Craigslist founder on journalism

The Los Angeles Times online had an interesting interview with Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, on Tuesday.

In part he said:

"What people seem to want are a few sources of national news overall and then a lot of very local stuff, because now and then we do care about really big issues, and that's important, and for that reason people do want national newspapers in some form. ...

"We also need to see the hyper-local stuff, and I think that's the way many newspapers are going to survive, because, you know, we may not care about what's happening across the country, but we may care about the guy walking his dog in a neighborhood. I guess what we care about is what's happening around us, because we all do live in neighborhoods and communities, and in our culture now, we have this Bowling Alone effect, where we do feel frequently isolated from the people around us. You know, you might live in a big building where you don't know the people around you, or if you live in a neighborhood that's more modest -- no high-rises or whatever -- you may want to get to know the people around, because we do have that need to connect. But, you know, the mechanisms for that don't really exist very well."

Check it out at: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-newmark-ps25-2008nov25,0,902749,full.story

I think he's right, and more and more people are reaching similar conclusions. But the question remains -- what is the money-making template for local news? Subscription services? Online ads? Membership drives similar to PBS?

No one is sure. There will probably be a variety of successes and failures with different models.