The Media Drop

For awhile, I had seen the volume of “hit pieces” and negative press that so-called “new media” tools were getting in major publications as a totally bad thing, and that some of the writers didn’t get it. That might still be the case (the latter, that is), but now I’m beginning to feel like at the end of the day, these are all good stories for new media. This morning, I read an item in Fortune where Adam Lashinsky describes the effect that online classifieds site Craigslist has been doing its darndest in taking away classified advertising revenues from print newspapers. At first I was like “duh, who didn’t realize this?” but quickly reversed, realizing that there are tons of people who a) probably haven’t heard of Craiglist before and b) don’t get the low down on every single Web or new media function on a regular basis. So even though Craiglist has been around for a long, long time now (at least in ‘net time), the audience reading this in Fortune might not be quite as savvy as to realize that this was one of the factors in the recent revenue losses at major media outlets.