Craig Newmark, founder and guiding light of Craigslist, the classified-ads supersite, says he's privately working on a project that would aggregate the most trustworthy versions of major news stories
of the day. It's still very much a work in progress, Newmark told a reporter for the
Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages. But, if launched, it would likely rely for its results on a combination
of software algorithms, editorial judgments, and reader votes. This is meaningful because Newmark has attracted the allegiance of millions of Net users who look to him as a sort of impartial arbiter
of information. Because he works out of low-rent office space in the San Francisco Bay Area and has repeatedly said he's not interested in selling Craigslist, no matter how much money anyone would
offer, Newmark has attained the status of venerated guru. At the same time, he's rejected any notion that he has single-handedly undermined the American newspaper industry, which has seen its ad
lineage slip away ever since Craigslist began to catch on. "Somebody invented recently a myth that we're hurting newspapers," Newmark told City Pages. "That appears to be an invention.
We're a minor factor."
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