Forbes Deleted That Ridiculous Anti-Library Piece

On Saturday Forbes published a poorly-researched, badly-argued piece that failed to convince anyone that Amazon Books stores should replace public libraries.

According to Quartz, the piece was deleted Monday morning.

On Saturday morning Forbes published an opinion piece by LIU Post economist Panos Mourdoukoutas with the headline “Amazon Should Replace Local Libraries to Save Taxpayers Money.” It quickly received enthusiastic backlash from actual American libraries and their communities.

As of around 10am US eastern time this morning, the story had nearly 200,000 views, according to a counter on the page. As of 11am, though, the story’s URL has been down.

“Forbes advocates spirited dialogue on a range of topics, including those that often take a contrarian view,” a Forbes spokesperson says in a statement. “Libraries play an important role in our society. This article was outside of this contributor’s specific area of expertise, and has since been removed.”

The amazing thing about this turn of events is that I've never heard of Forbes deleting pieces before. No matter how shitty, Forbes is willing to publish anything so long as it gets a few page views and Forbes doesn't have to pay the writer. But I have never heard of Forbes deleting any piece, not even the absolute stinkers written by a former Digital Book World editor (you know the one).

So the fact that Forbes deleted this piece is a pretty big deal.

image by terryballard via Flickr