The Modern Journalist

Why Craigslist Isn’t the Problem

I’ve been talking business model a lot lately. More than I’d like to since I’m trying to focus my thinking on solutions to the newsroom and not solutions to the publisher’s room.

Unfortunately, those two are long past being separated. So let’s just do this a little more.

I constantly here from newspaper folks that the loss of classified advertising to Craigslist just wiped them off the map. Whenever I hear that I want to flick whomever I’m speaking with right square on the forehead. It’s a simple half-truth that has been repeated so many times by those who don’t truly understand what the plight of their industry is that it has become fact — despite it’s irrelevance to the debate.

Dave Moran over at Online Spin has one of the best — and long — debunking posts I’ve read in awhile; however, I’ve got a few basic points to add.

The reality is that newspapers should have learned a valuable lesson about the nature of the Web and its users from Craigslist. Instead of demonizing the company, the smart money would have examined what they did well — user-created content, self-moderated community, community managers working together to sell actual products, connect with people and find stuff — and mimicked it.

Newspapers should still do that.

If they don’t like Craigslist, there’s always Ebay, a company with a similar — albeit more focused — idea.

The larger point isn’t that Craigslist or Ebay have killed revenues at newspapers, it’s the Web companies have out-innovated the media when it comes to media. The Web thinkers took what print people believe was their inherent right to own — classifieds — and democratized it because the Web allows us to store lots of data, sift through it and connect directly with other people.

That’s what the whole architecture is about. In just a few words, that’s how you can describe everything that happens online.

Whenever I’m speaking with newspaper and media folks, I implore them to think like a technology start-up. And if they can’t, I implore them to hire smart people who get technology and then quiet down and listen. Don’t defend the business model you have today because that model is — if not failing — incomplete. It only addresses the print and print-thinking crowd. It doesn’t plan for the future. It doesn’t capitalize on what the Web does best.

Most importantly, it doesn’t address the realities of how people are using the Web. And we know how they are using it because we’ve seen Craigslist and Ebay siphon off users from newspapers.