I’m watching a streaming clip from C-SPAN from a recent Gartner IT Security conference. Bob Woodward is giving opening remarks before the panel discussion starts. Just as he is turning it over, he recounts a dinner with a muckety muck with Simon and Schuster after he published his last book. The exec asks Woodward what his next book is going to be, and has a rather crass and commercial response to to Woodward’s thoughtful evasion. At the end of the dinner, Woodward say’s he’s found his topic, he’s going to write about the publishing industry in New York. The exec responds with a thinly veiled threat, which Woodward takes seriously, that such a book will be the last book Woodward publishes.

The “clip”:rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/ter/ter060605_cyber.rm is in Real video format. The comment comes about 14:00 in.

The publisher’s threat makes me glad we have alternatives to the old mass media.