Craig admits it: He’s had an impact

Craig Newmark (do I really need to explain that he’s the founder of Craigslist?) went before a group of editors at the Washington Post this week, and here’s a short video excerpt:

Newmark has long been saying that his network of free-classifieds sites is not a significant reason that newspapers have lost billions of dollars in classifieds revenue. That’s still his line, but here he does acknowledge that after speaking with lots of publishers and industry analysts, “They do tell me that we do have an effect on classifieds revenues, and it’s a real effect.” But he says “the magnitude of the effect has become exaggerated; it’s become an urban myth.”

He thinks that “overly aggressive sales reps” from niche jobs, auto, and real estate sites are the ones truly doing the damage to newspaper classifieds, because they’ve had good success drawing money away from newspapers.

I’ve always felt that Newmark is a genuinely good person who’s out to improve the world, but I also think he’s in denial about the impact he’s had on the newspaper industry. Now, if Craigslist hadn’t come along, something and someone else would have come in his place. So if Craig Newmark hadn’t been born, newspapers would still face the same dilemma.

But (editorializing ahead…) I don’t think that gets Newmark off the hook. I also hear in his public statements concern that the newspaper industry’s financial crisis is bad for journalism and for the public’s right to know what’s happening; he’s fearful that the investigative and watchdog role newspapers have played historically will diminish so badly that society will suffer.

I can’t help but think that Newmark and his Craigslist co-executives should ponder how to work with the newspaper industry in a way that benefits both — and perhaps saves some jobs of professional journalists. (They can’t all work for ProPublica, the investigative journalism start-up that Newmark admires.)

Craigslist has long been a notoriously closed system; other websites are not allowed to scrape its ads, and certainly other websites aren’t allowed to place ads into the Craigslist network. A policy change on the latter specific to newspapers, allowing them to feed qualified ads (that is, vetted and not spam) into local Craigslist sites, is one idea that could benefit both sides.

(ADDENDUM: Short response from Newmark, who thinks that his response to the Washington Post editors isn’t any different than previous statements. “Jim (Buckmaster, Craigslist CEO) and I have been saying, for years, the same thing: our effect is minor, according to publishers and industry analysts.”)

Tags: craig newmark, craigslist