered if you would just respond
because I think that it's perfectly reasonable
for somebody to have a career and try to move
forward with their career, especially in ideas
as important as the ones you bring up.
>>Brooke: I think it's a fair criticism.
I thought about it.
I know that Bob wanted to interview me on
the book and I said, "Absolutely not."
It was Norton that obviously wanted to--.
I am who I am.
It wasn't NPR that was promoting the book.
It was probably Norton and other people who
had approached me over the years to write
a book did it because I had a selling platform.
So, it's true.
I let them use the music.
We didn't stop them from using the music.
On the other hand, Ben Allison just has it
on a record.
So, anybody can use the music.
I could see why people might think that because
there's public money involved--.
I don't know.
I mean, how does any author sell a book while
boxing off what made them competent--if they
were competent--to write the book.
I mean, it's my expertise developed over years
on the program that--.
Otherwise, why not just say "The Influencing
Machine" by Anonymous?
It just doesn't really make sense.
I sympathize with the queasiness.
I had some.
I did not want this subtitle: "Brooke Gladstone
on the media."
That was definitely Norton.
I had like, 20 billion other subtitles.
And they went, "Nah, let's go with this."
I was like, "Oh, gee.
That's a surprise."
So, I can identify with the queasiness, but
I honestly feel that this is my own project
and Josh's.
And it is a product of mine and Josh's past.
That's what we have to recommend us.
Josh wrote a brilliant book on Katrina called
"AD After the Deluge."
Should he not put that in anything?
I understand that I work for a non-profit,
but I don't think that means I have to put
a gag order on any reference to what I've
done in my history in non-profits.
I've been with NPR since 1987.
That's a long time to black out.
So, I sympathize, but not enough to not use
it.
>>male #3: It's a very good follow-up on the
question of it being a project between you
and Josh.
How did that work.
I mean, it's a graphic novel, non-fiction
book.
I mean, did you write the text and he illustrated
it?
Did you have meetings and--?
>>Brooke: It was quite interesting.
I mean, I decided to do it this way.
I decided it was possible to do it this way
after I read two books.
One was Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics,"
which is a magisterial work of sheer genius
that I kept by my bed the whole time.
And the other was the graphic novelization
of Paul Auster's "City of Glass," which is
a gorgeous book in which there's much abstract
nonlinear thinking going on, which is conveyed
so brilliantly by Dave Mazzucchelli and the
other people who worked that book.
Now, I saw what was possible and I saw what
you had to do to do it.
I have gotten media books in my office once
a week for the last decade and it's very frustrating
because they can be very hard to get through.
They tend to fall in one or two camps.
It's either a right wing.
It's either a right wing book that's masquerading
as media criticism, or a left wing book masquerading
as media criticism.
In other words, political proxy books.
Or else, they are, it's the collapse of civilization,
doom is neigh.
Or else, we are teetering on the brink of
an absolute gorgeous cyber-utopia, so don't
worry about a thing.
And I felt like I was steering the middle
course.
And that seems like, "Well, what's the big
deal with that?"
But that means that a lot of people got mad
at me on both sides of that line.
But I wanted to do it in a way--.
I wanted to build my argument on a series
of historical anecdotes that I thought were
terrifically significant and I wanted those
ideas to be sticky.
And I understand about visual images being
sticky.
I mean, somebody talks to me about this book
and they ask me question and I'll say, "Well,
remember that picture where blah, blah, blah."
And they'll remember it a lot faster than
they will the argument.
I also wanted to try something new.
And I felt that this would be much more like
radio, which I know is a little weirdly counterintuitive.
Radio is [chuckles lightly] the medium without
pictures, but radio is incredibly intimate
and anybody who listens to it on a regular
basis knows that you have a relationship with
that voice which is not the same as with newspaper
reporting or television.
There's a person there.
There has to be a person there.
And I'm used to writing for radio.
Done it almost all of my professional life
and I wanted to speak in bubbles and look
the reader in the eye.
So, I was able to do that.
Also, this book, unlike almost every other
bit of graphic non-fiction--with the exception
of Scott McCloud--is nonlinear.
It's non-chronological.
You're jumping back and forth.
You need a guide.
You need a Virgil to take you [giggles lightly]
through this very complicated territory, especially
since we're hopping back and forth through
a couple of millennium with a little side
trip to the Stone Age and to the year 2045.
