Craig Newmark, Newspaper Villain, Is Working to Save Journalism
SAN FRANCISCO — Craig Newmark, so often accused of destroying journalism, is now doing his best to revive it.
In
the late 1990s, Mr. Newmark, a former IBM programmer, built a service
that allowed people to find apartments, jobs, computer parts, sexual
partners, rides out of town and all sorts of other things through the
newfangled consumer internet.
Craigslist
was fast, free and popular, which means you could be pretty sure of
getting what you wanted or getting rid of what you didn’t want.
Newspaper
income from classifieds, which had provided up to 40 percent of the
industry’s revenue, immediately plummeted. Researchers eventually
estimated that Craigslist had drained $5 billion from American newspapers over a seven-year period. In the Bay Area, the media was especially hard hit.
Mr.
Newmark is trying to stop the bleeding — although not here. He is among
a gaggle of West Coast technology moguls who are riding to the rescue
of the beleaguered East Coast media.
On
Wednesday, New York Public Radio announced a $2.5 million gift from Mr.
Newmark to expand its newsroom. That brings his total philanthropic
efforts involving media in the last year to $50 million, much of it
centered on New York.
A month earlier, Marc Benioff, another San Francisco tech mogul, bought Time magazine
for $190 million. Mr. Benioff characterized his purchase as an
investment. For Mr. Newmark, the situation is more political and more
urgent.
“A trustworthy press is the
immune system of democracy,” Mr. Newmark said. “Like we say in Jersey” —
he hails from Morristown, N.J. — “you’ve got to put your money where
your mouth is.”
That
mouth is something that is often on Mr. Newmark’s mind these days. As
he moves onto a national media stage, he is trying out personas, hoping
for the right blend of sincerity and humor.
“I’m not as articulate as I need to be,” he said. “I might not be the nerd people really need, but I’m the nerd they’ve got.”
Pause. “Is that quotable? I kind of like that,” he said.
Mr. Newmark’s media-giving spree began in June, with a $20 million gift to the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which put his name on the door. This met with some criticism. Felix Salmon, a correspondent for Axios, tweeted that “it’s utterly bizarre to name a journalism school after the man who almost single-handedly destroyed local newspapers.”
Mr. Newmark followed that up last month with another $20 million gift to The Markup, a new site dedicated to investigating technology. He also gave to a new nonprofit effort called The City.
His media ventures differ from those of his peers — not only Mr. Benioff but also Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, who bought The Washington Post, and Laurene Powell Jobs, who is the widow of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and bought the magazine The Atlantic.
“I’m
not the kind of guy to own an operation,” Mr. Newmark said. “I help,
then I get out of the way, then I stay out of the way. That’s my
strength.”
He disagrees that he
helped kill newspapers. In the back garden of the Reverie Cafe, near San
Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and not far from his house, he
said he was getting a bum rap.
He
cited the work of the media analyst Thomas Baekdal as proof that
newspapers’ decline long preceded Craigslist. In an email, Mr. Baekdal
largely absolved Craigslist of any responsibility for devastating
newspapers and hastening the end of the world.
“If
we were to imagine a world where Craigslist was never invented, I do
not think it would have made any difference,” Mr. Baekdal wrote. “We in
the media industry insisted on keeping the classified market limited and
high-priced so that it supported other parts of our businesses where we
were essentially losing money (a.k.a. journalism). It was only a matter
of time before someone realized there was a more efficient way to do
this.”
The fact that Craigslist was free, however, doubtless accelerated its effect. It is now in 700 cities in 70 countries.
“Craigslist
helped people put food on the table, helped people get a table, helped
people get a roof under which to put the table,” Mr. Newmark said. It is
something he has said before, he acknowledged, “most recently some
hours ago, on Twitter.”
