LK: That was actually incorrect. That part went further, way further than what I said. He was asking me to respond to the fact that some other Web sites had aggressively sought public contributions, and I said, “Look, public contribution is what it is. It’s interesting. If there’s an explosion somewhere like the London subway bombings, do I want somebody who comes out of that with a great telephone picture to send it to us? Sure. And we should make that easier. We should make it easier for people to offer us what they think would be interesting news or information.” I’m not of a mind to let people post their visions, their view of the world, or submit “citizen journalism” contributions that would automatically get posted with their view of what’s going on. We intend to maintain full control over how news is presented on our site. And we think that’s critical. We’re not a blogger, we’re not a blog — we’re a news site.

[The question was] would we find a way, or could we find a way, to make it easier for people who have something to offer to get it to us. And the answer there is, yes, we will. We’ll figure out a way so that if you’ve got an offering, we want you to think of us first. We might look at that offering and say, “that’s interesting” and send a reporter out to talk to you and have a reporter interview you, or we might say, “that’s a great picture, we want to run it.”

SH: So how do you feel about citizen journalism? It sounds like you don’t really think it has a place on CBS News.

LK: Right, it’s totally different than what we do. We do journalism. I actually don’t really think it’s really “citizen journalism” — I think that’s a misnomer. I think blogging and what citizens do, and citizens’ observations and posting, is interesting, and has a place in the world, and certainly within communities it is very important. People of the same community or who think the same way or who work together on things — those people share a common interest, and their views on things may be of interest to each other. But it’s not news. It’s very different than a news organization that’s committed to covering news and putting it in perspective and covering it fairly, and not in a biased way.

SH: Since you started MarketWatch in 1997, what do you think has changed about the online audience and what it expects from the Web?

LK: Well, it’s grown dramatically, and what they expect from the Web in news, particularly, and in information, has grown exponentially. One of the reasons we did MarketWatch when we did was we thought financial news was going to be one of the first types of news accepted on the Web. And that turned out to be true, for a lot of reasons, including the fact that it has a short shelf life, and so people need it quickly. And historically people in the financial world, in the investing world, had a Web-like utility — they either had a Bloomberg terminal or a Reuters terminal — they’re professionals. So it was an obvious way to us that people were going to get news, if they could, about the market and what’s going on. How quickly sports and traditional news would also be sought after on the Web, we weren’t sure.

And the main thing that’s happened, the main change, has been the continuing technology upgrade of the Internet, to enable all forms of content, including video, to be delivered easily. The broadband revolution has really fueled the past year or two’s constant drumbeat of people coming to the Web for news. So if everybody now has a broadband connection at work, it’s very easy to get the news you want, up to and including video — all forms of news — on the Web, and in real time. Plus Web sites have gotten very good at the alerting process, where we can tell you on email or your cell phone or your BlackBerry that a story just broke about something you’re interested in and drive you to the Web site at that moment to get more information.

So the news consumption patterns have changed dramatically, and our research is telling us that the change is even more profound in younger people. There’s brand new research out this week that says that 75 percent of kids 12-18 are getting news from the Web. That’s a huge percentage! That’s up from like 38 percent five years ago. So that’s just the way it is — kids are all over the Internet for everything, and news is no different.

What really matters here, the opportunity with CBS that got me so excited, was to have a news organization that is funded largely by television revenues, or entirely, which is why it’s so big — by getting access to that entire network to build a news Web site, overnight we’d have the most resourced news Web site in the world. Because all of our people will be working for it.