Alec Baldwin Moderates Media Panel at Guild Hall

Guild Hall welcomed New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, Times columnist David Carr and filmmaker Andrew Rossi on Friday evening for a moderated by actor Alec Baldwin. Guests viewed a screening of Rossi's "Page One: Inside the New York Times" as part of Guild Hall's third-annual SummerDocs series.

Director Andrew Rossi offered an intimate look into the Times newsroom, focusing on the relationship between editors and reporters and the new world versus the old school as journalists chased stories involving WikiLeaks, a media mogul merger, the Iraq war and more. 

After the film, the group discussed the project and the future of journalism. Alec Baldwin, an , served as moderator, asking professional and personal questions. At times he drew on his own experience and interest in the media to offer his take on the future of news.

Baldwin prepared several points of discussion but frequently went away from the agenda to touch on current issues, including the pay wall business model and the News Corporation scandal in Britain. In the final segment of the discussion audience members were invited to ask questions about the film.

Carr, a media columnist who Baldwin noted was portrayed as a cross between "H.L. Mencken and Dennis Hopper," engaged with other panelists with the same wit and shrewd honesty that made him one of the main focuses of the film.

He discussed a variety of topics, from the importance of remaining credibile despite difficult sacrifices to his relationship with his father and his past as a drug addict. Carr commented that the recent News of the World scandal is one of the rare pieces that crosses over from media news into "real news."

"We write about people who write about people who write about people who actually do things," he joked

Keller answered questions about editorial politics, the troubled advertising market and dealing with scandal. During his stint as executive editor the paper has dealt with the Jayson Blair scandal, a reporter disgraced after being caught plagiarizing; the Judith Miller scandal, who inaccurately reported information concerning weapons of mass destruction in the months leading up to the Iraq invasion; and the David Rohde kidnapping in Afghanistan, a Times reporter held captive for months in 2008-2009. Keller also reflected on his time as an editor, and his earliest years in journalism.

"My first relationship with newspapers was delivering them," Keller said. "I think I fell in love with doing this kind of thing when I was in high school and worked on this little paper and realized … there weren't a lot of ways to get away with anything, but having access to the newspaper was one of those ways."

Keller, who won a Pulitzer in 1989, recently announced that he will step down as Executive Editor in the fall to become a full-time writer.