Craigslist's nerdy founder wants to change the world -- starting with your daily news

Craig Newmark, the 66-year-old founder of Craigslist, has many contradictions, and his dedication to journalism is just one. He's credited by some with single-handedly taking down the newspaper classifieds industry and strangling local papers of revenue. In Feb, he gave $15 million to projects that support journalism at a time of deep political divide over where and how we get our information, and how trustworthy those sources may be. "So far, I've given over $90 million for this combined effort of trustworthy journalism, cybersecurity, countering information warfare," Newmark says. 

But not all Newmark's ventures have panned out or been received so warmly. For example, his $20 million investment into The Markup, a data-driven platform for reporting on Big Tech and its effect on society, was to launch in 2019. Instead, it went up in smoke after its founding editor-in-chief, Julia Angwin, was fired in April before the site went live. While his widespread philanthropic interests range from women in tech to voting to veteran support, nowhere is Newmark's contribution more visible than in the world of reporting. For Newmark, a robust and accurate press is nothing short of an expression of democracy.  "It's a patriotic act, to contribute towards stronger, more vigorous, trustworthy journalism," he says. "It is a national security matter. We need, as a people, to know what's going on with our government, with the world."