E-Newsletters a Waste of Time?

This is slightly old news now--I'm already falling behind!!--but Jeff over at Donor Power Blog recently mentioned an article from Third Sector Online that stated that "Email newsletters to supporters are a waste of time." This apparently comes from President Obama's digital strategist. But neither the article nor Jeff's post actually cites any hard data to back this up--other than the overwhelming success of the Obama online campaign. Neither does the article differentiate between the different sorts of newsletters and e-newsletters out there in the nonprofit world. For example, museum organization newsletters tend to have articles about topics relevant to their membership rather than just status updates on the organizations themselves. So, Mr. Gensemer, are those e-newsletters a waste of time, too?