Auletta: Traditional Media ‘Googled’ Themselves

From the title of his new book, Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, you might suspect that author and longtime New Yorker magazine media critic Ken Auletta may blame the Internet for the ongoing demise of traditional media. Not so.

Auletta says in an upcoming edition of C-SPAN’s “Q&A” program — his first interview for the new book — that old media essentially blew it.

“What really bugged me about the time I spent with traditional media…is how late they were to understand the new digital world and how the Internet changed the game. And they had to change and play a new game, and they weren’t doing that…”

Auletta does reserve some ire for the hubris displayed by many tech players.

“There’s a conceit that people in Silicon Valley have that the Internet is the most transformative technology that the world has ever seen. That’s crap…electricity was much more transformative.”

The interview will air on C-SPAN Sunday (Nov. 1) at 8 and 11 p.m. ET and Monday (Nov. 2) at 6 p.m. ET. Here’s a preview:

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