I was startled by this phenomenally wrong-headed editorial in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Tim Redmond exposes his insecurities by arguing that Craig Newmark's work in Craigslist doesn't build communities because it threatens the business models of alt weeklies. I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but this is a blatant example of scapegoating horseshit.
First, my credentials: I am a person who worked at the most venerated and well known of all alternative weeklies in the country. I worked for the online group within that organization, which derived the overwhelming majority of its revenues at the time from classified ads, and watched as those revenues were decimated by the arrival of Craigslist in that market. Part of the impact that had on the company was that I lost my job.
I am exactly the person Redmond is ostensibly arguing on behalf of, and so I can say with certainty that he's profoundly wrong. Craigslist builds communities in the cities where it has a presence by providing a home for the gift economy and information trading that is often difficult in contemporary urban society. In short, Craigslist lets people act like neighbors, offering up their items to swap or sell, letting them snipe at each other, helping them find a romantic connection, or just putting you in touch with someone who can find you a job. It builds the human connections that many newspapers aspired to (and a few still provide) and provides a context that real journalists still strive for.
Part of the problem here is the culture of alt weeklies: Despite having a reputation for being politically liberal, they're some of the most conservative organizations in journalism. Hamstrung by unreasonably overentitled union members on one side and underpaid, underappreciated freelancers on the other, it's impossible to create a newsroom where more than a handful of writers are even able to give a damn. And a business model predicated on nickel-and-diming for rent ads or charging brokers a premium price for ALL CAPS in a listing, combined with some edge-of-legality back pages full of ads for whores is certainly not contributing to a community.
I found the link to the Bay Guardian on Valleywag, which is appropriate because that site is so badly needed. My most consistent (and probably harshest) criticisms of San Francisco come from the times it embodies the worst caricatures of liberalism. A complete unwillingness to be critical, an almost astoundingly low set of criteria for acceptance -- these aren't the traits that encourage a community or a culture to improve. So, even if only a gossip site, just the fact that someone's willing to point out that some things suck is a helpful counterpoint to the prevailing sense that everything is good enough. It's that "good enough" that makes a paper like the Bay Guardian stop trying to learn from its community's desires.
It goes deeper, too. Most alt weeklies are given away free, contributing to the sense that journalism is worthless. People are willing to pay for the things they care about, they just don't want to pay for apartment listings that are polluted by unethical brokers, or a newspaper where 50% of the content is sub-Citysearch-level event listings padded out with ads for futons and cell phones.
That's not to say that excellent journalism doesn't still happen, often, in alt weeklies. But publishers don't give the proper respect to the people who do so, and it's part of the reason why these papers are vulnerable to the growth of community websites in the first place. Column inches are short, and if you've got writers who are passionate enough to want to work for the low pay in the paper, let the writers write! Give them blogs, expand the columns online, let them cut loose.
And live up to the standard you've set, Tim. You say "And he puts nothing back into the community: He doesn't, for example, hire reporters or serve as a community watchdog." Craig spends hours every day tracking down scammers and shady characters in communities he doesn't even live in. He turns down more money in buyout offers every year than a typical alt weekly has earned in profits during its entire existence. But somehow I can
I asked the management at the paper I worked at to approach Craig, to work with him, and to learn from him. I'm not sure it ever happened; It's just one of the reasons I'm glad to be doing the work I do now. But the worst thing a journalist, or any person who creates media, can ever be is uncurious. The defensiveness I see in the SF Bay Guardian, and in many similar papers around the country, indicates a powerfully uncurious and defensive reaction. It's an embarassment to me as a liberal that people who claim to share my values would want to undermine someone who gives a community a place to connect, for free, about the most important things in their life. A place to live, someone to love, a cheaper way to get the necessities of life. People are passionate about Craigslist even if (like me) they rarely use it because it's an online community that hasn't let down its promise in the way that too many local newspapers have.
