Results matching “craigslist the”

Classifieds website Craigslist has provided a noteworthy boost to alt-weeklies' adult classifieds revenue after its recent policy change that requires closer regulation of its adult-services classified ads.  This is an ironic turn of events for the online colossus of classifieds that has wrought havoc on its competition, in print and online, ever since 2005.

The Washington City Paper reported increases in adult ads of 38% compared to one year ago, a change Andrew Beaujon from the paper's City Desk blog correlates directly to Craigslist's tougher regulation of their adult ads. Beaujon reminisces that for alt-weeklies like his, "Craigslist's free classifieds were an extinction-level event." But now Craigslist's requires would-be adult-services advertisers to waver that their posts contain no "content that is unlawful, pornographic, or which advertises illegal services", no ads "suggesting or implying an exchange of sexual favors for money", and no "pornographic images, or images suggestive of an offer of sexual favors.". These stricter standards have driven adult advertisers away from Craigslist, resulting in the higher figures for the local papers and free weeklies that used to account for so much of the classifieds market.

A thirteen-year old Scottish boy is one of the latest entrepreneurs to get involved in the web news business.  Six months ago, schoolboy Scott Campbell launched NetNewsDaily, a site which aggregates and summaries global news stories, "so that people with little or no time are able to read it without rushing".

In an interview with the Guardian, Campbell described the functioning of the site and how he maintains a good work-home balance.  The site reportedly receives around 1,000 to 1,500 uniques a day, a number that Campbell and his colleague Nathan Adam hope will triple within a year. To begin with, the project was funded entirely by the teenger's own pocket money, but now the site gathers around £150 a month in advertising.   According to Campbell, advertisers normally approach the editors via Twitter or email.  NetNewsDaily have also done several sponsored posts to boost revenue.   

The I Want Media's The Future of Media: 2009 discussion held at NYU yesterday gathered the most renowned names in the new media world to present their visions of the future of information media.  Present were Gawker chief Nick Denton, Jack Dorsey, cofounder and chairman of Twitter; Bonnie Fuller, creator of Us Weekly and founder of Bonnie Fuller Media; Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive editor online at The Wall Street Journal; and Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.

Perhaps of most interest to have come from the exchange were Denton's statements about journalists' attitudes, their inaptitude for internet blogging and the pay wall debate which is currently dominating news provision dialogue.

The alternative weekly publications of the New Mass. Media group, the Hartford Advocate, New Haven Advocate and Fairfield County Weekly have outsourced all of their editorial content to freelance journalists in India.  

The first editions to have been created in this way will be released this Thursday.  And rather than trying to bury the use of these potentially problematic methods of journalism, the publishers are courting the controversy.  The cover of each paper will be emblazoned with the statement: "Sorry, we've Been Outsourced. This Issue Made In India."

Poynter's Romenesko blog has published a memo from MediaNews Group CEO Dean Singleton and president Jody Lodovic to the group's employees which explains that the company is planning to charge for online content, to revamp its websites and to build new local information sites. The memo, originally sent on May 8, is the result of a recent executive meeting on the company's interactive strategy.

The interactive summit was meant to address "three daunting challenges" that the company is facing. The first is that "we continue to do an injustice to our print subscribers and create perceptions that our content has no value by putting all of our print content online for free." As well as reducing print circulation, this "devalues the core of our business - the great local journalism we (and only we) produce on a daily basis." The second is that "our interactive revenue growth has slowed because it has been too closely tied to our print classified business, which has suffered with the advent of Craigslist" and others. Thirdly, "we are not significantly extending the reach of our audience, as our online products too closely resemble the newspaper, and thus fail to meaningfully read the next generation of readers."

Michael Wolff, media columnist and the head of Newser, was quite resolute on the death of newspapers at a panel discussion sponsored by Gotham Media Ventures. He said,"About 18 months from now, 80 percent of newspapers will be gone."

