It reads pretty much like the chapter of a book--actually, almost like the book itself--but if you're interested in the development of Craigslist, it's worth taking the time to plow through a
discursive piece by Ryan Blitstein in SFWeekly.com. Blitstein's takeout goes deep, deep into the workings of the San Francisco-based online classifieds juggernaut. Here you'll learn about the
company's history, its hero-founder Craig Newmark, its challenges, its future strategies, and its increasingly negative impact on ad revenues at the nation's print newspapers. Interestingly, Blitstein
argues that the success of Craigslist has harmed not just profits at important newspapers, but the quality of their news coverage as well. "It's tough to convince the average reader that one of the
causes of inferior newspaper articles was her placement of an ad on Craigslist instead of in the paper. And yet, in aggregate, the numbers make the case," writes Blitstein, who cites a consistent
decline in staffing at the nation's papers, much of it attributable, in his view, to the way Craigslist sucks ad dollars from the industry.
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