Paul's Comments

There have been a few cases where someone either meeting someone else or being met by someone else for a commercial transaction or personal reasons as a result of a posting on the on-line advertising site Craigslist.org has been robbed and/or murdered.

So, as a result of the minor connection these incidents are sometimes being referred to as 'Craigslist Killings' or the alleged perpetrator as the 'Craigslist Killer'. Now, the question to be asked, is this just the usual and customary news media hyping of bad incidents because, of course, bad news sells more newspapers and gets higher ratings on television, which, of course, translates into higher advertising prices, or is it because of an attempt to 'smear' Craigslist which is, of course, a serious 'dangerous competitor' to all media, not just newspaper classified ads?

Craigslist provides free classified ads for people to buy and sell things and to look for friends and romantic partners. They have low overhead and basically make their money from accepting commercial help wanted ads in some markets. This, of course, is extremely dangerous to any other place that depends on commercial advertising.

Craigslist gets no public funding and operates on the same terms as any other business, and so this sort of 'shooting the messenger' sounds a lot like an attempt to tar them for the actions of third parties.

If we went back, say, ten years ago when the only way in general to find other people such as buyers or sellers was through paid advertisements, and someone robbed or killed someone who responded to an ad, or robbed or killed the advertiser, would the media be blaming the newspaper? Do we hear of cases of the Chicago Tribune Killer? The Washington Post Killer? The Las Vegas Sun Killer?

Some newspapers - the Washington Times being one - are even going in the direction of allowing tiny advertisers to run free ads. Selling items under $200 in small ads are free; it's probably a loss-leader to get people to subscribe or to get people to buy the paper. The Washington Times has had real problems getting people to take it seriously for a number of reasons including that it's owned by the Unification Church ("The Moonies") and is a weak competitor to the much larger Washington Post. It's also losing about $50 million a year.

But at least they're trying to think of new ideas. Newspapers have a flawed system of delivering content because they're not realizing the way they need to deliver content has changed, and they themselves need to change. Most newspapers belong to the Associated Press and they are doing the stupidest thing. They give AP their content (that they spent money to create) for free but pay for an AP wire. Ayn Rand points the stupidity out - over 50 years ago - in her book "Atlas Shrugged" when Dagny Taggart notes how Taggart Transcontinental got the Railroad Unification Plan set up so that each railroad is responsible for its own costs but gives competitors use of its track for free. (The only thing different that - at least for now - that newspapers are not doing is pooling their income and splitting it somehow. Or at least, except in the case of some multi-newspaper cities where they've done something like this where they get government permission to run a 'joint operating agreement' to try and eliminate 'duplicate' functions by running two newspapers with some shared services.)

Do we doubt that there have been cases where someone was robbed or killed as a result of running a newspaper ad or responding to one? It's part of the problem of inviting someone you don't know into your home, (or going to the home of someone you don't know) they are usually a nice person or honorable, but in rare instances they're a sociopath. But I don't remember anyone connecting the newspaper to the perpetrator of these crimes. But they do in the case of Craigslist.

The big difference and the reason Craigslist is going to be very popular is that you can run an ad on Craigslist for free. A newspaper ad is going to cost anywhere from $10 to $100 or more for a day to a week depending on how it's priced and how big your ad is. A Craigslist ad can basically be a long as you want, include pictures and if you can figure a way to rephrase the content so as not to be duplicate, you can rerun it as often as you want and run it in as many cities or regions as you want.

So I question whether this is basically an attack on what is essentially a function of capitalism, in which a low-cost competitor (Craigslist) comes along with a new idea that destroys an entrenched market (newspapers and to some extent other paid advertising-based media) or just the result of typical hype which also is inherent in news media in a capitalist market that has, to some extent, be noisy in order to get attention in order to be able to sell advertising.