October 11th, 2007
Could craigslist be unintentionally HELPING prolong the war in Iraq?
I know it sounds like a stretch that craigslist- where you may have found a lawnmower, a car, an apartment or love- could have anything to do with something as major as the continuance of the Iraq War.
Probably is a stretch but do hear me out.
Today’s New York Times’ features a Q-A with craigslist founder Craig Newmark 
and despite his surname, their quite unmaterialistic CEO Jim Buckmaster.
Both, for the record, are self-defined, liberal leaning progressives.
“Do you see a smart online business model for traditional media that will permit newspapers and other publications to continue to do deep reporting and attract talented journalists?,” asks the New York Times’ Stephen Dubner.
Buckmaster answers:
Investigative journalism at traditional media outlets has been hurt badly by financial prosperity. The bigger and more successful the media companies get, the more likely they are to be dominated by bottom-line business managers, and from a business standpoint it makes no sense to alienate the most powerful persons and institutions, who by definition are those most in need of investigative reporting. Hence the lack of tough questions from well-funded media, leading to a misled public and situations like this disastrous war in Iraq.
Oh, but I could envision the causality being quite the opposite.
It’s known fact that craigslist’s ads are sucking the life out of classified advertising. That’s one of print media’s cash cows.
Some newspapers have responded to the loss of classified ad revenue by tightening editorial budgets and even eliminating reporter positions.
I could make the case that the elimination of some of these jobs, and the phasing out of investigatory projects, means there are less reportorial boots on the ground to cover Iraq war issues- even local ones such as the life and death of a brave soldier, a locally based war contractor who might or might not be on the up and up, a street protest.
Now what if these furloughed projects are in newspaper circulation areas with Congresspeople who have not yet decided to oppose the President on the War? The type that know there is substantial opposition to the war but are afraid of the political implications they fear will await them if they switch sides?
Could it be that newspaper investigations that point to some of these issues in these local districts could raise enough of a ruckus among the citizenry that even a few Congresspeople decide they must switch sides and vote for financial measures that include timetables for full or partial troop drawdowns from Iraq?
And could it be that some of these invetigations, profiles, etc., are never undertaken by local or regional newspapers because they’ve had to furlough reporters due to decreasing revenues?
Revenues decreased by having one of their top sources of revenue hurt by craigslist?
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
