A little-noticed Seattle Times piece this week on Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist raises the possibility of a relationship between the classified giant and the conventional news media.
While Newmark remains his typically self-deprecating self, he does think aloud about one day offering a geo-tagged service that would help people find high-quality news in their neck of the woods. He's waiting for something "mature" to emerge.
Services like newscred.com and newstrust.net are out there sussing out the audience on its views on news. Interestingly, Newmark doesn't have an answer to the more pressing journalistic issue: the loss of revenue thanks to his service draining classified advertising from newspapers. He suggests there needs to be more investigative and aggressive reporting done, but he'll "defer" to experts on how to pay for it in this new digital climate.