My advice? If you have a newspaper, publish something that's unique to your community; Write something that nobody running a website on the other side of the country would have enough knowledge or information to create. Find a business model that makes your work seem valuable instead of worthless. Free the smart, creative people on your editorial staff to express themselves, especially online, without having to obey seniority rules or arbitrary limits. And realize that the reason Craig is eating your lunch is not merely because his information is better, or because he cares about being online and you don't, but because he's given people a place to connect with each other, instead of just being preached to by people too arrogant to stay curious.
Well said!
You're good.
Real good.
Are you available for Bar Mitzvahs?
Well said, I agree completely.
The biggest thing that stood out to me aside from the comment that Craig was ruining communities instead of building them was the assumption that Craig was funneling all the money from alt weeklies into his pocket.
That's the brilliance of Craigslist (and the frustrating part if you're trying to make as much money as possible) -- Craig sounds like a socialist when he talks about it because he almost is. The markets Craig killed are actually killed -- little money goes to Craigslist, it's all free now.
Aside from property listings, there's no money in Craiglist, and instead the empire he built relies on human nature and people being good neighbors, like you said. I don't think Redmond knows that or if he just assumed every post at Craigslist cost a few bucks.
Great piece, Anil -- I couldn't have said (or even THOUGHT!) it better myself. And to echo Matt, I've always been impressed that Craig really has been responsible for one of the larger disitermediations ever, bringing people closer and taking the money out of it.
(When the hell do you have time to write pieces like this, by the way?)
OMG, thank you for pointing out that no one in SF will criticize anything. It's been driving me insane for four years.
“A complete unwillingness to be uncritical�
¿Que?
Wow, that's just silly. Anyone who has met Craig or heard him speak knows he's far more interested in building communities than making money. And as far as giving back to the community, there's always this...
Actually, San Franciscans are happy to criticize, as long as it is directed at the Republican Party.
Anil, thank you very much for a very well written and comprehensive post. It was a pleasure to read.
Craig doesn't mean to or aim to destroy the business models of alt-weeklies, but he sure is.
Craig knows this and that's why he's doing that half-hearted citizen journalism thing (which will pay even worse than alt-weeklies).
If Craig's list keeps expanding, then what are we likely to see? Many alt-weeklies go out of business, a network of classified advertising across the country controlled by one company, and the further cheapening of journalists jobs.
Sounds like a Wal-Mart to me.
Communities are not the hundreds of newspaper journalists - they are the tens of thousands of people who decide to use craigslist on their own, without a gun pointed at their head.
I note (with the appropriate level of smugness acknowledged) that the SFBG evidently doesn't give a toss about that part of its own readership which may have accessibility issues.
Tables! Yeah!
This kind of Thursday-afternoon quarterbacking - it's much too late for Monday-morning quarterbacking - is typical of the deep misunderstanding of the new media world that has always been in clear evidence throughout the alt-weekly world.
The fact is that there are about a dozen if not more things that have had a profound effect on the whole local weekly magazine (alt? ya right) environment, and in my experience the reaction to each and every one has been off-key and sometimes downright silly.
I won't bother to recount the sordid details, but the lessons of the past decade are clear - more text, more editorial perspective, more investigative work, and more openness are all critical when your only value is local and national relevance. Since relevance leads directly to eyeballs and loyalty, it would seem like a no-brainer.
Instead, the papers (in Montreal in particular, the market I know best) have been led by the nose by publishers that seem to place no value on editorial and seem to have decided to simply squeeze as much money out of them as possible, And make no mistake, there is still a lot of money in weekly publishing.
Their only reaction has been short-term defensiveness and, recently, silly gimmicks that prove that those who should have been leaders in the development of online publishing have in fact little idea of how to deal with this environment even after a decade of living within it.
Neat. Very neat Anil. I am surprised though that you're really all guns blazing against Redmond.
Of course Redmond is myopic, trite and hackneyed in his treatment of the subject. This is partial snapshot journalism at its best. But I can see his point - he's just pissed with Craig's feigned modesty and warped sense of self.
