Jim Lehrer's newest PBS project actually stemmed from an idea his wife suggested after last year's unmasking of one of journalism's most legendary sources.

When the Deep Throat story broke, Lehrer interviewed former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee on "The NewsHour."

"Kate said, 'You two ought to have a really long conversation' " about the news business, because "you talk about it privately all the time. Maybe do it for a DVD or on PBS," Lehrer said.

The program, the first in a planned series of interviews — "I do have a wish list, but I won't tell you who's on it," Lehrer joked — features the longtime friends conversing in Bradlee's Georgetown home about the state of journalism past and present, on topics such as Watergate, plagiarism and the demands of the constant news cycle.

"Ben and I are from the old school — we supply the facts and the readers supply the outrage," Lehrer said. "It sounds high-falutin', and it might be a generational thing, but that's what viewers will see."

Lehrer thinks media consumers eventually will "realize they want gatekeepers again, to figure out what's the most important thing." He also believes that journalistic embarrassments, including fabricated stories by Jayson Blair of The New York Times and Jack Kelley of USA Today, "brought a focus to everyone in this business about where things can fall through the cracks," he said. "We never before had brought the public into the tent to see how we do it, and that kind of transparency is good for the news business."