Craigslist has cost U.S. newspapers $5 billion since 2000, researchers say | Hacker News Reader

Craigslist has cost U.S. newspapers $5 billion since 2000, researchers say

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21 pointsalexlitov43 comments

That's like saying that cars have cost horse carriage manufacturers $X billion. What a silly statement.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Except less useful, unless I missed the part where horse carriages had been in decline for years before cars existed because the dominant producers engaged in a series of corporate mergers and cost-cutting moves that stripped out the main customer value from the product.

America's newspapers (particularly the big dailies) had been destroying themselves since about the early 1980s; the decline was well-known, and often discussed long before it started to be blamed on competition from the internet in general or Craigslist in particular.

Its entirely reasonable to claim CL has transformed a billion dollar business into a million dollar business of which it (as a company) is the sole beneficiary. For quite some time, Newspapers and the like have not sold news- they sell used cars and real estate. Quantifying the actual numbers if valuable.

It's reasonable to say that they have transformed the market, but saying they have "cost" them anything is an ill choice of words.

> CL has transformed a billion dollar business into a million dollar business of which it (as a company) is the sole beneficiary

And of course the value added to CL's users and the many markets it facilitates..

Cars offered many advantages over horse carriages, enough that people were willing to pay for cars.

Craigslist offered one main advantage over newspaper classifieds: they were free. It's hard to compete with free on something like a classified ad.

If CL had charged anything close to newspaper market rates for ads, they would not have had nearly the market penetration.

And if newspaper ads were free, Craigslist wouldn't be where it is today.

With ifs and buts we can change the world :)

Alternatively, Craigslist has saved people $5 billion (minus fees for a few categories) since 2000.

This is how I was looking at it..

I feel the same way. The headline should say:

Technical progress and competition have cost U.S. newspapers $5 billion since 2000, researchers say

"Failure to innovate damages industry Dinosaurs"

If you consider how much value craigslist creates, its so much more than $5B. Everyone who wasn't willing to pay for a newspaper ad plus the people that were add up to a lot of benefit. Its a ton of value. It doesn't go into GDP. But its still real value.

And saved people countless hours in waiting for their classifieds to get printed and effort in figuring out spacing and setting up their ads.

What a horrible headline. That makes it sound like US newspapers were somehow entitled to that $5 billion. In actual fact, the newspapers had the same opportunity as Craiglist to earn (or try to earn) that revenue, and they dropped the ball. Boo hoo, cry me a river.

It should, instead, read "failure to adapt to new technology and a changing environment results in $5 billion loss to US newspaper industry". Or something roughly like that.

Newspapers forfeit $5 billion badly needed dollars to Craigslist by totally failing to notice how bad they were at their jobs, and how technology has changed information delivery. Continue to insist upon sending patrons pounds of waste paper every month.

Nothing stopping media tycoons from making their own classifieds site. Village Voice did with Backpages

Cost per inch, classifieds were always a big rip-off. Worse? Obituaries. Now many papers charge a fee for print, plus a web fee. Adding insult to injury. Who's going to disrupt the obits?

In a world where people are increasingly connected to those that they care about, do we still need obituaries? They may become a thing of the past.

"Facebook to cost newspaperz Z billion in lost obituaries"

I think you'll have to wait about another 40 years. Most people I know who are over 40 don't use social media, and given trends, probably have another 40 years or so to go.

Facebook via memorializing user accounts.

Yeah, and Twitter, g+, etc.

Foreclosure auctions have to be advertised publicly and the de facto standard is to publish in newspaper classifieds, too.

Only old people care about obituaries on a regular basis. When they start reading other media (actually, when people who read other media get old), newspaper obituaries will be disrupted.

Only old people read obituaries? What about real estate agents? Auctioneers? I'm sure people said no money existed in free classifieds. Except for Craig.

Sure, but I think few people buy obituaries to help out real estate agents. If those people want obituaries, then perhaps they can pay newspapers to run them for others for free.

There may be legal requirements for posting death notices - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obituaries

I never thought to look but it turns out that Craigslist doesn't have obituaries (maybe not surprising to others). I figured there would be something in one of those other boxes that I never even look at, which is basically everything except the for sale and gigs sections. Are people against posting obituaries on the same page that can take you to "casual encounters"? Does CL find it a tad too morbid to include? It may not be their aspiration but hell, if CL had crossword puzzles, obituaries, and a "print digest" feature my grandmother would take to it in a second (she already uses it to shop for autos and whatnot, primarily as a supplement to the local paper).

"He proposed on a Valentine's day, although he didn't do it face to face, he did it in one of the little Valentine bits in the paper. I think he had to pay for it by the word, because it just said 'Lee love Dawn, marriage?' which you know, I like, because it's not often you get to something that's both romantic and thrifty. "

Actually, most papers, including the one I work, will run a basic obit without charging you a dime. It's only when you want extended text or pictures or fancy fonts that it costs a dime.

Not the one in my father's home town of ~12,000. ~$150.00 per column inch IIRC. That price was without pictures or fancy fonts.

That sounds absolutely insane. We would charge less than that per column inch for full color, and our _circulation_ is over 15k.

You may be thinking of a "death notice" which is just the person's name, and date of death, but I really don't know if those are mandatory anymore.

My hometown newspaper used to print all hospital admissions and discharges every day. Unthinkable today, given privacy laws.

First, the article is talking about data for 2000-2007 (so the title is a bit misleading). The prime collapse in the newspaper industry began after 2007.

Second, if you ran it to 2013 it would clearly be at least several times $5b based on the spectacular collapse of the classified industry.

Third, losing the lucrative classifieds business chopped the legs out from under newspapers, the net cost to them was much wider than just the raw classified business itself.

As others have noted, Craigslist has saved people and businesses at least as much as they've cost newspapers. The efficiency gain alone of Craigslist is likely to have produced a significant net gain for the US economy.

I wouldn't mind if newspapers went out of business. Hopefully most of the industry's jobs could move online. And it sure would save a lot of paper.

This is a very short-sighted view. Where do you think all those syndicated stories that fill every online news site actually come from?

Journalists?

That are paid by...?

Reuters, for example.

Sometimes they aren't[1]. Some are paid through agents. Those syndicates are missing their opportunity to organize and solve the journalists' coordination problems. Someone will.

[1] - https://natethayer.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/a-day-in-the-lif...

Do you think those stories would disappear if newspapers were no longer printed? There are plenty of online news sites. The syndicates can keep selling their stories without printed newspapers.

Let's all sit around and cry about how new technology replaces old business models.

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