IP Democracy: Crummy Article on Sam Zell Stirs Blog Frenzy

It’s a terribly slow news day, even for an Easter Sunday, which must be why the blogosphere is getting all fired up about an article that appeared in today’s Washington Post. The piece deals with real estate magnet Sam Zell, who last week made a controversial but successful $13 billion bid for the Tribune Co., parent company of 16 newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun, along with a slew of other media properties.

The article contends that Zell plans to cop a get-tough posture with Google, basically going the route of those crazy Belgians to try to force the search giant to either cough up more money for Tribune’s newspaper content or stop indexing it altogether. Zell, who heretofore has had little experience outside the real estate world, said

“If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?” Zell said during the question period after his speech. “Not very.”

The blogosphere has gone ga-ga over this. Jason Calcanis has this reaction in an item titled “Sam Zell is going to lose billions on newspapers and the Washington Post has no idea what they’re talking about.”

Based on this article, Doc Searls fears for Tribune’s future. Mathew Ingram thinks Zell is a “complete ignoramus.”

The concern over the purported dumb beliefs of the man who will steer the course of some of the country’s top newspapers is well-placed. Any newspaper that pulls itself out of Google is hopping on an express train to obsolescence-ville.

But, the outcry stems from an article that is…, how should I put this…crummy, bad, poorly written or poorly edited, nonsensical and perhaps even sub-professional. It reads as if it were dashed off at the last minute with little of the vaunted editorial oversight that newspapers embrace — and this may be right given the holiday weekend.

Factually, the piece is just wrong — for example, one paragraph begins “Newspapers have allowed Google to use their articles in exchange for a small cut of advertising revenue.” Well, no, that’s not how it works. Google indexes newspaper content so that it shows up in search engines or on Google News. Newspapers may choose to monetize the traffic thrown their way by Google through their own sales of advertising, or they may choose to display Google AdWords, but Google doesn’t share ad revenue with newspapers simply because their articles get indexed.

The piece is tonally strange too. (I won’t articulate why because I already feel bad for pointing out the slap-dash nature of the article. The next time I write a piece of crud, the karma deities might just well heap public criticism on me.)

Doc Searls picks up on the poor reportage.

The big irony here is that the Washington Post…may be vulnerable to becoming as dumb about the Web as the majority of other papers, which seem to share Zell’s Web-blind prejudices. With reporters, of all people, leading the way.

So does Jason Calacanis. He blames the writers for

VERY OBVIOUS FACTUAL ERRORS. Really guys—your job is correct people when they make huge incorrect statements like this—not plaster them in the Washington Post.

So who knows what Zell really said or if he even knew what he was talking about. This is a 60+ real estate wheeler-dealer who may have been trying hard to sound like he understands the Internet when, in fact, he’s clueless.

But it’s a slow news day and, hey, if Zell means what he says and the article accurately portrayed his ideas, this is the hottest debate around.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on April 8, 2007 6:26 PM to IP Democracy