I understand that the crux of the “It’s not journalism” editorial was supposedly to drive home the point the Google does not perform the functions of the newspaper. Jeff Jarvis wrote a good post to that effect: http://www.buzzmachine.com/2007/08/18/just-kidding/

But the overall tone and assertions of the editorial hinge on the fact that Google News won’t be editing those contributions, which flies in the face of the meticulous editing conducted for many newspaper letters pages.

Many journalists are uncomfortable with the fact that there are people out there without journalism degrees who are also starting to drive the conversation. I’d imagine that editorial writers feel particularly threatened. If you have message boards, Google News comments and blogs written by experts, then will people still read the opinion pages? I think so and hope so — but there is still a sense of being threatened. What you’re seeing here is not unlike a cornered animal lashing out.

Instead, newspaper leaders should be aggressively innovating and figuring out how they can use the new ways people are communicating to their advantage. Rather than crying over spilled milk, turn the tables and aggregate all the commentary on the Web to the newspaper site. Become the hub for discussion; don’t let Google or anyone else do it for you!

And the comparison to Bin Laden was not really referring to “some journalists.” It was referring to that writer’s opinion. Never have I heard such a statement being made by any newspaper publisher. Google is a serious concern to our industry, but to me, that was an offensive comparison.

The editorial doesn’t really rail against what Google is doing. It merely states that some journalists have a problem with it. The crux of the editorial is to distinguish what Google does from what newspaper does.

A handy reader on the weekend L.A. Times piece on Google comments: Tony Hung: LA Times: “… Its Bigger Than Jesus, Worse Than Bin Laden!” Ethan Kaplan: Newspapers are Committing Recursive Suicide John Battelle: Newspapers: Stages of Google Grief……