Although admitting that he may be exaggerating, David Kaplan said Wolff was serious in saying that "the NYT will not be owned by the same company 18 months from now. I stand by that."

To mark the relaunch of the Editors Weblog, the World Editors Forum is running a special series entitled "Doing More with Less." The series highlights major trends that editors-in-chief are using to steer their newsrooms through the difficult economic climate. The sixth in the series takes a look at outsourcing editorial work to India.

Editorial outsourcing has frequently been presented throughout the Western world in a very negative light. The idea of trained American or European journalists and copy editors losing their jobs to workers across the world in India or Australia who will work for far less has appalled many, and others worry about a drop in quality. But is it really as bad as it sounds, or are people rejecting a good business model in favour of a misplaced emotional attachment to traditional values and a fear of change?

The Editors Weblog spoke to Tony Joseph, CEO and co-founder of Mindworks Global Media, which takes on copy editing, layout, and website optimization for clients around the world, and James MacPherson, Editor of Pasadena.now, who has taken the controversial step of hiring a staff of writers in India for his site which reports on local events in Pasadena, California.    

Mindworks: an extension of client's newsdesk

Tony Joseph explained that what his teams essentially do is become an extension of the client's news desk. Each member of staff only works for one publication as part of a dedicated team, and the team keeps the same hours as the newsroom with which they are working so that they can stay in constant communication via instant messaging, phone and email.  He stressed that his editors only come in after the content has been generated, and after a senior editor has decided where the article will go.

Each member of staff works as one only one publication and stays in constant communication with the client's newsdesk via instant messaging

One of the fears of editors when contemplating outsourcing is that workers will be out of their sight and hence out of their control, and mistakes will be made.  Joseph explained the steps that Mindworks takes to reduce this. Two crucial principles which he described as "absolutely essential" are "zero loss of visibility and zero loss of control". The work of Mindworks' staff is visible to everyone in the newsroom chain, as they access the client's content management system, and Joseph insists that his editors work within the client's existing hierarchies. A six to eight week alignment and training period is used to ensure that the work of the Mindworks team is fully integrated into that of the client. Various indicators are used to track the alignment process, such as headline editing; Joseph explained that in the first week of alignment 25-30% of headlines written by his staff are changed at the client's end, so they analyse and assess why these are being changed and make it part of the training.

Pasadena: doing away with reporters

MacPherson has adopted an unusual strategy for news reporting, one which he compares to the work of an intelligence agency, or newspapers in the 1920s.  He has entirely separated the process of content gathering and writing. In fact, none of the people he employs could be described as 'reporters' in the traditional sense, rather he has 'observers,' who are "boots on the ground" in Pasadena, and 'writers' in India.  The observers attend events and gather data, generally in the form of audio and video clips. Macpherson or his wife then put together an assignment package, containing interview transcripts, video clips, links to web resources or anything else relevant and this is then sent to the writers in India.  The writers save their articles within the site's CMS, where it is checked by management before it is published.  "It would be absurd," commented MacPherson, "to put anything out to the public that had not been proofread here in Pasadena."

Observers are "minimum wage workers," MacPherson explained, and the India-based writers are paid between $7.50 and $10 for each article, which usually takes them under an hour to produce. So compared to paying American journalists, this is undoubtedly a cheaper option.  MacPherson was vehement that he had not hired Indian writers to replace Americans; rather he hired the Indians first, then hired five additional Americans in response to intense criticism, and was forced to let the Americans go when advertising revenue was showing no increases.  Outsourcing writing "has saved our publication," he emphasised, "we wouldn't be a viable business without it."

"It would be absurd to put anything out to the public that had not been proofread here in Pasadena."

Trained journalists

Both Joseph and MacPherson only employ trained journalists for their outsourcing.  Joseph clarified that his recruits are either from India's top journalism schools, or have ample experience in the field: an average of five years amongst junior staff. Many of his staff have worked in the US. MacPherson explained that he found high quality writers via Craigslist and other websites and he has six people employed on a part time freelance basis. One of his Dehli-based workers is actually originally from Orange County, California, not far from Pasadena itself.