And so, you really need somebody to hold your
hand through that thing and I wanted to be
that person.
In terms of the process--I know this is long
answer--but that was really interesting because
the difference between a graphic book, like
this one, and an illustrated book is that
an illustrated book supports the text.
But a graphic book, in panels, replaces the
text.
Now, when I first wrote my first few pages
for Josh, he said, "What is this?"
And I said, "Well, I hope I didn't give you
too much.
Here's my suggestion for what I think could
be in the page, but I don't wanna cramp your
artistic freedom."
And he went, "Oh no.
You totally don't get it."
He said, "You have to tell me exactly what
you want me to draw.
I can't read your mind."
So, for a thousand panels, essentially what
I did was write--.
Say there were 20 words text in the panel,
a detailed description of 200 words of how
to arrange the whole thing, and then maybe
a half a dozen links to visual reference points
for Josh.
Josh was brilliant.
He did an astonishing job of writing funny
columns and comics that are absolutely tragic
based on a lot of photographic material and
a lot of fancy.
There were a lot of times when I sent him
something and he would say, "No, Brooke.
You cannot fit the entire Crimean War in a
single panel.
[audience chuckles]
You can do one horseman, [audience laughs]
or you could do a two-page splash, but what
you're asking for in an army of a trillion
extras is not gonna happen in one-sixth of
a comic page."
So, he was like the experienced director of
photography--brilliantly skilled, experienced
director of photography.
And I was like the newbie director.
I story-boarded every single panel.
And when it worked, he did it as I asked.
And when it didn't, he would suggest other
angles.
And we both worked towards the production
of this book.
But the astonishing thing for me was how much
fun and how illuminating, how much I learned
looking for reference points.
So much information in this book, I happened
upon serendipitously when looking for visual
reference points for Josh.
>>male #3: But so, the many visual callouts,
like the Gin Lane and Beer Street one for
instance.
That came from you --.
>>Brooke: I sent him the Hogarth and I said,
"Do this Hogarth, but I want you to have them
reading these newspapers."
And I sent him a list of the names of newspapers
that were being read in the time that I'm
talking about.
But yes, I sent him the Hogarth.
I sent him the Vitruvian Man.
I sent him all this stuff and then he had
to make sense of it.
And he was drafting these frames even after
my description, some of which were not possible
to follow.
I mean, he had to teach me all the time the
art of the possible.
By the end, I sort of got it.
But I had to completely redo the war section,
which is kind of a book within a book because
I, what I had asked him to do was quite literally
impossible.
Had to completely send revisions on every
single one of those panels.
I thought he was gonna--.
It was just surprising he was able to keep
his equanimity.
>>male #3: Thanks.
>>Brooke: Mm-hmm?
>>male #4: You had mentioned someone else
mentioning that our role is perhaps part of
the problem here.
>>Brooke: That what is?
>>male #4: That Google is perhaps part of
the problem here in terms of focusing the
results on what the person is expecting or
what we know about that person's expectations.
And I think most people who work at Google
have actually thought this themselves at one
point along the line.
Are we contributing to narrowing everybody's
world view?
But the flip side of that, isn't it, is what
you mentioned in terms of corporation.
Google's job is not to educate and uplift
the intelligence of the population, right?
Our job is to make money.
And if we don't deliver the results that people
want, even if that is very much narrow-casting,
people are gonna go to Yahoo or Bing or something
and Google will fall by the wayside.
So, I'm not sure how to do that.
I have sympathy for--.
>>Brooke: And how does that conflict with
the "don't be evil" mandate?
[laughter]
>>male #4: Yeah, don't be evil, but don't--.
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
Is it really evil though to deliver the results
that people expect?
>>Brooke: This is a really--.
It is a fine irony.
When Eli Pariser, he was complaining about
Google, he was also complaining about Facebook
dropping people off of his newsfeed who--these
conservatives--he's very liberal, he's the
founder of Move On-- these conservatives that
he had friended, so he could see what was
going on there.
And Facebook eventually dropped their things
from his newsfeed.
I'm sure he has many hundreds or thousands
of friends.
So, because he wasn't going to them.
And he was like, "How could they do that?
They've just edited my stuff for me."
But you weren't going to them.
So, the question is you wanna create a situation
where--.
