Smearing Craig
December 1st, 2005 | Published in Out Loud | 3 Comments
SF Weekly has published a hilarious smear of Craigslist, blaming him for the lost jobs of Bay Area reporters. Writer Ryan Blitstein has spent way too much time crafting his colorful turns of phrase to really understand, well, really anything.
Poor Ryan laments the downfall of the venerated newspaper, while repeating the sloppy reporting techniques and blatant sensationalism that got newspapers into trouble in the first place.
It’s difficult to read an article with facts as twisted as this without smiling. As an old acquaintance once said (actually the market researcher father of a college girlfriend), “Statistics are like a woman in a bikini. What they reveal is interesting, what they hide is crucial.”
First, Blitstein paints Craig as a sinister “geek”, who’s month-and-half-old apartment doesn’t have a finished bathroom, but does have 2 operational, wall-mounted flat-screen TVs.
Well, yeah, those are the same. Ryan, have you ever set up a stereo before? Have you ever remodeled a bathroom before? How are these two activities equivalent?
Then, he paints newspapers as unwitting victims of the sinister Newmark, who’s craigslist classifieds site has apparently sucked the oxygen out of every newsroom within a hundred miles.
Explain to me again how newspaper publishing companies are like defenseless little girls? Explain how the decline in local coverage, decreases in circulation, and a serious lack of “new media” smarts is not the fault of newspaper management?
Business is about change. Hell, life is about change. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t need reporters. That is your job, after all, Mr. Reporter. You report stories about how things are changing.
The very fact that you and your management didn’t see this coming proves that you’re incompetant and don’t deserve your place in the community, our loyalty, or your jobs. It’s harsh, but true.
The upside, of course, is that we all are still here. We all still need to know what’s going on, and we need to connect to our local communities perhaps more than ever. We are still thirsty for the connection newspapers offered long ago and the Internet offers now.
You still have a chance to redeem yourself.
But hey, if you want to sit and whine about your plight, that’s cool too. I don’t have to wait for you to build a community, I can go out and do it myself—just like Craig.
December 1st, 2005 at 5:42 pm (#)
Mr. Barkow
I don’t think it was a smear article, and Craig Newmark doesn’t either. I’m disappointed that you would write so personally about me, someone that you’ve never actually spoken with, and ask me questions in a blog post without giving me a chance to respond, but I thought it was worth replying to address some of the points you make.
I didn’t paint Craig as a “sinister ‘geek.’” I merely described him as a geek—which he is. Having taken many computer science courses in college, and lived in the Bay Area for several years, many of my friends are geeks. It’s not a disparaging term—Newmark calls himself a nerd or geek as a point of pride. I didn’t say that his two TVs and a lack of bathroom were a bad thing. I just described them to elucidate who he is and what matters to him.
I didn’t describe newspapers as “unwitting victims of the sinister Newmark” or as “little defenseless girls,” as you charge. The newspaper industry has many serious problems to address, Craigslist or no Craigslist, and I made that clear in the article. But there’s no question that the site is having a significant effect on newspaper revenues.
That my management, with which I and the other staff writers have very little contact, didn’t see this coming is hardly grounds for calling me “incompetant” (your misspelling, not mine). As it stands, if you want to be a journalist and earn a salary, you have to work for a media company. Most media companies happened to miss the boat on the Internet.
In the future, I hope you will think twice before posting personal attacks on your blog. Someone might actually be reading…
Best regards,
Ryan Blitstein
December 1st, 2005 at 6:59 pm (#)
I used to work for SF Weekly and they are the most evil bastards in the world as is the entire NEW TIMES corporation. They give very little of a pooh about actual news content their entire aim has been about revenue always!
NEW TIMES is evil. Their pages have virtually no content and a bunch of ads – if it wasn’t for their event listings no one would read at all.
The market rewards efficiency – I can’t wait to see all the hate mail next week.
The newspaper industry has been in trouble for a long time and entirely too conglomerated and entirely too concerned with profits over good reporting.
My one beef with craigslist is that landlords save money on apartments they rent and real estate agents make money off the houses they sell but do not necessarily pass those savings along the to renter or buyer. Real estate agents will always tell you advertising is their largest expense thus justifying the larger percentages they keep.
The market rewards efficiency.
December 5th, 2005 at 1:38 pm (#)
ryan, sorry you’re bent out of shape. i didn’t mean it as a personal attack, my “Mr. Reporter” comment was aimed at journalists and newspapers in general. these are blogs, ryan. people are going to say what they think, misspellings be damned.