Mr. Newmark’s
charm at 65 is that he is the mogul who declines to act like one. He
has looked 35 for the last two decades — round, balding, goateed. He got
married six years ago, and even before that his bride, Eileen Whelpley,
promised a makeover. She told The San Francisco Chronicle that “Craig is going to do yoga, although he doesn’t know it.”
So how is the yoga going?
“Let’s say that’s still in the future,” he said.
Mr.
Newmark still does customer service for Craigslist, which mostly
consists of booting off troublemakers, but has not had an operational
role for a long time. “As a manager,” he noted, “I suck.”
The site has been run since 2000 by Jim Buckmaster, who is described in his official biography
as possibly the only chief executive who has been labeled a “socialist
anarchist.” Mr. Buckmaster keeps a low profile. “He won’t call you
back,” Mr. Newmark said cheerfully. (Mr. Buckmaster didn’t.)
Unlike
just about every other venture begun in the dot-com era, Craigslist
never even thought about going public. It has no ads or subscription
fees. (It charges for job postings in the United States and for brokered
apartment listings in New York.)
Every
tech mogul ever born has maintained that it is not about the money, but
for Mr. Newmark and Mr. Buckmaster this really seems to be true. In
2006, Mr. Buckmaster told an audience in New York that there were
problems with “obscene wealth.”
“You
should be careful what you wish for. Do you really want to walk around
with bodyguards?” he asked. The audience shouted back, “Yes, yes!” and
“I do!”
Mr. Newmark flies commercial.
At Cafe Reverie, his consumption was limited to a glass of water. His
biggest extravagance is a $6 million New York City apartment.
His net worth, according to Forbes,
is $1.6 billion. Mr. Newmark brushed the figure aside. “My focus is on
giving it away in a smart way,” he said, though he didn’t want to say
how much he plans to give away. In previous interviews, Mr. Newmark, who
owns about half of Craigslist, has asserted he is worth much less than people assume.
One
thing is clear: He is not spending his money on Craigslist. He can’t
remember the last time he got something off the site, although he said
his wife used it.
“Craig doesn’t need
to prove he’s someone by having possessions,” said Sylvia Paull, a
media consultant who has known Mr. Newmark for 20 years. “His way of
living mirrors Craigslist. For years people have been saying, ‘You’ve
got to upgrade the interface, make it more interactive, add color.’ He
just says, ‘No, I like it simple and plain.’”
Mr.
Newmark has been a steadfast supporter of women in tech, and built a
website for Ms. Paull’s networking group for women, Gracenet, back when
that was a labor-intensive initiative. He also funds veterans’ causes.
He has lingering guilt about not serving in Vietnam even though he knows
he wouldn’t have been much of a soldier.
Contributing
money isn’t enough. He shows up at symposiums, like a recent one in
Berkeley, Calif. He told the audience that he traced the crisis in
journalism back to the mid-1990s, when the speaker of the House, Newt
Gingrich, offered “attractive lies the press just couldn’t stay away
from.” He criticized The New York Times for its coverage of the 2016
presidential race and offered general advice: “Don’t be a loudspeaker
for liars.”
Afterward, the first
member of the crowd to go up to him said he found it “kind of ironic”
that the guy whose internet site had done so much to undermine
newspapers was now funding journalism. For the umpteenth time, Mr.
Newmark recommended Mr. Baekdal’s work.
Journalism
in San Francisco is still in crisis. San Francisco Magazine just made
clear its future will involve a lot less journalism and a lot more
fluff. Many staff members have left.
“I’d
love to see some of the S.F.-based tech moguls step up and help
journalism in their own backyard,” said Gary Kamiya, a former editor of
the magazine.
But Mr. Newmark is concentrating on New York, where local coverage has also faltered.
“My
goal is to support the groups which are not only going to do good work
but say, ‘Here’s how you do good work,’” he said. “I’d like things to
start in New York and spread.”
As he was leaving Cafe Reverie, Mr. Newmark checked his phone.
“Twenty-seven new emails,” he said.
How many were asking for money?
“All of them,” he said.
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