Media Giraffe Project --
Link & reference blog

Craigslist Founder: People Who Run Printing Presses 'Screwed'

By Jennifer Saba
Editor & Publisher Online

Published: May 07, 2007 12:20 PM ET

NEW YORK -- You have to hand it to Craig Newmark, founder of the wildly
successful classified site Craigslist, for telling it like it is to an
audience of newspaper publishers.

Newmark, along with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and talk show
host Charlie Rose, opened the Newspaper Association of America's annual
convention here in New York City this morning.

Newmark fielded questions from Rose pertaining to Craigslist's rise to
prominence, mainly at the expense of newspapers. The mostly free
classified site, which covers such categories as real estate, help wanted,
personals, and general merchandise, has been taking important classified
dollars away from newspapers. The site claims over 7 billion hits a month
worldwide.

But Newmark doesn't feel guilty about the ongoing shift of classified
dollars away from the medium. While he is a champion of more investigative
reporting in newspapers -- which he admits costs money to fund -- he
wasn't going to let the crowd boo-hoo about revenue woes. He deftly
mentioned newspapers' high profit margins -- somewhere in the ballpark of
10% to 20% -- as proof there is plenty of money to feed investigative
journalism and the newsroom. "I don't understand what the problem is," he
said.

"People like Helen Thomas need backup," he said.

Newmark told an all-too-knowing audience that this is a time of "creative
destruction" and that he has a "great deal of sympathy for people who run
the printing presses. They are screwed." It's not that journalism is
becoming obsolete; rather the delivery methods are changing: "Even the
kids realize news is important. The problem is paper is too expensive," he
said.

Newmark doesn't worry about his site's demographics or potential value. He
chiefly serves as the company's customer service representative.
Determining a new market is arbitrary, Newmark revealed, and is mainly
based on the "mood" of Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster. If people request a
small town and the Internet usage is good, they might launch a new city.

"We have no advertisers to keep happy and no investors to keep happy.
That's a great relief," Newmark said to about 250 newspaper executives
from around the country, who probably wish they could say the same.

He said his operation was taking even stronger steps to weed out
"scams" and young people posing as adults. This is one reason for charging
a nominal fee for the service in some areas.

Asked what he was doing with the riches he had earned, Newmark said he
lives simply, but could use a new "birdfeeder." The one he has just
doesn't attract as many hummingbirds as he would like (he has a Web cam
set up to view them).

He told the crowd to start taking cues from Jon Stewart and Stephen
Colbert who hold politicians and lobbyists to the fire. "We should see the
equivalent of that in newspapers," Newmark instructed adding that he also
listens to NPR, reads the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times,
watches CNN, has a "bizarre fascination with Keith Olbermann" and checks
in with blogs like Gawker and the Huffington Post.

When asked by one audience member if he were to start a newspaper today
what would it look like, Newmark said, "I haven't really thought about
it." He did say it would involved lots of investigative reporting in "big
areas," would be Web friendly and easy to print out.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jennifer Saba (jsaba@editorandpubisher.com) is associate editor at E&P.

----------------------------------------------------------------

The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

# posted by newshare @ 2:20 AM