Slate used to have the best hot takes but now, well, we don't have them in the feedreaders any more.
We haven't presented the coveted CLoD in a while so here's a quick fix from 2009:
Here's the story. Google's CEO Eric Schmidt made the keynote speech at
the Newspaper Association of America, his way of thinking wasn't always
embraced:
...Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson denounced Google News as nothing but a parasite sucking the life out of the Fourth Estate. To be precise, he told The Australian, "There is no doubt that certain websites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet."And that was from an editor at the relatively staid Wall Street Journal. Here's what journalism professor Tim Luckhurst had to say in the UK Guardian. "Google's conduct is the sort of favour crystal meth does for an addict," he wrote. "Google aggregates stories written by expensive, professional reporters and blithely overlooks how much these people cost to train, hire and deploy. The tiny pittances it remits to news organisations will not pay for a fraction of the political, business, foreign and investigative reporting we are accustomed to. But Google does not care.
"Google's technology is modern, but its rapacious conduct is as old as unfettered market capitalism. It wants to fill its coffers at minimum cost just as Victorian factory owners wanted to manufacture without trade unions and statutory working hours. It must not be allowed to get away with a ruthless economic model that will destroy ethical, fact-based journalism.">>>MORE
Slate's Chris Thompson on Google's news aggregator:
...Got that, Mr. Schmidt? You're handing out meth bindles to the luckless chumps who trudge into your dark satanic mills. When you're not busy latching your suckers onto our colons....
