Why Walmart won’t save local papers but Craigslist and Google may
I know I’m a few weeks behind with some of my postings but that’s what happens when you have so many items you want to discuss in a blog and so li’l time...Anyway, I want newspapers to save themselves too but this Slate piece is just insane fiction. The idea of Wal-Mart trying to help newspapers from going under is ridiculous because 1) Wal-Mart only cares about Wal-Mart, 2) they make rules that benefit only themselves, to the detriment of other industries (not to mention their employees who lack medical insurance), 3) they relish being a monopoly, 4) they have no compulsion about driving other stores out of business, 5) they’re probably happy that they can save on their advertising budget with less papers around.
A much saner alternative appears in this Seattle Times interview with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark where he proposes that he would OK to have links to newspapers from CL. And there’s more reasonable hope to be found here where Google, a growing megalith, is actually proposing to help papers.
Addenda: now Monster.com is looking to get into the act by partnering with several newspapers.