Is outsourcing the future?

Tony Joseph is confident that his company will continue to grow: "our engagements are increasing rapidly both in terms of number and size of operations." Currently, Mindworks handles 13 or 14 titles. He believes that the outsourcing concept is "gaining momentum" as newspapers look to make cost-cuts and increase efficiency in this time of crisis.  

MacPherson is considering hiring more writers in response to a "huge influx of advertising," as a result, he believes, of the fact that "small community websites are beginning to supplant print newspapers." He explained that he is developing "a proof of concept website that the industry can look to," and expressed his hope that the methods he develops can be used by small and medium size community newspapers and websites to keep "doing what they are doing and survive." As a general business model, he proposed the idea of having a few veteran journalists and editors, the kind of people who are "the heart and soul of the local newspaper," supported by 'observers' on the ground and writers, researchers and designers in India.  

The Telegraph Media Group was recently the latest major news organisation to announce that it was outsourcing sub editing of some of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph weekend supplements. It is using Pagemasters, an Australian company owned by the Australian Associated Press, which counts Fairfax media among its clients. Telegraph digital editor Edward Roussel explained that his belief that "Newspaper-web companies should focus internal resources on what they do best: creating premium editorial content." Another option is to adopt a form of in-house outsourcing, such as that which Reuters has been operating for several years.  It employs a team of about 100 financial journalists in Bangalore who cover Wall Street news.  Editor in chief David Schlesinger justified the move by explaining that the New York journalists could now be sent out and about to cover more interesting stories. A crucial difference is that these journalists are Reuters staff and their office is a Reuters bureau, but the fact remains that they are reporting on things happening on the other side of the world, and doing so successfully.

If newspaper revenue continues to fall, people will have to look for more ways to cut costs and editorial outsourcing may well become more and more appealing, even if there is initial reluctance at the staff cuts and modified work practices that have to be imposed. From a business standpoint, it makes sense to get the work done wherever it can be done cheapest, as long as the quality is maintained, and doing things as cheaply as possible is increasingly becoming a must. As MacPherson put it, "people keep saying they don't like what I'm proposing, but what's the alternative?"  

Executive Editor of PBS's MediaShift Mark Glaser offered a "Guide to Alternative Models for Newspapers" in response to all the problems currently "plaguing" the business of daily newspapers in America.  He offers a selection of solutions: some which are already being used, some brand new.

First come blog networks, which aggregate blogs written by staffers, freelancers and readers.   Glaser cites LATimes.com as a site which has used blogs to help it drive more traffic, which could of course lead to more advertising revenue. 

Next is classified networks; Glaser explains that free online services such as Craigslist have usurped much of newspapers' classified ad businesses.  In order to entice people back, he thinks they will need to "super-charge listings and add extras galore."

According to reports, on Thursday "mobs" of people were still gathering at newsstands to purchase copies of Wednesday's newspapers.

Some papers are even printing more copies of Wednesday's edition.  The Los Angeles Times printed an additional 100,000 copies of Wednesday's paper on Thursday, according to the paper's president, Jack D. Klunder.

Reuters announces that it is spreading out its mobile journalism to include coverage of the US political conventions, so that the event is captured from "the ground up" and through "unique perspectives" reports Journalism.co.uk.

Free-daily.com report that a free daily is about to be launched in LA, according to the job advertisment in LA on Craigslist.

No real details are known as yet about the new newspaper as the job advertisement that appeared on Craigslist is as yet the only news source.

In a style that seems similar to The Examinar, the paper will distribute between "200,000 and 350,000 daily Monday to Friday, none on Saturday and a 500,000 circulation Sunday edition which will be available nationally".

The article also reports that the free daily Quick in Dallas is about to be converted into a weekly due to the launch of the free broadsheet Briefing.

