We’ve previously blogged about crime on Craigslist. This post is about something different: retribution.

Allow me to confirm what you may already know: When newspapers consider what’s happened to their business model and who is responsible, the first name that comes to mind is often Craigslist.

Craigslist Decimated Print Budgets by Giving Away Classifieds
Newspapers used to receive more than 30% of their revenue through classifieds, for everything from job listings to rental ads to roommates and bandmates trying to find each other.  A few for-free job boards, such as Monster, cut it to jobs listings. However, Craigslist gave away all classifieds with no apparent revenue plan, and drove that part of the print profit line to near zero.

Print Classifieds Also Contained Adult Content
Before Craigslist, alternative papers got far more than 30% of revenue through classifieds, and developed a whole industry of personal ads, which ranged from dating to offers of casual sex to prostitution. The Boston Phoenix got so good at this they created a spin-off which helps more than 200 media companies, including newspapers, broadcasters and web properties, make money through personals. Here are the Boston Phoenix’s own ads for adult services. Craigslist’s erotic ads would seem to have nothing on them—except for being free.

Absence of Malice?
The financially imperiled Boston Globe provides what would appear to be biased coverage:

Continued