Craig Newmark on The Huffington Post

eBay, Craigslist Battle For Control In Court

2009-12-07T08:31:19Z

eBay and Craigslist are going head-to-head in court in an effort to settle dueling lawsuits the two companies have filed against one another.

eBay is hoping that the court will find Craigslist guilty of changing its stock structure to dilute eBay's minority stake in the company, which Craigslist counters were part of an effort to shore up Craigslist's "anti-takeover defenses," notes Bloomberg, which has a full report on the lawsuit.

According to the Wall Street Journal, eBay alleges:
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster diluted eBay's stake in Craigslist through a "self-dealing" and secret scheme to issue more stock. EBay claims the dilution from a 28% stake to a 24% stake caused the company to lose its right to elect a Craigslist board member.

Meanwhile, Craigslist is counter-suing eBay on the grounds that the online auction site exploited its investment in Craigslist in 2004 to steal confidential information from the site, which it later used to create a competing service called "Kijiji" that was first launched overseas, then arrived in the US in 2007.

The Craigslist blog has posted information on the lawsuit, which includes a link to Craigslist's pre-trial brief.

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is expected to take the stand, along with eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster are scheduled to testify for Craigslist.

The two companies are to meet in court starting Monday, December 7, 2009. According to Craigslist, its suit against eBay is not likely to come before the court until late 2011.

11 Twitter Activists You Should Be Following

2009-11-13T00:01:42Z

Tired of reading tweets about breakfast and balloon boys? We've compiled a list of some of the top activists on Twitter, many of whom you might not even know about.

Tanja Aitamurto: Sophisticated Tree Hugging: the Pure Joy of Public Data

2009-11-11T13:42:33Z

What happens when a city releases public data for anybody to use? The city becomes a better place to live.

Disabled people can more easily find nearest blue zones, which are parking spaces for the disabled. The most kid friendly neighborhoods can easily be found on a web page. Even tree hugging becomes more sophisticated, as residents can notify the city's maintenance department about suffering trees with one click on a computer.

Is this an utopia? No. This is happening in San Francisco, California, and all the services mentioned above are available on web or mobile applications. San Francisco is one of the few cities in the country that have released public data on a website for anybody to use.

The spreading, country-wide data liberation movement has created a whole new ecosystem, including web developers, non-profit organizations, journalists, and citizen activists. All the ecosystem's parts were present at the California Data Camp organized on Saturday in San Francisco. The historical camp, first of its kind ever, was a part of the city's initiative to encourage data sharing.

Inspired by the liberated data, developers are coding iPhone apps and pondering revenue models. Non-profits are creating services based on processing the data. Journalists want to break stories based on public data and do impressive visualizations highlighting problems.

We were witnessing something historical at the Data Camp. Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, got the gist out of the phenomenon by saying: We are all part of something bigger. This is changing the ways we govern ourselves.

So far, the City of San Francisco has released for example street sweeping and local transportation schedules, and crime data. One of my favorite apps based on public data is Mom Maps. With the app, you can find kid friendly locations such as playgrounds, indoor play areas, and restaurants nearby your location in the city.

San Francisco is lucky to have a mayor like Gavin Newsom who has taken the data liberation movement seriously. Both stick and carrot are used to encourage data sharing. As a stick, he has given an executive directive to make all the city's non-confidential data public.

Internal competition is used as a carrot. On the city's online dataservice, you can see a leaderboard about data liberating in the city. Not surprisingly, the Department of Technology is leading.

The freedom of public data is still in its infancy, and a lot of things need to be figured out, as Jay Nath of DataSF put it. One of the open questions is an attribution system for public data. Maybe a Creative Commons-kind of an attribution could work?

One of the biggest challenges is the mindset in the city governance. Sharing can be scary for some people. On the other hand, sharing public data must be motivating for the city staff. It is more meaningful to maintain datasets that will make difference in people's lives, rather than maintaining the data only for city's internal use.

Sheila Shayon: Purity, Integrity, Inspiration: Possible in 2009 News Online?

2009-11-02T12:50:21Z

"Amazon Tribe Finds Jet Crash Survivors"
"Reward Bus Trip Turns Deadly in China"
"Soon-to-be Graduate Deported to Gaza"
"Navy Accidentally Fires on Polish Port"
"Pirates Demand $7M for Yacht Couple"
"Sex Offenders Monitored at Halloween"
"6 Bodies Found; Convicted Rapist Sought"
"Iran Undermines Heart of Western Nuclear Offer"
"Racy MySpace Pics Spark School Lawsuit"
"Lawsuits Filed Over Sweat Lodge Deaths"

These are actual headlines taken from online news sites on October 31st 2009.

Craig Newmark's recent Huff Post blog, "A Nerd's Take On The Future Of News Media" put forth the following:

Trust is the new black, as I like to say. The great opportunity for news organizations is to constructively demonstrate trustworthy reporting, and to visibly do so.

And then there's Michael Hirschorn's recent piece, "End Times":

If you're hearing few howls and seeing little rending of garments over the impending death of institutional, high-quality journalism, it's because the public at large has been trained to undervalue journalists and journalism. The Internet has donemuch to encourage lazy news consumption, while virtually eradicating the meaningful distinctions among newspaper brands.

There's one model that's actually working quite well. In 2009, the Christian Science Monitor, a 100 year-old news organization, became the first nationally circulated newspaper to replace its daily print edition with its website.

Exactly one year ago today, PC World's Brennon Slattery commented on the transition:

For years, the newspaper industry has declined in profit and subscriptions, as newsmongers more often than not log onto the Internet to get their daily fix. In the era of RSS feeds and constantly updating blogs, physical newspapers are hard pressed to compete against the sheer volume of material and wide range of sources. By mid-afternoon, most print dailies are old news.

With its decision to go online-only, the Monitor not only stabilizes its finances -- allowing better funding for journalism abroad -- but it also enters its second century at the forefront of the digital revolution. This move may be seen to some as the Internet "killing" a venerable, century-old publication. To me, it's the evolution of modern journalism; a logical and progressive step in the direction many more will approach in the years to come.

It's important to briefly consider the history of the Monitor. It's 1907, and an 86 year old New England woman, Mary Baker Eddy, has published a book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which sets forth unconventional religious ideas. The book becomes a bestseller. Eddy, a teacher, author, and preacher, becomes a public figure - and a target of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Yellow journalism was rampant at this time.

The New York World proclaims Eddy is incapable of managing her own affairs and convinces close friends and family to sue for control of her estate. Boston and New Hampshire newspapers and major wire services interview Eddy and find her competent, but Pulitzer is unrelenting. Eddy is taken to court -- and the case against her is dropped. The next year, 1908, Mary Baker Eddy founds the Christian Science Monitor with the mandate: 'To injure no man, but to bless all mankind.'

Mrs. Eddy had been thinking about the quality of journalism for many years. In 1883 she wrote:

Looking over the newspapers of the day, one naturally reflects that it is dangerous to live, so loaded with disease seems the very air. These descriptions carry fears to many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon the body. A periodical of our own will counteract to some extent this public nuisance; for through our paper we shall be able to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought.

And thus was founded the Christian Science Monitor, a publication that would provide "short articles for busy people," as Mrs. Eddy put it.

Joseph Pulitzer went on to endow the Pulitzer Prize for journalistic excellence. The Monitor has won seven Pulitzer Prizes.

Recent highlights from the past year's transition to online from the CSMonitor.com:

About 2.5 million unique people visit CSMonitor.com each month. Website traffic is up, on average, 30% since last year. Our journalists now publish news at all hours of the day. The Monitor weekly magazine has 67,000 paid subscribers. That's a 55% increase from the 43,000 daily-edition subscribers in April. The Daily News Briefing has 1,800 paid subscribers. This printable digital subscription edition is outperforming expectations by 50%. 6,800 Facebook fans (up from just 1,000 in January) engage in lively conversations on big topics.

Confident confrontation; elevation of thought; honest intent.
Purity, Integrity, Inspiration: Possible in 2009 News Online?
It's already here.

For more about Mary Baker Eddy:www.marybakereddylibrary.org.

Vaclav Klaus, "Blonde-Loving" Czech President, Throws Europe Into Chaos

2009-10-19T12:04:16Z

He has paralysed the European Union by refusing to ratify the Lisbon treaty and dismisses global warming as a "myth". Yet in one respect Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic has confounded his reputation as a man who likes to say no �" his predilection for young blonde airline stewardesses.

Read more: Craig Newmark, Europe, World News

Jose Antonio Vargas: How We Unplug

2009-10-06T07:00:00Z

Sometimes, we just need to unplug.

No firing off text messages. No updating Facebook profiles. No browsing Craigslist or Yelp or whatever-hot-new-site is trending on Twitter. No compulsively -- okay, obsessively -- thumbing through iPhones, BlackBerries and Androids. Yes, technology is all around us -- in our pockets, on our beds, constant, clickable companions. And, yes, it's all moving at such warp speed (have you heard? foursquare is the new Twitter!) that we can't help but try and keep up.