Source: Free-daily.com via IFRA Executive News Service

While not blaming Craigslist for the sorry state of the newspaper classifieds, Steve Outing, of ReinventingClassifieds.com, writes an open letter, challenging the company to find ways the newspaper industry and Craigslist can mutually benefit each other. Below follows an edited version of Outing's letter:

What can Craigslist do? I hope this open letter succeeds in making you open to having some conversations with the newspaper industry about how to work together.

Allow local newspapers to scrape Craigslist ads...Allow the local newspaper(s) in the cities you serve to include Craigslist ads -- just from that city... in with their own classifieds. Ads from Craigslist would include the Craigslist brand and drive traffic back to the local Craigslist site; (and)...with a reinvigorated newspaper classifieds section, a newspaper could sell contextual display or banner advertising around it (which might support hiring back some of those lost journalists).

Allow consumers to place ads on Craigslist via newspaper websites. If a newspaper classifieds customer wants to place an ad via the paper's online ordering system, permit them to also post it to the local Craigslist site as part of the process... While most ads coming into Craigslist this way will be in no-fee categories, some will be for the few categories that Craigslist charges for. A newspaper site could collect that money, along with the fee paid for newspaper print/online placement, and send it to Craigslist, minus a commission... that makes using the newspaper classifieds more relevant, it's also a revenue source.

Add links on Craigslist to newspaper website classified sections.

Add a news component to Craigslist. ..."Effectively, we're a flea market, and flea markets I think are more about socializing than about commerce." Craigslist represents a huge community in each of the cities it serves, and members of that community know a lot about what's going on. It makes sense to add "news" to the Craigslist community, and tap that valuable local information resource that is the many Craigslist users. So how about letting the local newspapers in your served cities help with that?

Source: ReinventingClassifieds.com

Mark Potts, author of the Recovering Journalist blog, recently wrote about the ten changes he thinks newspapers need to make to thrive. What follows is an edited transcript of his post:

What would you do if you ran a newspaper?

Somebody asked me that question recently, and it made me pull together some of the thoughts I've had recently about the problems that newspapers are having and what they might do to pull out of their current spiral. This is hardly a complete list, but here's a 10-point prescription for ailing newspapers:

1. Make the Web the primary product.
Stop pasting the newspaper onto a screen. Reorganize the newsroom so that its work appears online as quickly as possible. ... And embrace the technology: news Web sites should be full of Web 2.0 goodness like interactive maps, social networking tools, RSS feeds, distribution to mobile devices, etc. Use the medium to its fullest.

2. Local, local, LOCAL!
There are a zillion places to get national and international news, in real time. But newspapers are virtually the only source of truly local news. ... Local news is the last unique franchise that newspapers own, and too many newspapers don't seem to understand this. ... (Why do you think local community newspapers are thriving when big metro dailies are shedding circulation?)

3. If it's widely available elsewhere, don't waste time re-creating it.
Does every newspaper really need its own movie critic? A TV critic? ... Book reviews? Stories from Washington that the AP already has? ... the answer is unequivocably no. Those resources are just wastd.

4. Zero-base the news operation.
Pretend you're starting from scratch. Look at everything that's in the paper and ask tough questions about whether it's still necessary in an age when readers have multiple sources of news and information.

5. Get the readers involved.
As Dan Gillmor has elegantly argued, the audience knows more than news people do. Much more. Tap that knowledge by encouraging reader participation in as many ways as possible: contributing news and information about their communities, sending in photos and videos, commenting on everything. This can't be a token effort, and you absolutely cannot be scared or controlling about it: let the readers get involved at every opportunity. It will greatly improve the product and increase readership.

6. Lose the editorial page.
Unsigned editorials are a relic of a bygone era when newspaper barons exerted power in their community... Here's a thought: Replace it with reader opinions!

7. Expand the advertising base.
In any market, there are thousands of small advertisers that would never consider advertising in the big local newspaper. It's too expensive and covers too broad an area. But those advertisers want to reach the same people the newspaper does. Find a way to make this happen: more focused zoning, cheaper ads, ad rep pay structures that encourage selling to smaller advertisers. This is another area where community papers are running rings around big dailies.

