Interesting article about Craigslist and its effect on newspapers. Craigslist is generally credited for taking the important classified ad business from papers. The article gives an insight into the founding principles of Craigslist.
But the article misses the earlier part of the decline. Craiglist was simply an online replacement for free Shopper’s Edge and similar papers. The Shopper’s Edge type started to take classifieds because newspapers abandoned them first.
The trend was obvious in the ’80s, long before the web. Papers were superfussy about every possible aspect of Die-Versity, refusing to publish ads that weren’t 100% pure woke. Shopper’s Edge simply continued the OLDER and LOOSER classifieds, and took over a large part of the business.
All the established institutions did the same thing. Churches, media, business, politicians, academia. Each in its own way discarded half of its business and threw out half of its customers. Each fails to see what happened. Each blames the kicked-out customers for being illiterate fascist peasants.
Polistra's Mill 