Google CEO Eric Schmidt trashed bloggers in a speech at the American Society of News Editors conference in Washington, DC today, saying:

We’re not in the news business, and I’m not here to tell you how to run a newspaper. We are computer scientists. And trust me, if we were in charge of the news, it would be incredibly accurate, incredibly organized, and incredibly boring.

There is an art to what you do.

And if you’re ever confused as to the value of newspaper editors, look at the blog world. That’s all you need to see.

So we understand how fundamental tradition and the things you care about are.

Emphasis ours.

It’s obvious that there’s value in the old model of news gathering and distribution – but Schmidt seems to be over-eager to dismiss efficiencies pioneered by bloggers and new media.

In many ways, blogs and new media are putting traditional newspapers to shame:

• Traditional media is woefully inefficient. The Nieman Journalism Lab recently found that 9 out of ten mainstream news stories are copied. Nobody’s going to pay for that level of inefficiency on the Internet.
• Print newspapers are unsocial. 3/4 people now get news through social media. Unless newspapers adapt gracefully to the blogs and social media, their stories will not be missed.
• Traditional newspapers are dinosaurs – people just prefer to get their news via the Internet.

The “blog world” that Schmidt dismisses is also a lot more complex and diverse than he suggests.

The average blog can’t compare to the New York Times or the Washington Post. But then – neither can 99% of the other newspapers out there.

What do you think? Is there something to Schmidt’s attitude toward blogs – or is he just trying to suck up to traditional news publishers?