"Buying Frommer's in the first place suggests, on Google's part, both an inchoate need for 'stuff, good stuff, like useful information' (I have been in many meetings with technology people, and this is, uniformly, how they talk about content), and the strong possibility that the only thing the kids at Google know about books is what they've seen kicking around their parents' homes."
-- Michael Wolff, writing about Google's investments in content companies in his weekly media column for USA Today. Wolff apparently forgot about the eight-year-old Google Books project.
Wolff also writes about Google's purchase of Frommer's last year: "Still, this was the first time Google seemed actually to acknowledge that it needed to own content, specifically to enhance Google+."
ReplyDeleteHere, too, he seems to have forgotten that Google bought the Zagat restaurant guide 18 months ago. It's now part of Google+.
Wolff knows little about any subject not directly related to Rupert Murdoch.
ReplyDeleteFrom the Wikpedia article about Wolff:
ReplyDeleteIn a 2004 cover story for The New Republic, Michelle Cottle wrote that Wolff was “uninterested in the working press,” preferring to focus on “the power players—the moguls” and was "fixated on culture, style, buzz, and money, money, money.” She also noted that “the scenes in his columns aren’t recreated so much as created—springing from Wolff’s imagination rather than from actual knowledge of events.” Calling his writing "a whirlwind of flourishes and tangents and asides that often stray so far from the central point that you begin to wonder whether there is a central point" she quoted one daily New York columnist thusly: “I find it nearly impossible to read his columns. They’re flabby. I don’t know what the fuck he’s trying to say.” One journalist who knew Wolff told Cottle, "He can't write. He doesn't report." Cottle subsequently called Wolff “possibly the bitchiest media big foot writing today.”
Spot on. The guy is either burned out or on something.
DeleteWolff's elitist and hyper-parochial worldview is antithetical to USA TODAY.
ReplyDeleteIf Wolff were on staff, he'd be precisely the lazy, popmpous hacks they are trying to shove out the door. Instead, he has a "special" relationship with little buddy and business partner Kramer. Just more third rate content to fill
DeleteBring back Larry King!
ReplyDeleteMr. Wolff,
ReplyDeletePerhaps you seem to miscalculate Google's value? Based on my view, Google owns a whole bunch of "stuff" that when added together is worth more than every newspaper company around the world...combined!
Perhaps, what Google doesn't need is a bunch of washed up journalists that cry when they get furloughed or when they do not have an electric pencil sharpner!
Just what is the relationship between kramer and wolff? He is a contract columnist, yet was center at usa today's upfront marketing disaster last month. He gets paid to write for us, yet we also have to use content from his website. What the heck is all the entangled deals about? Smells funny.
DeleteNo worse than th stench coming from the rancid newsroom. Something has died there. Spirit. Purpose. Judgement. Energy. It is really sad. No one seems to care.
DeleteOne would think Google's previous decade of performance vs. Gannett's would render this entire discussion irrelevant.
ReplyDelete