Advice to Craig: Be blase and immodest. What you're doing is called creative destruction. It's what capitalism is all about. Be blase. Till you get big enough to be sued like the Waltons or good old Bill.
Then get professional PR help.
:)
Thank you Anil, thank you. I've been a fan of your blog for a while now...silently tagging my favorite posts with del.icio.us. But this one is by far my number one.
My advice? If you have a newspaper, publish something that's unique to your community
If you have a newspaper, my advice is start reading Jeff Jarvis and get ready to stop printing paper. You're not a paper. You're a community news organization. Hell, you could take just a part of what it once cost to print and start doing video. Hello 21st century!
When I read the Guardian article I was struck by its staggering self-importance. I live in Boston, exactly the kind of city where you'd think alt weeklies would thrive. The truth is, my friends and I use them once in a blue moon to maybe find an occassional event. They provide almost nothing of value to our daily lives and the idea that alts foster community is ludicrous. By contrast, every single person I know in the city has used Craigslist at least once, always with speedy and satisfactory results.
This is why websites like Myspace and Facebook become so popular. Their networks hook into the details of real life to foster real community, and lately there's very little real to me about alts like the Guardian.
I find it amusing that the alternative weeklies are complaining about Craigslist impacting their business because it's free to post on CL, yet they themselves are attempting to compete with the traditional newspapers by offering themselves for free. Pot calling the kettle black?
We're having a lively debate about this issue over at our indie weekly's blog, one of the few places they have for interaction, an off-site [but heavily linked, and official] blog.
In an actual community where lots of people aren't online, we're seeing the newspapers not even sure if they should be trying to provide community online. While they were trying to decide, Craig came in and set up shop. You'll still get more people to a show or a class out here by putting up a flyer or putting an ad in the paper than you will by putting it on Craigslist.
You can tell the alt.weeklies that they're not relevant to you because their online interface is bad and their writers clearly don't get the online world, and you can tell them like Matt does that really the revenue stream is drying up no matter what, and you can tell them that hiring programmers means that you don't have to plaster ads over all of your online content to get some sort of return on your tech "investment" but I'm not sure out here in the boonies how much of that really resonates. The defensiveness "we have to EAT" gets sort of tiring. Craig eats and supports employees the same as the indie papers do, without jamming ads down everyone's throat; it's a false dichotomy.
I get to interact with a much larger community than my town of 2300 people thanks to various online communities. My local indie paper is good for club listings and local news, but they don't have a stranglehold on it and I can't bear to use their website. As more good local news and club listings go online, I'll be checking there instead.
Papers like the Bay Guardian are pretty generic in their representation of the community. They try to condense a lot of interests across a large number of people into a few pages of useful info burried in at least as many pages of broadcast-style advertising.
Craigslist is not so generic--it's always growing / changing around actual members of the community and their interests / needs.
But, physical papers that aren't generic still have a lot to offer. When I lived in SF, I relied on the Noe Valley Voice more than Craigslist or the regional free papers.
This is a *really* great post. I run a metroblog for Watertown, MA, a dense, borough-like place that shares a border with Boston. The rapid rise in traffic and users surprised me -- and proves that there really is a deep hunger for truly local content, and for what you describe as a place to be neighbors. Right on.
Yes.
Thank you, Anil.
excellent post. more like this, please.
Great piece. I think a good example of an alt weekly that's taken the online plunge, and is doing it right, is The Stranger, based out of Seattle. They've got massive amounts of relevant local news, and they've started a great blog where their writers continue the discussions where the print edition left off. It's really nice.
http://www.thestranger.com/blog/
We should ask the writer.
What will the community that lives in the jungles of Brazil do once all the trees in their community have been cut down to print + 50,000 (100 page) copies every week?
He won't have an answer.
