I think I am going to raise the BS flag on this one. My wife who is not a geek spends a lot of time on Craigslist scoring cool stuff. Did I tell her about it nope. She actually knows more about the site than I do and that does not happen very often. Oh yeah and she’s Japanese so go figure.
For newspaper people to say they don’t know Craiglist is a farce and they have to be lying. Or else that are so consumed in their little world that they don’t see that the are about to get wiped out by what is happening in the world today. [TechDirt]
You are correct in assuming that newspapers are too consumed in their own little world.
I worked for a large libertarian paper in Southern California and very few people in marketing and sales knew about craigslist. In fact, they were shocked to know that Craigslist has 14 percent of the market share for the Los Angeles area and their own classified sites only had 7 and 6 percent respectivly.
In regards to being wiped out, they are trying frantically to regain subscriptions by charging for premium online access. Statistically, their print subscriptions drop more than 32 percent each year. But make no assumption that newspapers/magazines will go away, they will survive in one form or another.