Yesterday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at the Newspaper Association of America's annual death procession. During the Q&A session, according to Valleywag, Schmidt answered every blogger's favorite question of rumination: what did newspapers do wrong? Schmidt answers:

I think the sites are slow. They literally are not fast. They're actually slower than reading the paper, and that's something that can be worked on on a technical basis. I should also mention that at Google we're working hard to try to address the technological question that you're asking but we don't have easy answers here. This is something where better development tools, better hosting tools, and so forth from the industry as a whole will make a big difference.

Surely that doesn't go for commenting on, say, certain sites, right? Right!?

Anyway, Schmidt went on to commend ye old print publications for embracing blogs. "[Y]ou guys did a superb job!," he condescended.

This comes on the heels of the Associated Press recently announcing some for of bizarre and (ultimately) ineffective plan to "protect news content from misappropriation online." That is to say, they hate Google and wish they would die. (Note to AP chairman Dean Singleton: when you evoke the battlecry of an insane fictional character who talks to God and calls Faye Dunaway his boss, you've pretty much lost the war. Really, you might as well have screamed "Micropayments!" on stage for an hour.)

Also, does this mean we should all start using tinypic and tunyurl now to avoid DMCA threats from AP? Oy.

As local, national, and worldwide print publishing continues to take a brutal, Christ-like thrashing -- take, for example, the San Jose Mercury News' recent layoffs and a 30% drop in the San Francisco Chronicle's daily circulation -- the time-honored watering hole for "crusty but benign" journos, it seems, has also taken a beating.

The Market Watch report above tries to brings this point home, reminiscing with Michael McCourt from The Washbag, which closed this year. Apparently Herb Caen used to enjoy getting ripped there.

But, really, most of the bars frequented by some of your favorite Bay Area alcoholic journalists seem to be doing well. Let's see, the Chronicle has The Tempest. That seems to be pretty well-packed all the time. SFBG has Connecticut Yankee, and SF Weekly likes to stumble out of Hotel Utah. Wired used to call the Eagle Drift-In home, we think, but that lovely old dive is now dead. (It's Outer Sunset sister, though, is alive and kicking.) 7x7 fancies Otis, presumably.

Any others that we're missing? SF Mag? Mother Jones? B.A.R.? eWEEK? Chime in, local print pub editorial staffs, and tell us just where you and your colleagues like to go to kill the pain. You poor dears.