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Before introducing tonight's speaker, Ken Auletta, a news flash. From August 31, 1998.  And I quote,

Here's a World Wide Web search engine with a difference.  It's called Google, and although it's a plain-looking site, you might enjoy a visit.  Mostly, Google is like other search engines... And it works fine that way.  But it also has a funny button you can click, "I'm feeling lucky..."  In more serious searches, Google does a good job finding sites.  You might want to bookmark it.

This newspaper article demonstrates a significant point.  There's nothing particularly wrong with this account; it just doesn't get Google.  For 1998, understandable. But some 12 years later, conventional wisdom hasn't changed much.

You have to admire someone who feels so strongly about this point.  Enough to write a letter to the editor of the New York Times.

Criticizing the newspaper's favorable review of his recent bestseller, Googled: the End of the World As We Know It.

Auletta took the reviewer to task for missing a crucial point:  "The book repeatedly argues that traditional media were slow to awaken to the digital revolution, and have mistakenly scapegoated Google."  He then suggested that the writer, whose review was favorable, revisit the book's subtitle: "The End of the World as We Know It."

Clearly Auletta doesn't believe Google will cause the world to end.  We might just need to learn a new media landscape, something Auletta concludes most traditional media companies were "inexcusably slow" to do.

Ken Auletta has written on media for The New Yorker magazine since 1992.  He is the author of eleven books including five national bestsellers.  Before becoming a writer, he served in numerous roles: in the Peace Corps; as Special Assistant to the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce; in Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 Presidential Campaign; helping Howard J. Samuels twice lose the race for Governor of New York (Auletta's words, not mine); as executive director of the New York City Off Track Betting Corporation.  In 1974, he became chief political correspondent for The New York Post, then weekly columnist for The Village Voice, then contributing editor for New York magazine.  He is a regular fixture on such programs as Nightline, News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and The Charlie Rose Show.  He is a correspondent for one of the finest investigative journalism programs on American television, PBS Frontline.  I am very happy to present to you the person Columbia Journalism Review has deemed America's premier media critic, concluding that "no other reporter has covered the new communications revolution as thoroughly as has... Ken Auletta."