8. Rethink the classifieds.
Craigslist, Monster.com and countless other news competitors have decimated the newspaper classifieds business. ... Anybody who's used craigslist knows how much more effective it is than paid newspaper classifieds. Look hard at your classifieds ... Yes, that may include shifting most of the classifieds online and giving them away for free, in order to keep the critical mass of classifieds that makes them useful.

9. Find new ways to serve advertisers.
What newspapers offer advertisers--display ads, classifieds--really hasn't changed much in a century. Look for ways to change that. Get into the Yellow Pages directory business online. Aggressively offer contextual advertising. Use idle newspaper delivery resources to help local businesses with their delivery needs. Use subscription lists to help businesses find customer leads. Explore interactive advertising forms that go way beyond boring banner ads. Offer data services to help businesses manage their inventories or sell things online. It's not enough to simply sell space in the paper or on the Web site. Help advertisers make their businesses more successful.

10. Take chances. Innovate. Be fearless about trying things--and killing things.
...A wise editor once said to me, there's virtually no history of research and development in the newspaper business, which is odd considering that covering the news is a daily act of research and development. Let's face it: The single biggest innovation in print newspaper journalism in the past decade or so is...Sudoku. Newspapers can and must do better than that to survive.

Source: Recovering Journalist

Many startups such as Local Edition and Backyard Post are attempting to claim the "hyperlocal" news market. OurTown is the newest player, which boasts 70,000 hyperlocal websites across the country. George Blake, former editor and 20 year veteran of the Cincinnati Enquirer is now chief news officer for OurTown.

Blake believes that the best definition of "hard news" is the news "most important to your readers." Thus, editors must discover what people want to read and respond accordingly: if people want local entertainment and activities, provide a community calendar, if people want school, church, kids sports news, provide links to their specific-interest site. There will also be chat rooms for people to discuss local issues, according to Blake. He hopes that this very local content will distinguish OurTown from bigger local sites such as Yelp.

"You want to know about the local festival 10 minutes from your home, not the one 50 miles away," said Blake. " When you go to your OurTown website, you will read stories about places and people you recognize in your community."

Local editors, who are from the community they represent, oversee the content of their sites and keep almost all of their local ad revenue, which Blake hopes to be enough incentive for them to make their site "the best it can be." Editors will also receive help from an advisory board of journalists and will receive updates on what is working and what can be done to make the sites better. Their licenses can be pulled if the site is not regularly updated or contains inappropriate content.

Blake hopes that OurTown websites will attract local advertisers who want to build close-to-home businesses. "Unlike the daily newspaper that needs to sell the $100,000 ad contract, OurTown editors can sell $100-a-month contracts and create significant income," he said.

OurTown is marketing through "word of mouth" and through sites like Google, Yahoo, Craigslist.

Blake stated that while OurTown does not plan on becoming a social networking site, it will connect people with common interests and common goals.

"Everyone will be able to go on their OurTown site to see what all those sirens were about last night, or if their neighbor's kid threw the winning pitch in that little league game," Blake said.

Source: OJR through David Black

The Chi-Town Daily News, a two-year-old nonprofit online newspaper, has been having success with its incorporation of citizen journalism in its news process, which highlights the potential benefits of citizen journalism for newsrooms with few resources.

A few months ago, construction workers had been injured in a building collapse, but the Daily News neither had a helicopter, nor a cops reporter, nor staff reporters to go to the scene.

Instead, they had a network of three dozen citizen journalists throughout the city, and thanks to Highrise, a software that lists their addresses and interests, the Daily News found a citizen journalist who lived near the building collapse and could cover the story.

The Daily News' experiment with citizen journalism began in March 2007, when they won a Knight Foundation News Challenge grant to build a local citizen journalism network that could be replicated in other U.S. cities.

The paper hired a community organizer, initially thinking it would get most of its contributors to sign up and local community events, through street-level interaction. But this didn't prove very effective.

