Maureen Dowd is Clueless About Google and Media

Wow. Not only is Maureen Dowd pretty stupid about politics (yes, i'm biased here:), she's very clueless about technology and media. Did you read her op-ed, "Dinosaur at the Gate"?

"... Firms, like Google here and Craigslist in San Francisco, have hijacked journalism, making us feel about as modern as the Tyrannosaurus rex model that sits on the Google campus.

Google is in a battle royal over whether it has the right to profit so profligately from newspaper content at a time when journalism is in such jeopardy..."

How clueless are these statements? I bet Dowd thinks she was clever in delivering this analogy, but it only highlights her misunderstanding of Google's role as an aggregator of news. Did she ever visit Google News? I do everyday. I rarely see a Google ad where Google profits from any newspaper content. Sure there are the AP articles with Google Ads, but what percentage of news links are these? I assume single digits. How much revenue is this for Google? Hardly a dent on the newspaper industry. Most of the news links are outbound to hundreds of media sites. Direct links, Maureen. Do you know what this means? Google makes money for the newspapers and sites that make it on Google News. It actually drives traffic to them. After this step, it's really up to the newspapers to monetize this traffic.

Yeah, Maureen, the sorry state of the newspaper industry is Google's fault as much as the Big Three auto manufacturers' demise was at the hands of the Segway.

Clueless Old Media... AP Needs to Go to School

This seems like it's out of a Will Ferrell movie. The Associated Press' executive team must be a bunch of Ron Burgundys. Just read the first few links and you'll get the picture. You can't get dumber than these rocks.

"Behind The A.P.’s Plan To Become The Web’s News Cop" TechCrunch

"A.P. Exec Doesn’t Know It Has A YouTube Channel: Threatens Affiliate For Embedding Videos" TechCrunch

"1. Solve journalism’s data problem. 2. Kill the AP. 3. Invest in the next market." BuzzMachine

"Does AP know how its YouTube channel works?" CNET

"Techmeme founder: WSJ, NYT are aggregators" CNET

"Online news aggregators – friend or foe?" Hitwise Intelligence

Tribune Co. Files for Bankruptcy

Amazing that my old company where I summered during graduate school is filing for bankruptcy. It was bound to happen. The revenue pie for newspapers has been rapidly declining. With less than 5% of people's media consumption, even a couple years ago newspapers retained 30% of company ad spend. Didn't make sense when the Internet had almost 40% of media consumption but only about 5% of advertising dollars. Advertisers were expected to eventually catch on. More from the NYTimes here.