What Newspapers Can Learn From Craigslist

[Opinion] With all humility toward the very smart people at the New York Times, I submit that they can learn a thing or two from the lowly Craigslist.

Indeed, I submit that it's hard to look at virtually any news site out there and not notice how its architecture and presentation differ from that of Craigslist, which has several times any news site's number of users. Craig Newmark did one simple thing: He thought about what his users wanted, and put very little on his site that wasn't useful to them. Craigslist's mission is merely to make it easy for people to sell an old refrigerator, or look for a roommate, or find someone to date. By just about any metric the site serves those users as well as any business on the Internet, with the arguable exception of Google. Newspaper folks, looking at their collapsed business model, have griped for a decade that Craigslist stole their classified ads—and a breath later dream about charging for content. They do everything but consider that a Craigslist model—which puts the reader first, highlights the presentation of information, and fosters community—might indeed fund newsgathering for a new millennium.