Slate Magazine has produced an argument that Wal-Mart's new online classified service, fueled by Oodle, is a possible life line for newspapers hit hard by such services as Craigslist and Kijiji.
It has to make a few assumptions to build the case, but the central argument is that Wal-Mart can serve as a great local partner by serving up aggregated local ads through its site. It asserts that newspapers need to hitch their wagons to Oodle, and in turn to Wal-Mart, to fight the new players, a kind of an Anybody But Craigslist model. For the time being, newspapers aren't partnering with Oodle.
