Newmark suggests newspaper publishers borrow tactics from Colbert, Stewart

By: SETH SUTEL - Associated Press | Monday, May 7, 2007 8:40 PM PDT ∞

NEW YORK -- Craig Newmark might not be the most obvious choice for a speaker at a conference of newspaper publishers, considering that his Web site Craigslist is often seen as a rival to newspapers by siphoning away lucrative classified advertising.

What, then, to make of his suggestion to the publishers that they follow the lead of late night cable TV hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert?

Declaring those two shows his primary source of news, Newmark told the annual convention of the Newspaper Association of America, an industry group, that Stewart provided a valuable service by juxtaposing video clips of lobbyists and other public officials giving contradicting statements at different times.

Newmark, speaking in an on-stage interview with talk show host Charlie Rose, says he still prefers reading news on paper rather than online, but he called that preference a "luxury" that was unlikely to endure.

Newmark said the country needed more investigative journalism, not less, and pointed to a recent study suggesting that that kind of reporting could be an important way for newspapers to improve profitability.

And while he said that the business of making, editing and writing news had a "great future," he said he did have "great deal of sympathy" for people running printing presses. "They're screwed," he said.

Newmark also tried to downplay the effect his business, which offers mainly free listings for housing, jobs and items for sale, was having on newspapers. He also brushed away suggestions that he might sell the company and was driven by the profit motive.

"To call what we have a business model is laughable," Newmark said. "We make it up as we go along."

Newmark's audience didn't warm especially to his suggestions about newspaper coverage, although one key industry executive conceded that he had a point about using humor to get one's point across, something that Newmark himself emphasized in his remarks.

Jay Smith, the president of Cox Newspapers in Atlanta and a former chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, said in an interview that Newmark's suggestions about exposing contradictions in the statements of public officials was something newspapers already do.

On the question of humor, Smith said: "Newspapers have for too long taken ourselves too seriously -- We need to take a lesson from the Stewarts and the Colberts," he said. "We could use some humor."