Slashdot Mirror
Newmark Denies Craigslist Is Killing Newspapers
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."
I disagree. I think the newspapers' godoffal web sites with all the blinkey flashey advertising and javascript asking you if you want to debug it and the same story endlessly linked over and over on its index page is what is killing newspapers.
People are starting to realise that newspapers are published, edited, and written by utter morons.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
And because you can't put a website in the bottom of the parrot cage. Well, maybe MSN.