Hashim's analogy is completely off base. The best of the local weeklies I've seen provide useful information and insight despite the inclusion of classifieds -- not because of them. Small local companies fell to Wal-Mart because the chain could carry the same items at a steep discount and provide one-stop shopping. You're insulting the writers and reviewers if you claim that craigslist has taken away some of the consumers -- it's only removed the revenue stream consumers. We just need to admit they can't find enough advertisers to make the spread.
Dan, thanks for the comment -- the Stranger blog is indeed one of the best examples around. It's what I hope to see more of from all the alt weeklies I read, and I was remiss in not pointing out some of the really positive examples of what's going on, including the Voice's collection of blogs.
Disclosure, fwiw... both the Stranger and the Village Voice's blogs are published using Movable Type, which is made by the company I work for. But, for that matter, so are the SFBG's blogs. :) My point is really more about attitude towards community than about some blog-correctness checklist.
I am not here to defend Tim Redmond's editorial, but I would like to note a few facts:
Anil, you worked for only one alt-weekly, so I think it's a bit presumptous of you to talk about the "culture of alt weeklies." (And BTW: The Village Voice is the only alt-weekly that is unionized, so how can they all be "hamstrung by unreasonably overentitled union members"?)
You also claim that, "Most alt weeklies are given away free, contributing to the sense that journalism is worthless." This statement betrays a complete lack of understanding of free circulation, without which alt-weeklies wouldn't exist. Free circulation was the guerrilla marketing tactic that allowed alt-weeklies to flourish in the 70s and 80s, when daily papers and the three TV networks were the only news providers. Plus, blogs are "free circulation." Do you think the fact that they are free contributes to a sense that blogs are worthless, or do you think people are smart enough these days to know that quality of journalism has nothing to do with the economic model by which it is distributed?
Then you say, alt-weekly "publishers don't give the proper respect" to writers who produce good journalism, and that's "why these papers are vulnerable to the growth of community websites in the first place ... let the writers write! Give them blogs, expand the columns online, let them cut loose."
There are 125 alt-weeklies that are members of our trade organization. How in the world do you know how much respect and freedom the writers are afforded at each of them?
And BTW, most alt-weeklies now have blogs.
P.S. And to the guy who says, "Papers like the Bay Guardian are pretty generic in their representation of the community." You obviously have never read the Bay Guardian. Even people who don't like the paper wouldn't deny that is sui generis.
Richard Karpel
Executive Director
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
http://aan.org
http://AltWeeklies.com
Thank you, Anil. Great post. It's weird, but the Alt weeklies are even more contemptuous of the new alternatives than are daily newspapers.
The Redmond piece is similar in its overtones to a cover story on Craig Newmark in the SF Weekly by Ryan Blitstein. Check out the sense of entitlement in these passages:
Or:
A big part of the message of the SF Weekly piece was: Newmark is killing off real newspapers, and what he wants to put in its place is journalism by amateurs, but amateurs can't cut it. Thus:
I was interviewed for Blitstein's article. He found room for multiple quotes from those ridiculing citizen journalism, and lambasting Newmark. But he apologized in a note to me that all my quotes got cut out by the editor.
I've been meaning to write something in response to Tim's rant (his "in this issue" wasn't even put online until I
became online editor at the Bay Guardian - uggh, it is now EDITOR'S NOTES in all caps).
I will give him credit for writing:
"Some say Craig has single-handedly destroyed thousands of newspaper jobs.
Frankly, that's a little silly: The guy figured out how to do something that the newspapers weren't doing, and they were way too late in responding, and he got their money, and that's how capitalism works."
The reality left out of too many articles on craigslist is that the Bay Guardian, Chronicle, or some paper should have done what Craig did.
But as you say, Tim is completely wrong that Craigslist doesn't create community. It creates many communities. And Craig and the others that work there listen to those communities in a way media organizations have failed to.
And craigslist has expanded not because of any grand plans, but mostly because people in those cities asked them to.