Still, there's a reason why most everything technological has an off button. So in honor of "In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed," Arianna's inaugural book club pick, we asked some of the world's most notable techies to tell HuffPostTech how they slow down. That is, when they do slow down.

Jose Antonio Vargas: Young Voices in The Future of News -- Connection, Conversation, Community

2009-10-01T12:18:08Z

"The future of news."

Such an incredibly loaded phrase, soaked with history, imprisoned by its own myths and misconceptions, usually the subject of much doom-saying, finger-wagging, "look-at-what-the-Internet-and-technology-has-done!" tone. Search for yourself. Type "the future of news" on Google and drink the misery. Talking about the future of news too often translates to talking about the past.

That's exactly how I felt when a friend, a fellow 20-something journalist, tweeted the news release of a 10-part public television series called "The Future of News," produced by the Newseum in Washington, D.C. and scheduled to air next year. "You've got to be kidding," the friend wrote in a subsequent instant message. "This is the future of news?"

Reyna Booth: This Week in the Classroom: A Throwdown for Public Schools ... That Feeds Your Social Media Obsession

2009-09-30T12:02:44Z

While our free time may be getting slowly siphoned off in five minute intervals and 140 character chunks by the blogs we read and write and the Tweets we post and follow, in the month of October at least, we don't have to feel guilty about it.

Starting October 1, DonorsChoose.org is kicking off its Social Media Challenge, a friendly competition among bloggers, Twitterers and other online media personalities to help thousands of public school students. Last year, more than 165 bloggers and their readers raised $275,000 for classrooms in need and this year participants include: Craigslist.org founder Craig Newmark, VC Fred Wilson, the BlogHer community, Gawker, SBNation, Serious Eats, and Apartment Therapy, to name a few.

Anyone can get involved by creating a Giving Page of your own, where you'll be invited to pick classroom projects you'd like to see funded and given tools to share your page with your online community.

For those truly obsessed social media fans, fill your Giving Page with classroom projects helping the next generation of bloggers and Twitterers get their internet-legs, like these requests:

• Mrs. F's high school seniors need $219 to complete Blogging with Dr. Frankenstein, a project to start a blogging book club around Mary Shelley's classic.

• With $691, Mrs. W's sixth grade class will get that staple piece of technology needed by all social media wannabes -- a laptop -- and become Bloggers-R-Us.

• If Mrs. P's fourth grade class receives $388, they'll bring "Lights, Camera, Action!" to life -- a project requesting a digital camcorder so the class can take their act to the web.

Feel like throwing down for public schools in October? Create a Giving Page today!

Have additional questions? Send them to smc (at) donorschoose (dot) org.

Craig Newmark: Social by Social -- A Really Practical Guide for Social Media in Orgs

2009-09-11T19:33:06Z

Hey, if you're interested in using social media in your organization, and you should be, Social by Social: A practical guide to using new technologies to deliver social impact is the real deal.

Its focus really is on how to get your organization really using the stuff, looking at practical measures like getting buy-in from the top and the bottom.

There is a wealth of technical talent out there, but energy
currently being driven towards creating 'the new Facebook' or 'the next
iPhone' could instead be given an alternative, social outlet. We need
fewer cool tools and more useful, effective software to improve our society. As social innovators begin to engage in this new world, the impact on our lives could be huge.

The opportunity is there, but to take it will require a shift of mindset,
mandate and expectations on the part of social innovators, charities
and public institutions. Because once upon a time, there were captive
audiences, things we wanted to tell them, channels for reaching them, a
group of people who were waiting to be 'serviced'. Now that's all
changed.

Larry Gellman: It Was Never Fair and Balanced -- Now It's Not Even News

2009-08-24T13:32:18Z

We are all painfully familiar with the many casualties of the deep economic decline that has ravaged the value of our homes, businesses, and investment accounts.

Another less obvious victim of the economic crisis has been the truth. Hatespeech and lies have been on the rise in politics and the media while fact checking has almost disappeared. The actions of those with a political agenda are reprehensible but at least easy to understand.

But I have always assumed that the real journalists would step in at some point and refuse to cover the rantings of crazy people, fanatics and liars as though they were actually news. For decades these types have stood on street corners handing out pamphlets and screaming about the coming end of the American way of life but none of them ever showed up on the national news or was written up in real newspapers.

But that has all changed in a big time hurry. Forget about "Fair and Balanced" or "News You Can Believe In." What we now see on cable TV is nothing resembling news. The entertainers who pose as newsmen now routinely spew lies, distortions, and biased opinions or provide a platforms of legitimacy to the sociopaths who do.

It's all right to have personal opinions expressed on television or the radio. Just label them appropriately.

There is a guy who sits near me at the University of Arizona games who starts screaming at the referees at the opening jump ball and never stops for a minute throughout the game. He and the other fans don't want the game called fairly -- they just want their team to win. You certainly wouldn't ask the president of the Booster Club to be the referee. He would have no interest in being fair and balanced and could never be objective.

But that's what we now have on cable news. People who are on the payrolls of or involved with partisan groups or political parties are introduced as "analysts" with no disclosure of their obvious conflicts of interest.

For years Fox News has been the unofficial network of the Right wing and Republican party while hilariously calling its coverage "fair and balanced." If Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity were actually fair and balanced then none of the Fox viewers would watch them -- and they know it.

But during the last year, Glenn Beck has taken hatred, bias, and unabashed lying and demonization to a level that Hannity and O'Reilly could only dream about.

Last month, Beck went on the air and called President Obama "a racist -- who hates white people" without giving any support or documentation for his claim. He also did not explain if Obama's hatred of white people extended to his own mother and white family members of the hundreds of white people he has chosen to advise and represent our country in his administration.

Just a few days ago, Beck came up with a blatant lie claiming that Mark Lloyd, the newly appointed FCC Diversity Chief will levy exorbitant taxes against Right wing radio stations with the proceeds slated to go to public radio, The fact is that Lloyd has neither the plans nor the authority to do any such thing. Non-Beck watchers should view this link as Beck and his guest talk in very specific terms about a complete falsehood.

When this happened, I was at the Aspen Institute FOCAS conference with 40 media leaders from around the U.S.

When the News Corp (the parent company of Fox) people at the Aspen conference were asked about how Beck could keep his job given his record of blatant fabrications and racist rants they admitted that they were personally embarrassed by his behavior. But they confessed that Fox has made so much money by pandering to the hateful Right wing that nothing is going to change in the foreseeable future. Maybe the fact that many of Beck's sponsors have recently canceled their advertising on his show will make a difference.

The unfair and unbalanced hatemeisters of Fox have been recently joined by Lou Dobbs of CNN ("The Most Trusted Name in News") who for years has railed on a daily basis about how Americans are being victimized by foreign countries and undocumented immigrants who come here in search of a better life. In recent weeks, Dobbs became of hero of the Right wing with his endorsement of the Birther movement.

Apparently Dobbs and a many Republicans believe that Americans should not have had the right to vote for the man they wanted to be their next president because he was born in Kenya. The Birther movement is a thinly veiled racist effort to undo the will of the American people that has been promoted by a depressingly large group of people who simply can't deal with the notion that we have elected a Black president by an overwhelming margin.

The management of CNN, like the leaders of Fox, have not been able to turn their backs on the revenues that have accompanied the journalistic malpractice that in the past would have caused Dobbs to be fired. Today, the truth is apparently just a matter of opinion and it's just fine for a newsman to call the President of the United States a traitor, socialist, Nazi, Kenyan, and such with no evidence or supporting facts.

Chris Matthews of MSNBC provides a more troubling case study. Matthews has repeatedly questioned the sincerity and "grass roots" credentials of protesters at the health care town meetings and the sanity of the Birthers accurately claiming that they are either paid or political stooges or well meaning real people who have fallen under the influence of the political operatives who are trying to bring Obama down.

He has referred to the Birthers and the anti-health care reform mercenaries and liars as "whack-jobs, crazies, and nut cases." But then he invites these very people to be guests on his show to state their cases.

He does not seem to understand that once you provide liars, haters and people who bring loaded guns to presidential meetings with a platform, you have already lost the battle. If a person is crazy or hateful, they should get no platform at all. Once you start presenting "both sides" of an issue where one side feels free to rant and lie you have already lost.

There was a time when we could have expected our most respected journalists and news reporters to be an effective filter and only present us with issues and stories that had real merit. But the economic crisis facing all types of journalism have put us in a different place.

During the three days I spent with a broad range of print, internet, and media managers and contributors in Aspen, most of the conversation focused on financial survival and ways to monetize the variety of information services being provided and how to keep from going broke in a very challenging environment. Many were mourning the imminent loss of print journalism. Few were grieving over the ongoing loss of journalism itself.