Like for instance, if I created an RSS feed
that had tons of stuff in it that I wasn't
interested in and I didn't go to them, what
good is the RSS feed?
Ultimately, we have to be responsible for
going outside our comfort zones.
The only trouble is, is Google is a way to
get outside your comfort zone painlessly in
the process of doing a basic search.
So, it would be a shame if Google served us
so well that an area of serendipity disappeared.
I understand that there's a conflict.
At this point, I don't see any real competition
on the horizon.
And maybe the narrowing of the focus isn't--.
I mean, have they done lots of studies to
determine whether or not you're way more successful
and you make a lot more money and people click
to more things when you do searches based
on their past behavior?
Do we know?
>>male #4: I can't answer that question.
>>Brooke: I mean, it's a good business.
Or do we just think it's good business?
I guess is the question.
I'm sure there's an answer out there.
I just don't know what it is.
>>male #4: In the print media, in the example
that I think of like, major newspapers, of
the major newspaper that tried to do this,
tried to be erudite and educate people in
terms of stuff they should know would be the
Christian Science Monitor, right?
And they didn't survive, right?
People go for New York Times with its supposed
liberal bias, or the Wall Street Journal and
FOX News for the other side of it.
>>Brooke: I don't know that I would distinguish
a whole lot between the Christian Science
Monitor and the New York--.
I mean, some of these--.
I think the Christian Science Monitor went
through so many cuts, they started doing less
and less reporting.
It was the vicious circle that's happened
with a lot of newspapers where they just,
they keep cutting back their service.
So then, fewer people come and then they have
to cut back their service even more and eventually
they disappear.
I mean, I think that--.
I wouldn't say that the mission of the Christian
Science Monitor was radically different from
that of the New York Times.
I just think that the Christian Science Monitor
didn't have enough reserves, wasn't big enough
to survive the darkest times and to adapt
appropriately.
I wouldn't say, "Oh, there's an example of
a pure newspaper that didn't survive because
it tried to be really good."
I can't really believe that.
>>Male Presenter: I think this will be the
last question.
Go ahead.
>>male #5: So, you mentioned earlier the effect
of the fact that media organizations are businesses
on how they, basically on everything that
they do.
And I was wondering what your perspective
was on how that means that wealthy individuals
and wealthy corporations can use that wealth
to direct the media discussion.
>>Brooke: Well, certainly the patronage model
seems to be making a comeback.
I mean, if you look at ProPublica, which does
amazing work in partnership with lots of other
mainstream media outlets, they essentially
function because they get lots of grants and
stuff, but basically it's one family that
supports this organization and enables it
to function.
It does it according to very high ideals of
journalism.
Every news outlet has to decide what it is
that's worth covering and what isn't.
And they'll make those decisions maybe along
liberal lines, but it's good work.
It's solid work.
It's prize-winning work in the case of the
amazing piece that was done about the hospital
during Katrina, where they just let some patients
die.
I don't know if you saw it in the New York
Times.
It was a really stunning piece that won a
Pulitzer.
Rich people will come back into this in a
big way, I think, if they're willing to lose
money [chuckles] because they will.
I mean, rich people have always been in--.
I mean, it's always been rich families that's
owned a lot of America's great and worst newspapers
and magazines.
I think that rich people will direct the discussion
with news outlets more.
The most noticeable way I think that rich
people direct coverage is by being desirable
audience members.
And the fact of the matter is, I've been upbraided
and I think correctly, because I say that
the media reflects all of America, and I think
it pretty much does in a fun house mirror.
It's a little distorted.
It's a little cracked.
It's not well-calibrated.
But essentially, we're all out there and so
is everybody that we can't stand.
But one thing that is hugely unrepresented
is poor people.
And I really do think that's because of the
fact that for most media, this is an advertising
run business.
I think you'll see maybe a little bit more
of that on public media, but not a whole lot
more.
I think there should be more.
I mean, there's been over the last 50 years,
there's been an explosion of business reporting
and a complete shriveling of labor reporting.
There are things out there that relate to
coverage that have everything to do with wealth.
I think mostly it's a great thing if we can
get rich people to part with their money.
I work for National Public Radio.
So, I could use it.
Actually, I work for WNYC.
But, same thing.
Thank you guys very much.
It was a pleasure.
[applause]
