Perhaps scary Craig is not all bad

Posted by Martin Stabe on 17 February 2006 at 13:39
Tags: Online

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger thinks it’s only a matter of time until the free online classifieds services like the one pioneered by Craig Newmark have a devastating effect on newspaper revenues, just as they have allegedly done in the United States.

According to Rusbridger, Newmark’s Craigslist web site has “disaggregated journalism from advertising, disaggregated the cost centre from the profit centre and he just does the profit bit”.

In November, Newmark caused a further stir with comments that seeemd to suggest that he has also set his sights on the editorial-side cost centre — by launching some sort of citizen journalism web site.

In a recent interview with Minnesota alternative weekly, though, Newmark’s journalistic interests all sound rather more benign:

If you’ve read my blog lately, you’ll notice I’ve been emphasizing recently a balance and merging of professional and citizen journalism. The deal is, there’s no substitute for professional-level writing and fact-checking and editing. One of the tenets of the effort I’m involved with is to drive more traffic to professional news sites. People have gotten too excited about citizen journalism, and they’re not addressing the balance well.

Most journalists would probably agree with that. Just like Newmark’s other pet issue:

… one of the main thrusts of what I’m doing is to try to promote investigative journalism. I’ve been working with people at the Center for Public Integrity. And I had a meeting a couple of hours ago with a guy from the Center for Investigative Reporting. The deal is, how do we promote it better in an environment where people need to know why they’re hearing about things.

Maybe this is not such a bad guy after all.

Tags: Online