I came away from this experience with a better understanding of what is going on and why. It didn't make me happier. Even in a tough environment, there is no way to excuse the blatant lying, distortion, and almost complete absence of fact-checking that is now business as usual at media organizations that claim to be reporting news.

It's just plain wrong to call it "Fair and Balanced" or "News You Can Believe In" and it has been for quite a while.

Now there's no way to justify calling it "news" at all.

Eric Kuhn: TwitNotes from #PDF09

2009-07-01T16:08:06Z

Over 1,000 people earlier this week descended upon the Lincoln Center's Rose Hall in the Time Warner building in Midtown Manhattan for the annual Personal Democracy Forum. A who's who in the fields of government, technology, and media, the conference focused on how technology and the Internet can create a stronger democracy.

Below are some of my notes - taken on Twitter, of course - from the two day conference:

DAY ONE

Mark McKinnon (McCain 2008): "Democratization means campaigns are losing control."

Joe Rospars (Obama 2008): Our new media component was linked to a traditional campaign component. I hired journalists to leave all their careers and lead their media team.

Andrew Rasiej: When Huffington Post gets one question at a press conference the entire internet world goes "oh my god they finally acknowledged us."

Rasiej: Public should be redefined as being searchable and readable on-line. In a connected society we need to redefine "public" in an open framework. We have a right to be re-defined in the content in the technologies we have today.

Rospars: Lawyers telling staff you can post YouTube videos is a battle that's played out across administration.

Rasiej: "'Public' should be re-defined as being searchable and readable online.

Rasiej: "We do have Big Brother now. Big brother now is us."

Rospars: The big risk is that people think new media and technology is a replacement for the traditional stuff. The best is when we combine the two.

Via Skype, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg called into the conference:

He invited all the out-of-towners to move to NYC. He always welcomes more tax payers!

311 now has a Twitter account and a Skype account: NYC311

Google has agreed to provide NYC with data for the city services people are most searching for

Ning Co-Founder and CEO Gina Bianchini delivered five steps to being successful in social media:

1. Define your purpose. Sweeping impact with specific action is ideal.
2. Make your purpose immediately obvious.
3. Invest time upfront to kick it off right. It will be worth it.
4. Have a plan for growing commitment. Following alone won't create a movement.
5. Listen and iterate rapidly based on what you learn.

danah boyd (during her absolutely brilliant presentation. Read it here.):

It's our responsibility to work to prevent second class citizenship online.

Moving from MySpace to Facebook was a "modern incarnation of white flight. MySpace has become the ghetto of the digital landscape."

"Most likely you learned how to use twitter because people around you were using twitter."

"These aren't socially networking sites. These are where people reinforce their social network, they don't meet anyone new."

In the PDF auditorium, everyone is on Facebook. Two people were on MySpace. Yet, in "real world," each social networking site has an equal amount of people.

Early adopters in Facebook were Ivy bound. This set the tone for the site.

Jeff Jarvis: "We must give government permission to fail." (There was weak applause).

Jarvis: "Do what we do best and link to the rest."

Simon Rosenberg and Morley Winograd discuss the changing demographics in America:

Bush outspent Gore 10 to 1 trying to get the Spanish vote. This is why he won the election.

Gen X (born 1965 - 81) spent an average of 14 minutes per day with their parents.

Mellennials (born 1982 - 2003) - both parents are invested in the raising of their kids.

Election stat alert: By 2020 1 in 3 adults will be millennials

Values drive the use of technology, not the other way around.

Picture of Rachel Sklar moderating her Twitter panel here.

David All: "There is going to be another Macaca moment on Twitter and I am going to catch it."

All does not use the term "'new media,' because how much longer will it be new?"

IAVA Founder Paul Rieckhoff held a press conference today. Watch my interview with him (about NING and his major announcement) here. There are 1.8 Million Iraq and Afghanistan vets right now in America.

DAY TWO

Craig Newmark: Nerd + Wonk = Nonk

Macon Phillips (White House director of New Media): Participation and collaboration are important to what the White House is doing now.

Note: out of the entire auditorium about two people raised their hands who admitted to being Republicans.

Randi Zuckerberg (Director of Marketing Development at Facebook) says history of Facebook roll out internationally was not linked to colleges and thus has produced a different relationship with users.

Facebook expedited the implementation of Farsi on the site. Many of the comments coming out of Iran are in Farsi.

Alec Ross (Senior Adviser for Innovation in the Office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton):

"I look at the system, I am pessimistic. I look at the people, I am optimistic."

"Up till now diplomacy has been white guys with white shirts and red ties talking to each other." Now everyone who lives in society now has the power to be a Paul Revere (by using Twitter). Everyone one with a cell phone has a Gutenberg's printing press and a platform."

He who has access to information often has access to power and decision-making.

Todd Herman (RNC Director of New Media): Conservatives didn't use the tools available to them during the election, but that's changing.

Herman also displayed during his presentation a great social media flower chart

Dan Froomkin (formally of the Washington Post): "Not offending people is not a business model."

Sklar noted on her Twitter: Blogs are holding media accountable like they've never been held accountable before.

Frank Rich (New York Times) quotes:

"No one thought we would pay for TV. Well we do."

"The message is more important than the medium"

There is no example of an old media being replaced by a new media. There are examples of how media has failed though.

Rasiej on the millennial generation: "Not knowing what is happening right now is worse than death."

I just interviewed former Presidential Candidate Mike Gravel (watch here). When the interview concluded, we spoke about Obama and health care. He offered this advice that he learned as a "maverick" in the Senate: When you use all your political capital, you always get more.

"Truth Squad" can be used as a verb.

Ana Marie Cox said she heard from a "very good inside source at the White House" that they pay attention to Twitter

What makes bloggers unique is their nerve

When the mainstream media dies, who is going to do the big stories...so we can link to them? (from the blogging panel)

The best Blog aggregator for politics: Memeorandum

Dr. Mark Drapeau wins the best account for tweeting during PDF. Check it out: @cheeky_geeky

Cox during the "does blogs still matter?" panel delivered the best line of the conference: "I feel about anonymous blogging the way I feel bout anonymous sex: if it's good, how do you know who to go back to for more?"

If I missed anything or if there are some good blog posts / other notes, please leave them below!

Paul Rieckhoff: Marine Finds Unlikely Reinforcements Online: Nerds

2009-06-29T23:46:40Z

John Hodgman was right. It’s the revenge of the nerds in America right now. These past few years we’ve seen self-proclaimed, highly-influential nerds using the power of online technology to play a huge role in driving public policy, political campaigns and organizing grassroots engagement. In the 2008 presidential campaign both McCain and Obama harnessed the power of new media to address voters, raise millions and rally their supporters. And just in the last two weeks, Twitter is revolutionizing the way protests are coordinated and communicated in Iran.

But social networking isn’t just for electoral battles. It’s transforming the way communities organize for the public good. And now, nerds -- and I say that with the utmost respect -- are changing the lives of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. Case in point, Rey Leal, an Iraq veteran, found his community online and began his journey home from war:

Rey served in Fallujah during some of the heaviest fighting, earning a Bronze Star with valor as a Private First Class, an almost unheard of accomplishment for a Marine of his rank. When he was discharged in February 2008, Rey looked forward to returning to Texas to begin a new chapter with his wife and infant son. Unfortunately, Rey’s transition home from combat was far from easy. He struggled with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and spent months trying to deal with his symptoms, including severe depression and insomnia. His marriage at a breaking point, Rey sought treatment.

Yet, instead of having resources at his fingertips, his closest VA hospital was over five hours away. And at his nearest outpatient clinic, there was just one psychologist, taking appointments only two days a week. It wasn’t until Rey saw IAVA’s “Alone” Public Service Announcement on TV that his transitional journey began.

He decided to check out the website, CommunityofVeterans.org—a social network exclusively for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. The first of its kind, the website is the linchpin of a new national outreach campaign to ease the transition for vets returning home from combat.

Immediately, Rey found a community on CommunityofVeterans.org. Thousands of other veterans were inside. For the first time since returning home, Rey started to feel like he wasn’t operating in a silo with unique issues, but could share them with his peers, many of whom were all tackling the same issues he was.

According to Rey, "“I honestly didn’t find help until I learned of IAVA and Community of Veterans. This made me realize that I wasn’t alone in my struggle. I felt I could talk to these strangers about my problems on COV and for some reason they wouldn’t judge me. I knew they understood.”"

Rey told his story to other veterans through IAVA’s social networking tools and yesterday, I shared his journey with a much wider audience -- again with a little help from technology. I was at the Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) in New York City to present IAVA’s groundbreaking new social networking site with Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark and Ning CEO Gina Bianchini. For those of you who don’t know, the PdF is the world's largest conference on technology and politics. Everyone from Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Ana Marie Cox have come together to explore how technology is transforming politics, democracy and society.

But Communityofveterans.org isn’t just a tech phenomenon—it’s a movement that is literally saving lives. And for that, we have online technology (and countless nerds) to thank.

