• Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, November 26, 2008 9:30 AM

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, the online bane of all newspaper classified sections, sees a promising new phase for news media. He believes that people want a few sources of national news overall and then a lot of sources for very local information and assistance.

"Now and then we do care about really big issues, but we also need to see the hyper-local stuff, and I think that's the way many newspapers are going to survive," he says. Readers care about what's happening around them because they all live in communities, and "in our culture now, we feel frequently isolated from those around us."

He says that local papers in the future may also serve as a home for community organizers, a new and evolving role for newspaper staffers who blog, host discussions and are engaged with people in the community. Advertising and sponsorships would come from ma and pa shops. "They need to get readers' attention, and that's a matter for display ads, not classifieds. Craigslist is classifieds."

Read the whole story at Los Angeles Times »