Ever since we ran across this interview with craigslist founder Craig Newmark, we’ve been bugging him for more information about his interest in “citizen journalism.” A cup of coffee and a couple of chats later, we’ve come away with this: Newmark is intently interested in advancing the citizen journalism movement. Although his plans are still sketchy, he’ll likely start with a personal financial investment. But his interest may eventually come to involve craigslist itself.
“As a consumer of news, I’ve learned that there’s too much important stuff which isn’t printed or which is distorted on the way out,” he told us. “One example being news out of the White House. We need to fix it.”
“We, meaning the public, need to evolve a trusted institution with lots of fact-checking that we can trust and that we can prove does provide honest news.”
Newmark said his own role would be behind-the-scenes: “I want to help other people do the real work. I’m no news man. I’m not much of a businessman. I’m just one persistent nerd.”
The full interview with Newmark will appear soon in the Mercury News.
2 Comments
-
Anonymous Techie said:
There is certainly enough of a critical mass such that if the vast number of bloggers, indymedia types, etc, ever got organized somehow, they could be very effective.
Something like Craigslist seems capable of organizing citizen journalists, but wouldn’t an established media company, such as, for example, oh, let’s say, a newspaper conglomerate with a huge combined readership, want to try something like this first, to supplement their wire service reports, for instance?
Or would that run afoul of the newspaper writers’ unions?
-
Dutch said:
“One example being news out of the White House.” ?? Or how about CBS? Sounds like Craig is more interested in opinions than real journalism.
One Trackback
7:09 pm
Micro Persuasion said:
Citizen Craig
Craig Newmark is not waiting around to merge his company with eBay, as I predicted last year, to throw his hat into the citizen journalism ring. According to Merc bloggers Matt Marshall and Michael Bazely … Newmark is intently interested