I talked to Craig in the fall of 2000 about doing some linking (we could link to the user generated areas of craigslist and they could link to our edited listings and other content). He was open to talking further, but there wasn't much interest at the Guardian.
The reality is the Guardian and many other weeklies are hurt more by Match.com and other online personals.
And a blog (which is now only in
Tim didn't get online and Bruce (the owner) was even more clueless.
We were starting to do some interesting things with limited resources and staff. Experimenting with audio
http://www.sfbg.com/listen/
The Guardian could be doing so much with podcasting.
And we had a blog which now only exists at archive.org
http://web.archive.org/web/20010627073117/www.sfbg.com/SFLife/sfblog/archive/2001_04_15_archive.html
They've tried blogs a few times since then, but aren't doing anything now.
There's a lot more to be said, but this is too long already.
There are 126 members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Most focus on hyper-local editorial.
Articles found in SF Weekly and the Bay Guardian may not be reflective of the entire Alt Weekly community, just as Anil's labor union experience at the Voice is not reflective of the corporate culture at the other 125 member newspapers (only a small handful of our members have unions).
If you peruse the Web sites of our membership, you'll find staff-run blogs, community blogs, free online classifieds, podcasts, videocasts, article feedback and discussion areas,. downloadable MP3s of local bands and other "new alternatives."
Roxanne Cooper
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
Anil,
A great read. Straight talk and clear reasoning are a rare pleasure in the newspaper business.
If incuriosity is the worst sin, alt-weeklies are the worst sinners.
I've attended two alt-weekly conventions, in San Diego and in San Antonio, as a vendor. In 6 days 6 people may have stopped by our booth, generally looking for free drawings of some sort.
It got so lonely for us we even talked to Ted Rall, if you can imagine that.
Here's to Win-Win Ethical Capitalism
Thanks for the insightful commentary and wonderful online debate. Right now, my company is attempting to understand what defines a local online marketplace that fuels a healthy, neighborhood capitalism on the ground. It's a tricky exploration.
We're spending a series of Monday nights with two graphic design professors helping us overhaul our future identity package, including potentially renaming the site, adding a visual logo, and analyzing community functionality.
On the ground, we function as a small business advisor to many of our clients. We help them apply Group Purchasing Power (GPP) to local advertising on-line through search engines and off-line by organizing the network into a more slimmed down small business advertising agency without the enormous agency fees. We started with co-op ads in print and were rebuffed initially by the local alt-weekly. Our co-op buying model threatened agent commissions. Essentially, we cut into profits at a sensitive time. Ironically, several non-online businesses advertised in a similar co-op manner.
Meanwhile, several other types of publications, including one of the largest media, found creative ways to work with us. These media were amenable to the idea that we performed a valuable, if not critical, function on behalf of a very unique small business district, the Central City of Sacramento, or as we define it: Midtown, Downtown, Old Town, East Sac, and the urban edges. A year later we're finally approaching better terms with the alt-weekly. Now, we're exploring co-op radio and T.V., and those supposedly uber-corporate institutions have been eager to work with us because they also see the symbiotic nature of what we do.
By being a good consultant, we help small businesses allocate their limited marketing dollars into multiple media, including online, print, radio, T.V, and guerilla marketing. We also make the larger media, including alt-weeklies, more efficient by servicing a difficult part of the market that usually lacks marketing funds or lacks a marketing plan. Both sides experience a healthier bottom line, achieving a win-win situation.
What's ironic about our business is that the entire model was offered to an alt-weekly in 2000-2001. The publisher and general manager at the time did not see how to make online services profitable. Instead of meeting with me on a serious level, they disparaged my insights as fantasy.
Well, here's to fantasy, www.SacramentoMidtown.com! We aren't becoming overnight Internet billionaires, but we are an extremely ethical business. We're learning a lot along the way. We don't have to work with predatory, unethical clients in order to rationalize short term cash flow and we can work with some of the smallest of businesses to attempt to avoid the fate of 99%, going out of business within 1-3 years. Naively, we believe that good business advocacy can be profitable business and great for sustaining community. Shop local! Thank goodness for naivete.