Crossposted at IAVA.org

Kari Henley: Why Don't We Volunteer? The 'Dare to Care'

2009-06-21T09:00:41Z

Get Involved! Volunteer! This administration's determination to address recession fallout spans beyond the reach of bail out dollars, and into old fashioned barn-raising, with a passionate call to service. The United We Serve campaign challenges all Americans to make a difference by doing "good" in their communities for 81 days, from June 22 -- September 11 and beyond.

"Make Volunteerism and community service part of your daily life, and part of the life of this nation," invites President Obama, "And I mean everyone."

Check out the President's short speech here:

It sounds good, right? But wait! I can hear the excuses buzzing already: "Well, umm, ahh, you know, the new episodes of WipeOut are coming on, work is so busy, summer is hectic, and money is tight - I just can't get involved." Sound familiar? Why don't we volunteer?

Here are some of the top reasons:

Not feeling qualified- "I don't know what to do."

Worried you will be sucked into paying a lot of money-"I can't afford to donate."

Afraid it will take too much time- "I am over committed right now as it is."

I have small kids and can't get away- "My giving bone is stretched to the max."

Not knowing where to go or what cause moves you- "Soup kitchens are not my thing."

Maybe we don't volunteer because of the WIFFM (What's In It For Me?) factor. Here's a reframe: does feeling happier, more contented and satisfied with your life intrigue you at all? Plenty of studies have shown those who volunteer actually have improved health, and trigger the same dopamine pleasure bath as when we eat our favorite foods or have sex with the one we love.

Yet most of us walk down the streets, lattes in hand, self-absorbed in our tweets and general activism apathy. Despite compelling evidence, I highly doubt swarms will start filling the streets with t-shirted volunteers, just because the President says we should. We have to feel a calling. We have to be pulled. Bottom line, we have to care.

Maybe Obama understands this, and created this volunteer "challenge" to get us out of the drone zone, and rolling up the proverbial sleeves. A fantastic start -- are you moving yet? Obama may call it United We Serve, but I am going to put out a "Dare to Care." Come on, give your time to someone or something that needs help this summer- I dare you!

Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist), Google, UCLA, YouTube and others have collaborated on a web site called All For Good to help Americans overcome our volunteer objections, and make it happen in a big way. If you don't feel qualified, you will quickly see that even picking up trash counts, and any toddler would be proud to join in. Many options do not require any money, and even a small amount of time makes a huge difference. The site offers categories of potential interest, like Nature, Education and Health, with direct links to local opportunities in your neighborhood. No more excuses!

Here's some of the WIIFY (What's In It For You) in volunteering:

Meeting people you never would have met. Volunteering offers a vital experience of putting roots in the ground. Feeling a part of something larger than ourselves can transcend the heavy emotions of isolation and loneliness -- even once a month makes a difference.

Gaining Perspective on Your Own Troubles. No matter how hard life can be, there is always someone worse off than you are. Getting out of our personal mire for a while is healthy and therapeutic.

Having Fun! A non-profit in my area recently held a gigantic tag sale to raise urgent last minute funds, as well as to put household items in the hands of those who need them. Our format was unique: nothing had price tags, and no haggling. Everything was to be taken at will, and donations given by choice. Guess what? We raised far more than we imagined, and everyone walked away feeling good about it. Was it a lot of work? Yes. The volunteers were exhausted sorting mountains of stuff, eating cold pizza for dinner, drinking wine in paper cups, and all the while laughing our heads off. Who won? We all did.

If formal volunteering is not possible or of interest, does this mean you can't "dare to care?" How a about applying the President's challenge towards the daily with our families, friends, neighbors and co-workers? Make each day an opportunity to connect with someone in pain, lend a hand before being asked, or spread some joy in the daily doldrums.

Here's how you can be in service every day, without joining any organization at all:

Deliver dinner to a friend or neighbor in need; even a rotisserie chicken and bread is great.

Offer to baby sit a new mom's kids for an afternoon, and give her20 for a manicure and a Starbucks.

Mail a card once a week with a heart-felt message. After all no one sends anything to us 'snail mail' any more.

I would like to attribute this last idea to Huff Po reader Bill Burns, from Puget Island, WA, who sent me a card, out of the blue, this month. I was sure it was junk mail. Inside, Bill wrote that he read a few of my columns, and told me to "keep it up - you are doing important and good work." Bill tries to send a card every single day to someone who has touched his life, and ended the card with, "I know it sounds kinda goofy, but it helps me flourish and spreads gratitude."

I loved the simple idea of sending a card to a stranger. That is daring to care. That is a call to service. That is volunteering to make a difference in someone's life. Am I someone in need? Sure, I'm human, and we all need each other.

Marilyn Mock is someone who "Dared to Care," in a big way last year, when she saw a sobbing woman about to lose her house at a foreclosure auction. Gripped by fate, something made her raise her hand, and win the bid for $30K. Marilyn then turned around, and gave the house back to the crying stranger, assuring her to repay as she could. That single act has transformed Marilyn's life into creating a non-profit to help thousands of others called The Foreclosure Angel Foundation.

Come on Huff Po! Let's hear the myriad ways you have "Dared to Care," and how you intend to fulfill the United We Serve challenge. See you next week! If you would like to receive regular updates of this column, click on "Become a Fan," and see my blog at: www.karihenley.blogspot.com

Phil Bronstein: A Real Missed Connection: Craigslist Saves Print and Stands to Profit Even More?

2009-06-12T14:13:14Z

Craigslist is saving newspapers!

I respectfully disagree with Arianna Huffington's claim this week that Craig helped her kill print journalism.

Just as Prohibition handed over the lucrative liquor trade to the Bronfmans and the Kennedys, rabid law enforcement agents are chasing the equally lucrative classified sex ads from craigslist back to old-fashioned newsprint businesses nervy enough to keep publishing them.

A post on washingtoncitypaper.com notes "an erotic comeback" of lurid revenue, including at City Paper's own printed product, where adult ads were up 38 percent over last year, according to the classifieds manager. The publisher of Minneapolis' City Pages says adult ads have "almost doubled." And at our own SF Weekly, the report notes, paid R-rated pitches for X-rated services went from 160 a week when craigslist still had a lot of leash, to 910 last week, post-crackdown.

New life for the printed page, even if it's dressed in Frederick's of Hollywood.

But that relief couldn't have happened without Craig and CEO Jim Buckmaster agreeing reluctantly to bizarre restrictions under threat of government suits from all manner of Elliot Nesses out there.

The entire scenario is like something out of a Coen Brothers' movie: full of some violence, nonsense, surreality, and slapstick (and probably a little spanking-for-pay.)

Now that craigslist has wrapped its sex classifieds in a plain brown paper cover of "adult services" instead of the former "erotic services" category to try to mollify 47 state attorneys general and other blue law crusaders, let's take a brief step backwards and breathe in the complete absurdity of the whole picture.

It's true that bad things happened in real life because of hook-ups via craigslist's sex ads. Some freak killed a Boston woman after answering her craigslist posting as a masseuse. And another charmer, facing 30 years in prison for raping three women who'd advertised on the site's now remodeled "erotic services" section, hanged himself this week in a Missouri jail cell.

Sliding down the Patrick Fitzgerald bat pole, caped avengers around the country from sheriffs to hard-charging and ambitious New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo put the squeeze on craigslist to do its own slipcover work on the adult ads to avoid legal action.

Compromises were reached, including the brown bag/"Pretty Woman" sleight of hand on wording. Like "erotic" and "adult" somehow live on different planets.

But what's with the double standard? Newspapers, mostly weeklies, print the same kinds of ads for the same "services" and no one blinks. It just seems like flat-out selective prosecution when a masseuse on craigslist is considered a hooker while a masseuse in an SF Weekly classified is apparently a bona fide health services worker. Maybe one description is a little saltier than the other, but very few of us were born yesterday.

Even as craigslist is duking it out with the law, alt weeklies and other print publications continue to benefit. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as one commenter on this week's press/Obama post pointed out -- but "full body massage" ads are less about the massage than about body parts and a happy ending.

And on those tabloid-grisly crimes -- the Boston guy was even called "The Craigslist Killer." Newspapers didn't used to have just a monopoly on the advertising, but also on the occasional psychopaths who read them. Let's check the history:

Bobbie Joe Long, busted in 1984, was called the "Classified Ad Rapist" after assaulting at least 50 women, killing some of them. Going back further, there was Harvey Glatman, the "Want Ad Killer." Over a dozen movies were made, true-life and fiction, about murderers who tracked their prey out of newspaper classifieds or lonely hearts columns.

So stop picking on craigslist just because it's popular, successful, a lion of sometimes irritating social media networking, and can get you big publicity as a moralist.

I'm not advocating for or against prostitution. But this is about discriminatory law enforcement using a lot of taxpayers' money. And, frankly, it's a little like a worldwide crusade against BB guns.

