Tim Redmond Way Off on Craig Newmark

Executive Editor, Tim Redmond lashed out at Craig Newmark in a surprisingly hysterical Editor's Note in the February 1st issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Insisting his beef has nothing to do with Craigslist smashing old school classified ad revenue, Redmond calls Craig out on his insistence that Craigslist builds communities. He goes so far to call it bullshit.

Redmond is completely off on this one. Craig has built an elegant interface to the challenging job of forming traditional and informal ad hoc communities in the internet era. This is something that can't be done with such efficiency in print and shouldn't be dismissed as irrelevant to what Craigslist does. I've known Craig since he first started the list and have watched his idea flourish into a million short-lived and some life-long communities. To me, Redmond sounds like the conservative establishment the Bay Guardian was formed to be an alternative to.

I worked for the alternative press in my late teens and early twenties. I learned so much about the difference a media vehicle could have in traditional and out-in-the-cold communities. (I was even a typesetter and graphic artist at the Bay Guardian for a bit.) I think Redmond should really apologize to Newmark and realize these lessons from the alternative papers carry nicely into online where communities can have a greater impact than the old models.

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