So The Daily News recruited its citizen journalists online, through Craigslist bulletin boards and networking through Facebook and Myspace. Information about the Daily News' free monthly journalism skills workshops was posted on going.com and upcoming.org.

Up to this day, the paper has recruited 36 citizen journalists. The Daily News' CitJ network, still undergoing development, will eventually include at least one volunteer journalist in each of Chicago's 77 neighborhoods, who will be recruited and trained by the Daily News so that their articles will "meet traditional standards of accuracy, newsworthiness and fairness," said Geoff Dougherty, Editor of The Daily News. As of now, some of their most read articles are ones written by citizen journalists.

The paper is in the process of upgrading its content management system to allow editors to send writers text messages about breaking news.

Source: Poynter Online

Since its launch, Craigslist has been declared a threat to newspapers and magazines for taking a considerable amount of classified advertising revenue. Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist's Chief Executive, has noted that the traditional media attitude toward Craigslist has transformed from positive stories about "a start-up darling" to negative stories.

"Journalist friends of ours say that they have been told not to write positive stories about us," Buckmaster said.  "I don't mean it as a complaint, it is a factual answer... we are seen as a primary competitor by newspapers."

Though the traditional media may be trying to encourage a negative image of Craigslist, they could have come up with that business model for classfied ads, but Craigslist creator Craig Newmark beat them to it.

Source: Guardian.co.uk through EJC

Poynter Media business analyst Rick Edmonds offers a critique of the latest Newspaper Next 2.0 report, which concludes, among other things, that newspapers must become more entrepreneurial in order to expand their customer base, and stay in the black.

Edmonds is not convinced that newspaper employees can simply morph into “disruptive” web entrepreneurs, noting that “the true disrupters” such as Craig Newmark of CraigsList and Jeff Taylor of Monster are a very different breed of thinker.

The report’s proposals also seem to put “the traditional all-things-to-all-people newspaper model in contemporary digital dress.”

The report demonstrates in a chart (see photo) that news will remain an integral part of the newspaper of the future, but will not be enough to sustain a paper. According to the findings, the pace of change today is unprecedented but not quick enough; newspapers should be “making the leap” beyond news, and venturing into unfamiliar territory like online promotions and e-mail advertising.

Source: The Biz Blog
 

A Washington Post piece written by David Simon, entitled “Does the News Matter To Anyone Anymore,” has caused quite a lot of uproar among the public and news industry insiders. Is the general audience as removed from news as some may claim, and “isn't the news itself still valuable to anyone?”

In a world of declining newspapers, people in the newspaper industry believe “that readers are willingly turning from fiber to cyber — a replacement of the method but not the methodology of reporting and editing,” says James Vesely, Seattle Times editorial page editor.

Kijiji, eBay’s free classified service and competitor to Craigslist, recently arrived in the United States, prompting concern about its potentially devastating effect on newspaper classifieds.

With advertising revenues already slipping for newspapers, online classifieds sites have produced a new rival: video classifieds.  Not only are videos effective for selling houses or posting interactive resumes, they are also free to put online, which poses a major threat to newspapers trying to keep their hold on revenue-generating classifieds.

In a recent interview between wired.com and Craig Newmark, founder of craislist.org, keys to the success of the site, Newmark’s thoughts on journalism, and a customer service philosophy were discussed, offering potential advice to the newspaper industry. 

Certainly not the first time he's been asked his opinion about the newspaper industry, free classified site Craigslist's CEO, Jim Buckmaster, an avid newspaper reader, says that he's no longer content with the service they are providing.

Local coverage is normally considered the competence of local reporters. A community website in California, Pasadena Now, is changing this perception by outsourcing local news production to India.

Yesterday at the Newspaper Association of America's annual conference, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark commented on his free online classified advertising baby, widely viewed as one of the primary factors cutting into newspaper revenues, as well as the state of American journalism, suggesting it needed to lighten up.