And just to put the an ironic capper on the whole wacky drama, those same officers of the public trust, by having craigslist charge more for adult ads as a way of "controlling them," have just helped moralize my friend Craig and his company right up to the alleged $100 million in annual revenue that was reported this week.

Barack Obama may or may not be God, but Craig Newmark seems to be. He's making lots of money, courtesy of government officials -- giving away some of it to future-of-journalism enterprises -- AND throwing weekly newspapers a life preserver. This could save him from the category of what Newsweek columnist Daniel Lyons calls "the (tech) geeks pocketing all the dough," presenting "themselves as a bunch of pious, sweet-natured nerds" who make the old "big, bad media barons look like a bunch of amateurs."

That's certainly a happy ending for some people.

Craigslist Revenue: $100 million In 2009

2009-06-12T12:12:24Z

Defying its anti-commercial reputation, Craigslist is expected to rake in $100 million in revenue this year, the most ever for the classified advertising site, according to a new report.

Jake Brewer: Data.Gov Launches: Why You Should Care and What You Should Do

2009-05-21T16:48:29Z

Sometimes the geekiest stuff is the most important. When it comes to creating a more transparent and accountable government, Thursday, May 21, is one of those sometimes.

On this beautiful morning, our nation's citizenry received one of the greatest gifts it could receive from its government: raw, freely and easily accessible data.

Mmmmm... data.

New federal CIO Vivek Kundra and the Obama Administration have officially launched Data.gov, which is the first-ever catalog of federal data being made freely (and easily) available to citizens.

Now, it's unlikely the description of Data.gov will send chills down the spine of anyone who doesn't speak Ruby or Python or MYSQL, and if you visit the site, it's unlikely you'll be struck or know to be impressed by what's there. But if you step back and take a minute to understand what you're looking at, you'll realize we've just taken an unprecedented first step into the Era of Big Open Government.

When information and process become free and participatory, markets get created (think about weather data), more people engage more deeply with their government (see: Obama's online townhall), and ultimately, people care more about what their government does and how it serves them. ...it's nearly impossible for people to know more about what's going on and care less.

Transparency is at the heart of destroying apathy.

The key with this new data, though, is that we do something with it. While opening up data is a beautiful thing in its own right, what will make this release truly great is when citizens actually take the information and create new, brilliant applications.

That's why Sunlight Labs in partnership with Google, O'Reilly Media, and Craig Newmark of Craigslist has simultaneously launched a contest with $25,000 in awards to incentivize the creation of said brilliance.

Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge

This is a wonderful, one-time opportunity to show the administration the good that follows when they make information free. So we need to seize it. And everyone's help in getting the word out is key -- whether you're a developer, someone who knows developers to share this with, or someone who simply writes and talks to others.

At the end of the day, the more great entries the Apps for America contest receives, the more likely government is to release more data -- and the more data government releases the more transparent, accountable, and efficient it can be.

Open, free, raw information -- true Transparency -- makes government work the way it's supposed to (for you).

So let's get on this. Geeks, wonks and active citizens alike.

Craigslist Erotic Services Ads To Be Removed From Site

2009-05-13T10:10:50Z

CHICAGO — A month after the killing of a masseuse who advertised on Craigslist, the classified ad site announced plans Wednesday to eliminate its "erotic services" category and screen all submissions to a new "adult services" section before they are posted.

Law enforcement officials praised the move as a victory against online prostitution, but they acknowledged doubts about whether the changes will curb the practice.

Jeremy Abelson: Embrace for Impact: My Conversation with Craig Newmark on the "Craigslist Killer"

2009-04-27T18:21:33Z

Craig Newmark is the John Hancock of the Internet. He is a founding father of the World Wide Web, and he will forever leave his oversized signature on the core principles on which the Internet was built.

His is the best example of a site that has maintained the ideals of the Internet's constitution, and he is himself a beacon of the idea of the "symbiotic online community" set forth in the original intentions of our declaration of independence from traditional media.

He has survived the dot-com boom, the dot-com bust, Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0, and has emerged not only unchanged but unscathed.

The Craigslist Killer has turned Craig into something of a Paul Revere on his horse yelling "The British are coming!" Craig, however, is now yelling, "The prostitutes are advertising!"

Sitting behind his multiple monitors, large-soda cup-with-straw at hand, earpiece glued to his ear, Craig is poised in attack position. His sincere response to most questions about the Craigslist Killer end with the aggressive assertion that "if you commit crimes on my site, you will get caught," and that he is "working with the cops to catch the bad guys." He is a modern-day Civilian Officer and he is looking to hand out Civilian Arrests. His tenacity makes him sound like a renegade bounty hunter with a purpose. In his view, his site has been unjustly associated with scandal -- and he is looking for retribution.

Here is the video of my interview with Craig, and the transcript is below:

Based on Alexa rankings, Craigslist is one of the 30 most trafficked sites online. Everything Craig does with his site has worldly importance. He has singlehandedly eradicated the "Classified Section," and decisions he makes about censorship (or manual advertisement removal) have a global impact.

It is important to note that I don't believe that Craigslist (and, by extension, Craig himself) is responsible for the Craigslist Killer's acts. The site is not creating societal deviants. If not through Craigslist, crimes would happen through other channels. Furthermore, if not through Craigslist, prostitution or erotic services would be advertised elsewhere. Like someone selling a used couch, I think erotic service providers have found it most efficient to market their services on Craigslist. But if Craig decides to remove the "erotic" advertisements, prostitution dealers will find other marketing vehicles. That being said, I think it is important to assess the site's role in sex trafficking, as Craig must make conscious decisions about erotic services in order to address the attention the site is receiving right now. It's interesting to learn what factors are contributing to Craig's decisions.

Craig claims that he does not censor user-generated content or advertisements on Craigslist. The community alerts the company about illegal or bogus posts; the company then decides whether to remove the post or not. Additionally, if enough users flag a post, it is removed automatically. Such posts could include someone trying to sell drugs or a New York real estate broker advertising an apartment that doesn't exist. Craig also stated that he manually removes posts advertising illegal activity. He claims that at this point Craigslist has real guidelines, but that they are all based on community feedback.

From what Craig says, it sounds as though the first line drawn in the sand is legality. Simply put, if you are advertising for something illegal, it will be removed (and info will be sent to "the cops").

Last time I checked, prostitution was illegal. Yet Craig has maintained an Erotic Services tab on the site for many years. I'm not sure what about this post [NSFW] is legal, but Craig claims that people have been advertising for erotic services through print for decades.

In response to the Craigslist Killer, Craig has maintained the Erotic Services section, but has begun charging for erotic advertisements. Craig claims that this move has cut down on the number of posts by 80 to 90 percent. He claims that this drop in posting can be attributed to the obvious cost barrier -- not to mention the forensics trail a credit card can leave. Additionally, he asserts that they now donate all new erotic ad revenues to charity and still give the community the opportunity to flag and remove posts.

I believe that Craig is hurt by the "Craigslist Killer" scandal. He has spent the last 14 years of his life working tirelessly to create a true community built for the people and monitored by the people. He has fought for his community that is built on free speech. He has rejected the lure of billions of dollars by selling out or integrating additional revenue-generating mechanisms into the site. I don't think I know a single other person that would have made that decision. He rightfully believes he has the most fair and pure site on the web. After 14 years and billions of advertisements on the site, a scandal has been associated with people that utilize his site, and his name is now associated with murder. I think Craig feels slighted by the media and by the public.

His response to this current scandal is the response he's had to everything since the inception of the site: "I will do what the law and the community tell me to do." I think his personal reaction to this scandal would have been to pull the Erotic Services tab and attempt to remove all sex trafficking ads, but he hasn't because "the cops" have asked him to keep it on the site for the forensic evidence it produces.

He is forever a servant to the community.

Craig is not ready to deem "erotic services" illegal at this point. He is, however, impassioned by the opportunity to work with "the cops" to help "catch the bad guys." You can hear the fervor in his voice when he proclaims he is now part of the solution rather than part of the problem. If the community tells Craig he's part of the problem, he will believe he's part of the problem. Aligning himself so closely with the law is his way of repenting.

Interview Transcript:

JA: What is the state bird of California, and if you could change it, what would you change it to?

CN: I don't know what it is, so I'm going to make up something and say it's the hummingbird, and that works for me.

JA: You love hummingbirds?

CN: Actually, I have several in my immediate backyard. I see them fighting for territory. I actually have some video of them, and I will be blogging it tomorrow morning.

JA: Have you ever called Jim Buckmaster "The Buckmeister"?

CN: I've been tempted, but it was too obvious.

JA: Many people believe you made a significant impact on the Obama campaign. What do you think about Joe Biden's decision to get hair plugs?

CN: Um, well, first, my role in the Obama campaign was greatly exaggerated. Regarding the Vice President, maybe I should ask him for some advice on how to get mine.