It's a beautiful world. Here's to exploring ethical capitalism and what may come.
If you have any insight or comments to improve our site or our business model, we welcome all constructive ideas. We’re prepared for a profound overhaul.
Thanks again for your perspective.
Brian Fischer
Dir. Business Development
Overall, well done.
But as for:
...some edge-of-legality back pages full of ads for whores is certainly not contributing to a community.
-- most of us whores have moved our advertising online, as well. Perhaps you've seen them on -- I don't know, maybe -- craigslist?
Nice work. I abandoned alt-weeklies years ago for the reasons you articulated, and it seems that not much has changed.
Wow, I may be the only critical comment, but I completely disagree.
You can't compare Craig deleting a few posts to funding to the complex and critical process of funding alternative local news - even if that news sucks, it's still important that it exists. I distrust the weeklies and my local corporate daily about equally, but I don't want either of them to die.
Where else am I going to find out what the hell is going on? Weblogs may do it eventually but they ain't there yet.
Easy on the "overentitled union members".
Union members brought us things like the weekend, the 40 hour work week,and on and on. Further, union members are also fighting for the freelancers to get better benefits as well.
-Keith A
Local 3544 - AFT
I guess things must be pretty bad when Richard Karpel shows up to flak for Tim Redmond on a blod. Amazing. I suppose SFBG is important enough in the AAN world that we might expect something like this, but it's unprofessional nevertheless. Anil doesn't have enough experience to comment on weeklies? Give me a break.
Shame on you, Richard.
Roxanne - can you provide some URLs for the blogs and sites you are describing? Thanks!
OMG! The last time I watched it, this was a pot of boiling water! Now its steamy hot!!
I agree with the view that all alt-weeklies are not running on cheap whore ads and do breath some sense into a community which craigslist would be an outsider to, atleast until a larger part of the community embraces him.
So, it is really the wider acceptance of craigslist in communities far and beyond SFO that would answer this question...but gotta appreciate Anil's scourges here too!! He was not entirely typecasting or owl-hunting either!!
nice post anil!
Having read Redmond's editorial by following the link, I have to agree with Dash's commentary. As far as building community goes, alternative papers generally represent only one point of view (usually, but not always left of center).
Craigslist seems far more democratic to me, even though you get the good with the bad -- extremists from all over the political & social spectrum along with more rational voices.
Moderators monitor for offensive postings on craigslist, but no one is imposing their agenda on the flow of information. You don't get that breadth of opinion from the alt press! (even with alt press blogs)
As new technology spreads through society, debates always rage as to its utility & benefits. The advent of online media (as long as it's available to all) is a very good thing. The alt press has the power to expand into the online world, too, should they choose to use it.
R 13
Very well said. Anil is absolutley right, and because of his background his refutation of Tim is all the more powerful.
SFBG (a paper I love, by the way) isn't alone in vindictively smearing Craig or his (our?) list. SF Weekly did a horrible cover piece on him a couple months ago. Every day I take Caltrain, and I always peruse the newspaper boxes. After the SF Weekly article came out, I rarely choose to pick it up.
So while I agree with Anil's sentiments 100%, I think this post would have been better suited to respond to the SF Weekly piece.
The comments pertaining to Craigslist helping a "fascist" state are mostly true from what I can tell.... though I am not so sure that "fascist" is really the word...
They are simply undermedicated control freaks that think they have any sort of actual power in censoring some people while leaving pimps and ho's to solicit in any way they want to....
It is as well a sad display of "who knows who" buddy system crap that polutes the internet in other places as well...
The things they do at Craigslist are called Anti-trust and the like, anywhere else.
They suck. It just isn't any more complicated than that. Empty headed power tripping turd burglars.
It's really good article! I agree with the view that all alt-weeklies are not running on cheap whore ads and do breath some sense into a community which craigslist would be an outsider to.