This article is part of The Poynter 50, a series reflecting on 50 moments and people that shaped journalism over the past half-century — and continue to influence its future. As Poynter celebrates its 50th anniversary, we examine how the media landscape has evolved and what it means for the next era of news.
The decline of newspaper print classifieds and the ripple effects that gutted newsrooms began, by many accounts, in 1995. That’s when Craig Newmark invented Craigslist, the homely but oh-so-successful site that matches buyers and sellers, mostly for free, with only a few listings carrying a modest charge.
Did Craigslist drive the downfall of print classifieds?
“I’ve always wondered about that,” Newmark said in a Zoom interview July 1. “I think it had an effect.”
But portraying him and the list as torpedoing an otherwise great business model is way overblown, he still believes. Citing an influential essay by Thomas Baekdal, Newmark contends that the root of newspapers’ trouble was the loss of readers.
“TV hit hard. … (And) l’m like the folks on ‘CSI,’ I follow the evidence. That goes back at least to the ’60s.”
Bad in itself, the loss also took away newspapers’ dominant share of local audiences and ability to charge premium classified ad rates. The slide in circulation looks even worse, Baekdal pointed out, when compared to continued increases in the number of households over the years.
Still, Craigslist came to symbolize the shift. Dozens of other vertical digital sites cropped up, before and after, all offering a deadly competitive pairing of an effective and much cheaper service than newspaper classifieds. Even if Craigslist was just one of many, though, it was arguably Newmark who put a face on the massive disruption.
Here in six short chapters is the tale of Craigslist’s rise to a business generating hundreds of millions of dollars a year, how Newmark has used that fortune and how newspapers, slow to adapt, failed to respond effectively to the digital shift. It’s based on information already on record, supplemented by analysis and color from my interview with Newmark.
Chapter 1: The early years
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