JA: Larry David would not approve, and I'm wondering if you do?

CN: I haven't spoken with Larry, well, ever, so I don't know.

JA: BlackBerry or iPhone?

CN: For me, iPhone, but I'm seriously looking at the Google Phone.

JA: Who are three people that you recommend following on Twitter?

CN: Well, I could probably figure out a long list... There is @ jayrosen_nyu (Jay Rosen), @buzzmachine/@jeffjarvis (Jeff Jarvis), @EllnMllr (Ellen Miller). That's a good start; those are people's opinions I rely on for the evolution of journalism.

JA: What does Craigslist currently censor (firearms, drugs, violence, et cetera), and how does that happen?

CN: We don't "censor" anything. That's a political term. There are a lot of community guidelines. For example, people in the community tell us they don't want to see firearm ads, they don't want to see people, let's say, breaking the law, harassing each other, bickering, that kind of thing. So we do have some real guidelines, but they're based on community feedback. Pretty much everything is based on community feedback.

JA: So, by principle, in order for you to actively remove a post, or remove content, you need to have received a request from the community to do so?

CN: Well, it's simpler than that. For the most part, removal of ads is driven by community flagging. Specifically, you know, if you see an ad that's wrong for some reason, you can flag it for removal. If enough other people agree with you and flag the ad, it's removed automatically. But now and then someone will draw something specific to our attention. In New York, a big problem is still apartment brokers posting in the owner's section, posting deceptively, and pretty much every day I deal with at least one of them.

JA: Is that just in essence a rule, that when you see it, you manually remove it?

CN: Pretty much so, and for whatever reason I take a particular interest in some of the less savory figures in the real estate community. Although since we've been doing this actively, the amount of abuse has dropped dramatically.

JA: Dealing with drugs, violence, firearms--is there any rule of thumb that you go by in terms of censoring that content?

CN: Well, we actively go after crooks by working with the police. Anything that is criminal is just not okay on our site, and we work pretty actively with victims and the cops to deal with it, because we know how to help the cops with the simple forensics that they need on our site and we believe in acting fast while still respecting the Bill-of-Rights kind of stuff. If a crook tries something on our site, they're gonna get caught.

JA: Let's talk about preventing the act. If something is recognized as a drug dealing post, is it something that you remove immediately when you see it and then send the information to a local authority?

CN: Well, for sure, some of the process we don't disclose, but if we see it we will remove the ad immediately, but retain the evidence indefinitely.

JA: I assume you have debated censoring obvious sex trafficking through the moniker "erotic massages." Why did you decide to allow the erotic advertisements and even provide a city homepage category for it?

CN: We don't censor any form, but if anything criminal is attempted on our site, we deal with it right away, and again, if you are a crook trying to pull something, and if the cops are interested, you're gonna get caught. We're driven by the law enforcement community and our general community, and specifically when it comes to erotic services, we've spoken with a lot of cops and a lot of DAs, we've spoken with forty states' Attorneys General, and [we've talked with] the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. We're still in conversations with them all, but for now, what they've told us to do, what they want us to do, is to keep the Erotic Services section, for reasons I can't disclose. They've asked us, as a way of discouraging all the bad guys, to charge a token fee and give all the profits away to charity, and we're setting that up right now.

JA: So you are going to be charging for people to place ads for erotic services?

CN: In that category--and specifically we are giving away all the profits to charity. Right now the big deal is that since we started charging, the abuse has gone down eighty to ninety percent.

JA: "Abuse" you classify as what?

CN: Mostly ads for illegal services.

JA: So the amount of ads has dropped by eighty or ninety percent?

CN: Yeah, the deal is that when we're charging that creates an audit trail, a credit card trail, which means that if in the remaining ads someone tries to do something wrong, we have a way of directly finding them that can be shared with law enforcement.

JA: Are erotic massages wrong? Are they now being classified as illegal?

CN: Well, if an ad for massage or anything else is illegal and it's wrong, we're gonna go after 'em. The idea is that sometimes people use those terms in different ways, which is part of the challenge. The use of language--well, something that sounds illegal may not be, and something that sounds illegal may be illegal. That's a part of why this is so difficult.

JA: It seems like you are very in touch with the local municipality about this specific issue. As of today, are you calling erotic services offered through the site illegal? Are you calling them wrong?

CN: That's too broad a way to characterize them, because I might accuse the innocent of something. The deal is that we work with the cops, DAs, Attorneys General, and our community, and [the community does] the flagging thing, and when there's something that seems really wrong going on, usually that means we'll wind up getting an e-mail and can address it quickly and directly.

JA: So for that section specifically there are people that are acting in a legal capacity and people acting in an illegal capacity?

CN: Well, there are people acting in a legal capacity. If it's illegal, they won't see it, because it's going to get removed.

JA: You continually mention that if someone is attempting to perform any illegal activity through the site, they'll get caught. With the current scandal and buzz associated with the Craigslist Killer, are you saying that you preferred it to happen on your site because of the trail of evidence rather than it happening outside your site because he could have gotten away with it a couple more times, but because of the evidence, he and people like him will get caught more efficiently?

CN: Well, you're referring to a specific ongoing investigation, and the cops have told us not to comment on it and not to disclose very much about it, because even now the cops have a lot of investigations going on through the Net, and I'm not going to risk tainting any evidence by talking out of turn.

JA: So then, hypothetically, on a theoretical level, do you prefer it to happen on your site?

CN: My personal perspective is broader. The idea again is that I talk to the cops and follow their lead. The comment that I guess I can pass on, because I spoke with several cops today, is that what they really want from us is that when they send us a search warrant we will respond quickly and cooperatively and not jerk 'em around. They're real happy with us about that.

JA: Has Osama bin Laden ever used Craigslist, and can you catch him?

CN: [Laughs] I don't really know if that's been the case. Not to our knowledge. The only references to that have been jokes and in poor taste.

JA: What is your reaction to the label "Craigslist Killer"?

CN: Basically, how would you feel if a bad guy used your site or resources for something and then people were calling him "the Jeremy Killer"? The deal is that the guy probably used the phone and they're not referring to him that way. The deal is that sometimes there are things I don't quite understand and it doesn't feel very good. But mostly, oh, my sadness is about the victims and the families of the victims, because those are the folks that suffer most. I feel badly for them, and again, I feel badly that our name was linked to this.

JA: From a branding standpoint, have you done anything to distance yourselves or your name from it?

CN: We've just spoken a lot to the press accurately and honestly. We do so in a restrained manner because, again, we want to be careful about ongoing investigations.

JA: Do you have any recommendations, after your experience with the Craigslist Killer debacle, for anybody that operates a site with user-generated content, in terms of getting blamed for the type of content that their users post on their site?

CN: I just don't know.

JA: Do you have any recommendations, after your experience with the Craigslist Killer debacle, for anybody that operates a site with user-generated content, in terms of getting blamed for the type of content that their users post on their site?

CN: I just don't know.

JA: Some say, based on the amount of sex trafficking on your site, that you can be considered the biggest pimp on the planet. What are your thoughts about that?

CN: People say all sorts of things.

JA: What do you think about the selection of the Portuguese Water Dog?

CN: Well, I love dogs and I carry around dog treats, so anything works for me.

Jeremy Abelson is the cofounder of Samson's Barber. Follow Jeremy Abelson on Twitter.

Craig Newmark: I'm Not Planning To Close Craiglist's 'Erotic' Section

2009-04-25T08:55:30Z

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The founder of Craigslist does not plan to close the "erotic services" section of the Web site despite criticism that has intensified after a medical student was accused of killing a Boston masseuse who advertised there.

Craig Newmark contends his site already allows users to flag inappropriate material they believe should be removed.

Andrea Chalupa: Sexy Job of the Future: the Almighty Fact-Checker

2009-04-23T15:22:43Z

Monday night, Air America CEO Bennett Zier led a panel with two media bigwigs and polar opposites: Craig Newmark, the laid-back founder of Craigslist, a self-proclaimed nerd who launched CL, "without a plan," in San Francisco, and Michael Wolff, an officer in the sorority of New York media lust, columnist for Vanity Fair, and founder of news aggregate site, Newser.com. The talk was on the future of media and whether one day all of it (namely the news) will be free.

Out of all the talk and hyperbole dished by Wolff, on how newspapers will cease to exist in 18-months, one thing stood out: ode to the mighty fact-checker. Craig (I refuse to refer to him by his last name -- he gave us Craigslist!) said he would pay for fact-checkers, so yes, he would continue to pay for his news, as long as it's fact-checked. His answer resonates with this growing fear that, with newspapers slowly disappearing, we might have to, God forbid, rely on the blogosphere for information, and the strict standards of the fact-checking department will be gone.

This is obviously a frightening scenario. I have worked at a magazine and have seen the tenacity of fact-checkers first hand. Their paranoia and eye-for-detail drives them to confirm the slightest descriptions in a story -- was it really raining that day? Without them we'd have a lot more Jayson Blair's and Walter Duranty's, reporters who just make stuff up. (By the way, both of these men reported for the New York Times, so even the "paper of record" can let a bad egg get by).

