First-order effects

• Google's new commenting program gives news subjects a right of reply that bypasses the traditional editor-and-letters channel, so papers like the LA Times no longer solely control who gets to answer a story.
• Criticism is converging on the Times specifically: Online Journalism Review's syndicated piece frames the editorial as the paper telling readers 'shut up', while Jeff Jarvis counters that critics missed the attempted irony in the piece.

Second-order effects

• The publisher-Google relationship hardens into open antagonism — sentiment captured in the claim that many publishers see Google as a greater threat to their livelihoods than Osama bin Laden — pushing editors to treat Google's aggregation as an adversary to be answered publicly.
• Google's own practices become fair game in return: TechCrunch's charge days earlier that Google News walls off its own content hands publishers a ready-made counterattack whenever Google lectures them on openness.

Third-order effects

• If subjects of stories increasingly respond through platforms like Google rather than through the publishing paper, editorial gatekeeping over public reply migrates from newsrooms to search intermediaries — a structural shift in whose rules govern the record.
• The recurring pattern since 2006 — newspapers misjudging Google's moves, critics piling on, defenders citing irony — suggests the industry argument is settling into identity politics between two business models rather than a negotiable dispute.