Newmark Denies Craigslist Is Killing Newspapers 132
Ian Lamont writes "Computerworld has an interview with Craig Newmark about the history of Craigslist and it's growth over the years (it's now expanding into foreign-language markets — it recently created several Spanish sites in Spanish cities). He also disputes the notion that Craigslist is responsible for dismantling newspapers' revenue models. Rather, he blames niche-classified sites like autotrader.com and Monster as well as newspapers' unrealistic profit expectations in the new media world: 'Newspapers are going after 10% to 30% profit margins for their businesses and that hurts them more than anything. A lot of things are happening on the Internet that never happened before because the Internet is a vehicle for everyone. The mass media is no longer only for the powerful, and that's a huge change for the entire newspaper and news industry."
Newspapers: A necessary waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, that's a damn shame. All the news media in recent times has become, frankly, a laughing stock, but newspapers it seems have held onto the most integrity (not that that's saying much). More importantly, we need someone who can pay reporters to investigate the government, and bloggers just aren't going to cut it.
I fear living in a world where the only things a government has to worry about are citizen journalists and internal leaks.
Re:Newspapers: A necessary waste? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not saying newspapers are superior, just listing advantages, and one of the reasons I've considered getting a subscription.
Re:Newspapers: A necessary waste? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who wants to go outside and dig their paper out of the snow to read yesterday's news when they can go online and get what's happening right now?
People who don't want to have to sit in front of a computer to do so? Paper isn't such a bad technology.
All the news media in recent times has become, frankly, a laughing stock, but newspapers it seems have held onto the most integrity (not that that's saying much). More importantly, we need someone who can pay reporters to investigate the government, and bloggers just aren't going to cut it.
And that's why newspapers will survive. We need paid people that are going to do the legwork and investigation. Where do you go to get news on the internet? As you say, the print media are the ones with the best stories. Not everyone might subscribe the the paper edition, but they'll still go to the website. Newspapers really make money off advertising anyway, not subscriptions.
The real problem with newspapers is just what Craig said. Investors expect really high profit margins of 10-30%. They aren't going out of business, but the business is certainly changing.
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Times change. Business models face extinction just as species do.
Problem with newspapers is the loss of the local.. (Score:4, Insightful)
All the paper consisted of was were wire reports. Usually the exact same content I had read via Yahoo or Cnn.com the day before. There was very little local investigative journalism. They did a 5-part expose on the local fire districts and some stuff that was going on there with the wives of firefighters being elected to boards/etc. Back in 2005. But not much since.
I forget the lady's name (The old woman in front row of the White House daily briefings (Helen something). She wrote a book about this topic a few years ago and she pointed out that it was this lack of in depth local news reporting was the major reason why newspapers were loosing so much readership. Her reason is that hiring investigative reports and having a real news room is expensive. So in order to boost short term profits....
This boils down to one thing: Content. You have good content, people will come. It doesn't matter if that is on the web or in print.
Re:one big reason why craigslist is successful (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people like the fact that every time they go to their favorite site it's something new and different
Old Media has manufactured the conditions (Score:4, Insightful)
Radio has been killed by ClearChannel's near total monopoly of the airwaves. Yes, they no longer have competition in radio, but they've ended the diversity held the audience's attention, and pushed commercials up to the point where you have to wade through 10 minutes of used-car ads to get to the 4 minutes of bland commercial pop.
Newspapers, meanwhile, stopped doing real journalism 15 years ago. It's much easier to pay a fee for AP articles and an editor to arrange them on a page around ad space than to keep on a staff of journalists doing in-depth investigative pieces; heck, it's even cheaper to change a couple words in the press releases companies send to newspapers these days and print them verbatim than to license AP articles--that's what more and more "news" outlets are doing these days.
TV, well, reality programs are boring, and commercials are annoying, and the few programs worth watching are in endless re-runs thanks to the writer's strike; or, the movies they run on cable are just promotional vehicles for the sequels that are coincidentally debuting next Friday.
Movies and music.
In short, greed, corporatism (is that redundant with greed?), and focus group-tested pap that the old media have pumped out in the last decade to maximize profits has alienated the audience. Craigslist and other segments of the Internet are simply doing a better job of taking over the few useful activities the old used to perform, but without all the baggage.
Everyone on
Re:Newspapers: A necessary waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
All the news media in recent times has become, frankly, a laughing stock, but newspapers it seems have held onto the most integrity (not that that's saying much). More importantly, we need someone who can pay reporters to investigate the government, and bloggers just aren't going to cut it.
And that's why newspapers will survive. We need paid people that are going to do the legwork and investigation.
Unfortunately, while hard-hitting investigative journalism is very necessary to the continued functioning of society, it is not something which is profitable. Since it is not profitable, it doesn't seem likely that it will survive.
You and I may think it's worth paying for that, but by and large Americans do not. They're perfectly happy to sit and watch entertainment programs like their local Faux News, where they can hear about the puppy that was rescued from a burning building by a cat. Meanwhile, since it's got "news" in the title, they feel like they're actually learning about what's going on in the world without having to do any of that "reading" thing the teachers kept trying to cram down their throats in school.
Make no mistake, I agree with you that newspapers are important, but I don't think that they're going to be able to survive.
Having worked for a newspaper for 25 years... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Newspapers: A necessary waste? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me that such an opinion could be rewritten to read:
I consider news to be a half-hour multimedia event that presents superficial coverage of major events, or events that appeal only to the broadest demographic, and am willing to have the the rest summarised in the form of opinion or commentary, or a ticker along the bottom of my screen, all presented in an entertaining fashion. Never mind that my half-hour event is filled to a large part with commercials, promos of "coming up next" stories, friendly chatter, more promos, and more commercials.
You can get "more" news in a half-hour of NPR than you would find by combining what's presented on all the major networks, CNN, and or offered up and re-interpreted by the cable-channel pundits in a given 24-hour cycle. And that pales by comparison to what a good newspaper offers on a daily basis.
Newspapers offer solid writing, real reporting, context. So next time you pass by that yellowing copy of last month's Sunday edition of The New York Times that you pulled from your snowed-in driveway, stop to consider that it probably has more in it than you you've seen on television, or will see for months to come. And much of it will be just as relevent, informative, and topical.
News isn't just the headlines. It's the stories, events and people behind the headlines, and most of it comes from reporters. Who work at newspapers.