Newspapers feeling the heat from craigslist

Most people know I’m a huge craigslist fan and I’ve bought and sold a few thousand dollars worth of stuff through it. I’ve always wondered about how much it has impacted newspapers and whether they’d start to print negative stories about it to make it seem unsafe or seedy. As long as you do everything in person and use common sense (ie. cash), there’s almost no way to get ripped off. I read an interview with Craig Newmark and the CEO of craigslist on the Freakonomics blog and saw this interesting answer:

Q: How do you feel about your own media coverage? I see that Craigslist
often gets reported on as the de facto way of picking up prostitutes.

JIM: We?ve been hearing increasingly from newspaper reporters who confide that they are only allowed to write negative stories about Craigslist these days, because we?re viewed as competition by their newspaper?s business managers. And, obviously, sex sells papers, more so than stories about finding a used couch, so while we do follow our media coverage, most of our attention is devoted to direct feedback from our users.

Read the rest of the interview here.