It's sad to think that journalistic standards, and reliability, is slipping away as magazines and newspapers shut down. But this is creating a great Hollywood close-up for the humble fact-checker. With all the websites and blogs continuously sprouting up, promising you your news in pill-form, as Wolff's Newser does, there's a marketing opportunity to get one up on the competition: Oh yeah? We have fact-checkers!!! That, my friend, will be the marketing edge in the future of news.

Future news: Not only does some great new news site have pithy writers who put the big stories of the day into snark-filled context that represents the political side that you believe in, but it has fact-checkers: two recent college grads from Harvard, who did nothing but read big thick books all through college, checking stories to make sure the facts are in their purest form. It's not only genius marketing but material for the next Devil Wears Prada.

So move over, abused editorial assistants!

To read more, go to WalletPop

Craig Newmark: Setting the Record Straight Regarding Crime on Craigslist

2009-04-17T17:19:14Z

We're really horrified and saddened that our community services have been associated in any way with a crime of violence.

There appears to be a psycho on the loose around Boston.

We always help the cops out fast with the help they need from us, but they tell us not to comment on current investigations.

That is, we're effective at helping cops and DAs with the forensics they need to catch crooks. Downside is increased press coverage, creating wrong perceptions regarding craigslist, but we'll still do the right thing.

Craigslist gets around 50 million people using it per month; considering that, the crime rate we see is very low.

That's a testament to the trustworthiness of the vast majority of community members... and maybe most crooks realize how vulnerable they are using our site.

Hey, do me a favor, and pass this on.

Jason Notte: Ten Features that Are Dying with your Newspaper

2009-04-03T21:30:34Z

The giant meme-generator that calls itself Facebook spat out an application last week that was a guided tour of the newspaper industry's living museum.

The Worthless Gifts for Print News Veterans app allows writers and editors in various states of employment to send each other gifts that once mattered in the news industry: Newsprint, old clips, pica rulers, etc. Oh, how doomed newspeople love a good laugh.

The funniest part isn't that there are still people who know what a pica ruler (or a pica) is, but that many of these items were still in use in the not-so-distant past. Newspapers with dwindling circulations and ad revenues are still using computer systems that are the Australopithecus to Twitter tweets and blogging applications. They're just clearing out the last of the photo loupes and film dryers from old darkrooms and still printing out photo proofs for editors, whose children are e-mailing them jpegs from camp that took a fraction of the time to process. Yet those tools are just a symptom column inches-worth of obsolescence that continue to appear on newspaper pages across America -- like rust bubbling to the surface of a vehicle that's rotting away from its core.

When newspaper as we know it finally does breathe its last, here are some of the features it will take to the grave:

1. Parade Magazine: What, you didn't think that stream of Hummel figurine and Franklin Mint ad revenue would ever dry up? If the Turkey Sloppy Joe recipes and "I Love Being A Free Spirit" Joss Stone softball interviews weren't a sign of this publication's subterranean cultural cachet, its 10-days-late publication schedule that led to a hopeful interview with Benazir Bhutto being run more than a week after her assassination should have provided ample warning. As more newspapers die off, however, Parade's survival will be the least of paper-laden parent company Advance Publications' problems.

2. Obituaries: Primarily read by the one constituency with a shorter life expectancy than the publication it is reading, the obituary page is a newspaper's way of putting a face on its shrinking circulation numbers. It is written by an intern, a part-time writer/librarian/file clerk or the least valuable member of the full-time writing staff who loves nothing more than to misspell names of the deceased and mistakenly turn surviving children and grandchildren into incestuous married couples (as they did to my family -- twice). As with classified ads, newspapers often expect readers to pay for this privilege. As with classified ads, newspapers are a Craig Newmark away from another lost revenue stream.

3. The Family Circus: This comic is the "Not Me" of the newspaper industry. When everybody's pointing the finger and blaming each other for newspaper's demise, Bil Keane and his little round comic will be sneaking out the back door. The Family Circus and its ham-handed morality and desperate grasps at cultural relevance are an easy target, but it resonates with a larger group of people than you can imagine. Even Timothy Olyphant's drug dealer in the movie Go, who dreads the comic awaiting him at the bottom of the page "waiting to suck," admits he's "strangely drawn to it." Yet Keane is 86 years old, and the planned takeover of the strip by his son Jeff will do nothing more than make Family Circus another nepotistic funny pages tombstone amid Hagar the Horrible (Dik Browne to Chris Browne), B.C. (Johnny Hart to Perri Hart), Blondie (Chic Young to Dean Young) and several others. Like the newspaper itself, it's a creature comfort with value that won't be adequately articulated until it is gone.

4. Dear Abby: Speaking of nepotism, Jeanne Phillips' run as advice icon Abigail Van Buren seems destined to fall woefully short of that of her mother, Pauline. A newspaper fixture since 1956, Dear Abby set the template for nearly everything from Slate's Dear Prudence to Dan Savage. However, much of the radio, television and Internet content that followed achieved more than Abigail Van Buren could have dreamed possible. Perhaps this is why, when Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer (aka Ann Landers) passed away, her daughter Margo left her post at Dear Prudence and filled the void left by her mother with Dear Margo. She has her own brand and a Slate-driven Web savvy that Phillips lacks and seems poised for a life post-pulp. Dear Margo: How do I use HTML? Abby from Page 8 of the Lifestyle section.

5. Horse Racing Results: The same beast that birthed the grizzled, boozy newsman of lore also sired the mythic cigar-chomping, paper-clutching rail rider. Both have become endangered species, but only one has columns of scarcely legible agate typed dedicated to him. The curators of these exacta- and trifecta-crowded columns tend to share their readers' fervor for the ponies, but have twice as much riding on the races. As tracks close or become low-end casinos, the railbirds only lose their pasttime. For the agate man, the dual declines of both horse racing and his industry are heading to a photo finish.

6. Day-old Weather: This just never made any sense. Your local paper doesn't employ a meteorologist. Never has. If you're looking at it from a strictly local perspective, that walk out to your front stoop/step/foyer/lobby to get the paper should give you a pretty good idea what the weather's like for your morning activities. Failing that, use a window. By the time you get around to reading the paper, you've likely heard one of 20 "on the 1s" forecasts on your radio, checked Weather.com at work or had the weather forecast blared into your ear at the gate while waiting for your flight to know what the weather is going to be like. Yet newspapers hold onto this feature for dear life, fearing that some shut-in (who's well sheltered to begin with) will cancel their subscription if they don't take up valuable space that could be allocated to, oh, local news, investigative reporting, etc., with a map of sun shapes and sun/cloud mixes. Here's a fun game: Spot the difference between "Partly sunny" and "Partly cloudy" icons. There isn't one.

7. Lottery Numbers: You know who has the lottery results? The same corner bodega where you fritter away your paycheck every week trying to hit the Powerball. Funny how it always posts them the day after you lose, sometimes with the caveat that some other degenerate who buys his Camels in the same store actually took the jackpot and earned the store more money than you'll make this year? That's right, play your high school locker combinations again -- the town needs a new fire engine, junkie.

8. Pages of Movie Times: When the last newspaper goes online or closes its doors, the only things left in the press room will be a stench of decaying paper and stacks of old movie ads. As automakers and dealers stall and department stores stumble, movie advertisements are one of the only reliable revenue streams newspapers have left. Never mind that before nearly every film, there are commercials for Fandango, Moviefone or some other listings service that is accessible by phone or Internet for free. Or that movie downloads and other home viewing options are sapping away theaters' strength. As long as there's a paper to take quarter-page ads for grappler/thespian John Cena's epic 12 Rounds, there will be an unpaid intern entering its host theaters and showtimes by hand.

9. Editorial Cartoons: You know those witty, insightful, stinging illustrated summaries of current events that make their way onto the op-ed page? In 10 years, you may be in the minority. If newspaper's death knell is ringing, editorial cartoonists are pulling the rope. The head of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists said four years ago that the number of full-time editorial cartoonists in the U.S. had dropped from 200 to 80. For his part, cartoonist and AAEC president Ted Rall has been putting together nearly as many layoff updates as illustrations these days. Remember when censorship was an editorial cartoonist's biggest worry? Apparently, those were the good times.

10. Printed Television Listings: TV Guide ditched its guide format, is printed biweekly, has randomly dropped certain listings and is hemorrhaging money to the point that the operation was sold for $1. Most cable services have the TV Guide Channel or, if they've updated to this century, a guide system of their own. Does any of this stop newspapers from running TV listings? No. Why? Because people like to bitch. Sure, this does enrage some editors to the point of incoherent ranting, but even in the face of disappearing ads and editorial space, they'll give in. Why? Because they know they need the reader more than the reader needs them, and that they and their colleagues are the only things disappearing from newspapers faster than the 10 items listed here.

