In a typical Dowdism, the New York Times columnist asserts unproven opinion as fact:

Google is in a battle royal over whether it has the right to profit so profligately from newspaper content at a time when journalism is in such jeopardy.

This profligate profit apparently comes from linking to headlines and driving traffic to newspaper websites. Dowd never explains the mechanism by which Google makes money; Google News only recently started carrying ads, and it's a tiny part of Google's overall business. But Schmidt doesn't bother to parry Dowd's lame logic. He merely lectures her about how newspapers should come up with new products -- and then explains why they probably can't.

Dowd finally asks him if editorial judgment still matters. Schmidt replies:

We learned in working with newspapers that this balance between the newspaper writers and their editors is more subtle than we thought. It's not reproducible by computers very easily.

Dowd shudders:

I feel better for a minute, until I realize that the only reason he knew that I wasn't so easily replaceable is that Google had been looking into how to replace me.

Really, can one blame Schmidt for wanting to try?