the newspaper business

That quote sure shook up the newspaper and technology world. It was uttered by Craig Newmark, the “customer service rep & founder” of Craigslist.com.

Many, including myself, interpreted this as just another “nail in the coffin” statement that has been pretty popular on the technology and media blogs for the past six months.

I’d like to add my two cents to a couple points.

1. Newmark meant the guys who “literally” run the printing presses are screwed. The printing press operators, not the owners.

2. You can’t generalize about newspapers. Paul Van Hoesen says: CraigsList founder Craig Newmark would be more correctly quoted as “People who run major newspaper printing presses in North America are screwed.” (Remember: this is not an accurate interpretation of the quote according to Newmark.)

Addressing Van Hoesen’s assertion that “major newspapers” are screwed is probably accurate. Major newspapers - those in the top fifty markets are almost all owned by people not associated directly with the newspaper business. They are public companies (or companies owned by large investment firms.)

Craigslist.com did put a significant dent in their classified advertising by providing free classified ads online. However, the Daily News has been providing free ads for over 25 years for items priced less than $100 and for Lost and Found. As quickly as possible we put our ads online too. Well before Craigslist was on the scene.

We recognized these little ads as valuable readership.  We also knew that a customer probably wouldn’t pay our regular rates for an item priced less than $100. (We also have a special rate for items priced less than $300.)

Major market newspapers didn’t consider the importance of classifieds as a readership item. But it wasn’t Craigslist that put the first dent in their classified advertising revenue. It was entrepreneurs who recognized that advertising WAS news to many readers. They started all advertising publications - shoppers - and gave away the classified ads as filler.

But the muckety-mucks at the big newspapers didn’t see that as a threat.

It was only when Craigslist came on the national scene in a big way with such a small investment that the larger papers started paying attention.

Too bad for them. We’re close enough to our customers that we will adopt quickly and efficiently to market demands.  Major market newspapers require studies and committees and worst of all, they can’t do anything that will hurt next quarter’s profit projections.

Again, too bad for them. It seems they are in fact “screwed.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 10:12 am and is filed under Future of Newspapers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.