5 comments

• 

  Richard Bennett

  2 years ago

  It's "bizarre" to say that newspapers are losing classified ad revenues to Craig's List?
  
  What planet are you on, space cowboy? Everybody knows that's happening.
• 

  Tim Lee

  2 years ago

  Richard, the bizarre part is the "parasitic" comment.
• 

  Richard Bennett

  2 years ago

  The interesting thing is that I never characterized Craig's List as a "parasitic web site," that's your own bizarre imagination at work.
  
  A parasitic web site is one that derives its content entirely from other web sites, and does nothing for them in return. Craig's List doesn't fit that category because it has no particular relationship to any other web site, it just offers up its ads for free and that's the end of it.
  
  But we have an explosion of web sites that exist to summarize and pass on the news reported by working journalists, and many of them do nothing for the host; they're like tapeworms.
  
  And just as there are parasites in the real world there are parasites on the Web. And no, that doesn't mean that every web site is a parasite, just that some are. And that's a second problem that investigative journalism faces.
  
  Is it clear now?
• 

  Doug Lay

  2 years ago

  Those "parasite" aggregator sites don't do anything but hurt original news providers? That's why all those "digg this story" links are popping up everywhere, and why news organizations are paying big bucks to SEO companies in an effort to improve their Google News rankings.
• 

  Richard Bennett

  2 years ago

  Aggregators aren't inherently parasitic, as they do drive traffic back to the host sites. But sites that copy whole articles, or summarize without linking, are a different kettle of fish.
  
  Tim, please update your post as you've misstated my characterization of Craig's List.