Mike Smith: 50 Most Fascinating People of 2008

2009-01-01T18:35:40Z

This year of 2008 has been amazing and fulfilling in my business, political and spiritual life.

I have had the great good fortune of volunteering all year on the Obama for President Campaign -- starting last year in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, Iowa through the final speech in Manassas, Virginia. I met Barack Obama in Iowa again after initially meeting at an Illinois Inaugural function when he was just a senator! I minored in African American Studies at Northwestern and studied apartheid. Never in my life did I think we'd have a Black man in the White House.

Working with Craig Newmark of craigslist changed my life. In terms of his approach to "doing well by doing good" and creating social responsibility ties (or as he claims, "giving people a break") -- I was inspired. I was able to meet people at Sunshine Foundation, Personal Democracy Forum, and press freedom groups. I hope to operate more like Craig in my dealings with people and organizations. Craig and I travelled all over the US as we worked on the Tech, Media and Telecomm group for Obama. One week over eight days, we did editorial boards in L.A., Columbus, Detroit and New York City. I met tech gurus like Julius Genachowski, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Mike Nelson at Georgetown, and other luminaries.

Seeing and hearing Bishop Desmond Tutu who called our times now a "Mandela Moment" was a spiritual inspiration. Other "God Moments" happened this year in the knowing of one's purpose at almost age 50. Another spiritual inspiration to me has been Eric Hodge, a management consultant at Huron.

I was also given the chance to work with Crispin, Porter + Bogusky ad agency, the hottest shop in the world. CP+B has just won agency of the year from Ad Age, Adweek and Marketing News, a hat trick. They also won advertising campaign of the year. Thanks to my friends in neuromarketing, I was able to interface with Nielsen and meet the top management team. This lead to introductions at the New York Times, Universal McCann, CP+B, Kraft, Coke, P&G, and other CPG companies. I was happy for the exposure to the brand managers and researchers.

Political World
Barack Obama
Howard Dean
Mark Warner
David Axelrod
Terry McAuliffe
Tim Kaine

Hollywood Activists
Anne Hathaway
Dana Delaney
Richard Schiff
Matthew Modine

Obama Campaign Directors
Samir Randolph, Iowa
Jen Pilat, Michigan
Jen Arnold, Traveling Press
Alec Ross, Tech, Media & Telecomm (TMT)
Bill Burton, Press Secretary

New Clients
Susan Fulton, Financial Planner and charitable giver to environmental causes
Alecia O'Brien, dna13 and twitter princess
Casey Golden, Small Acts charitable social network
Manoj Ramnani, DubMeNow
Bob Sommer and Waldo Tibbetts, New York Observer media group
Rebecca Sellers, Clear Orbit
Paul Helmick, StateNewsLines

Tech Gurus
Craig Newmark, craigslist
Brian O'Shaugnessy, Skype
Adam Kovacevich, Google
Reid Hoffman, Ellen Levy, LinkedIn
Ariana Huffington, Huffington Post (and editors of this column plus "Off the Bus" features)

International Dignataries
Jennifer Friedman at (Madeleine) Albright & Assoc.
Madame Sec. Albright

Editorial Boards
Bill Keller, and NY Times Ed Board
Jennifer 8 Lee, NY Times Tech Blogger
Jeffrey in research at NY Times
Len Downie, and Washington Post Ed Board
Kim Hart, Tech Business at Washington Post
LA Times Ed Board
Columbus Dispatch Ed Board
Adam Pasick, Reuters, (and my campaign video blog column "Inside the Tent")
Jim VandeHei, Politico
The Hill Ed Board

Crispin, Porter + Bogusky
Alex Bogusky
Chuck Porter
Ryan Skubic, account manager for our AFTV program
Jeff Benjamin, interactive guru

Nielsen
David Calhoun, CEO
Jon Mandell
Dr. AK Pradeep, CEO of NeuroFocus
Caroline Winnett, CMO of NeuroFocus

PR Execs
Arthur Yann, PRSA
Rose Gordon, PRWeek news ed and "yogi"
Doug and Susan Kohl, Sierra in SF

These are my "Top 50" most interesting people of 2008. I sent about 200 Christmas or Holiday Cards this year so that is roughly equivalent to how many folks I met in my network. All of them interesting for their own reasons. Happy New Year!

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Scrooge Nation: Can We Change?

2008-12-24T20:20:07Z

Every Christmas Americans indulge in their many book, stage, and screen versions of Dickens' Christmas Carol. Then the nation that sighs over the Cratchit family goes back to acting like Ebenezer Scrooge. But the economic crisis has shaken a middle-class veneer of prosperous self-satisfaction. Does that mean we can change?

There always hope -- but the statistics are staggering. The Every Child Matters Education Foundation lays out what they call the "Tiny Tim Effect" in their succinctly named "Homeland Insecurity" report: 13 million kids in poverty. (That's the worst poverty rate among 24 comparable countries.) Three million neglected and abused kids. Millions more without health coverage. 14 million latchkey kids.

Oh, and there's more: In the health care arena, where I spend a lot of my time, the figures are grim: Infant mortality rates for African American babies is 2.5 higher than those of whites. That's the worst infant mortality rate of any industrialized nation. And ~~18,000 people~~ -- wait, make that 22,000 people - die each year because they don't have health insurance. That's 60 deaths every day.

And we haven't even talked about health and poverty issues in other countries. We've allowed a level of suffering at home and abroad that should trouble our consciences every day.

But there are new impulses toward giving, and new ways to give. Some of them have been described here at The Huffington Post, including Craig Newmark's "Craigslist for giving" and the micro-giving technology described by John Borthwick and Ken Lerer. Jesse Kornbluth has some thoughts, too.

I "micro-gave" $2.00 with a few mouse clicks. The reason I don't make more contributions isn't selfishness: it's time and attention. I'm betting a lot of people feel the same way, making this a great way to contribute. If we can give more through mouse clicks, more of us will give. "Tweetsgiving" raised $10,000, and the Salvation Army's now raising money the same way. (all courtesy Beth Kanter)

Up in Canada a Vancouver Tweetup (an unplanned meeting announced on Twitter) helped clothe the homeless. On a less high-tech (but no less inventive) front, a Utah student "bought" 22,000 acres of wilderness land at a Bureau of Land Management oil and gas exploitation sale, disrupting the Bush Administration's plans for a last-minute fire sale.

These generous and inventive idealists have created real-life, real time miracles.

There is economic suffering in our world right now -- but a lot of it was already happening before the crisis. Nobody wants to make light of our present difficulties, but if they make us more sensitive to the needs of others -- and less materialistic -- there will be a silver lining. You won't need digital technology to give, but it can certainly help.

Private giving won't be enough to fix our problems, or the world's. We'll need policy changes at every level. But private giving can address part of the need, and it can raise our awareness of the depth of that need. It won't be easy, but it's worth trying. If technology allows people to give whenever it occurs to them, with the click of a button, that could enable a million more miracles to come.

Other Christmas posts:

Death of a Torture Victim
Cousin Jesus

RJ Eskow blogs when he can at:

A Night Light
The Sentinel Effect: Healthcare Blog

Read more Holiday Season commentary from HuffPost bloggers

Jesse Kornbluth: Ignore Your New Flat Screen. Put Down Your Wii. Use The Week After Christmas To Volunteer

2008-12-15T10:07:29Z

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and if you've got cash, you're teed up for a good one. In New York, elite stores that don't usually mark anything down until January slashed prices 70% right after Thanksgiving. Every online merchant I visit is offering free shipping. And my phone rings regularly with customer service reps on the line, all of them desperate to hear me say I'm happy.

I'm not. Ditto my wife. Ditto our friends.

That we have enough and others don't -- that many others don't -- casts a pall on the season. But we're parents of a young daughter who is clueless about derivatives and mortgages and lost jobs. So we front. We front beautifully; our daughter is counting the days.

My wife and I are counting different days.

We figure that Christmas Day will see men and women of good will stacked up at churches and shelters, feeding the disadvantaged and making sure that every kid gets a present.

It's December 26th we dread.

The week between Christmas and New Year's will see people who can afford it -- the people who run things -- on beaches and ski lifts. Staycationers will be hooking up their new bargain flat screens. Kids will burn the day playing Wii; college students will party the night away with friends.

If you're a winner, it's time off.

But if you're on the hurting end of this economy, where do you go for help -- or even for distraction from your troubles?

It wasn't so long ago that Barack Obama inspired a lot of comfortable but concerned people to leave their homes and ring doorbells in neighborhoods they'd never ordinarily dream of visiting. And America met America. It was an exciting time -- I think many people were inspired, not just by Obama, but by the possibility of bridging gaps of race and class.

Now I feel as if we're sitting back again, waiting for Obama to be inaugurated so he can fix it all.

Did "yes we can" really evaporate that quickly?

Has economic distress really driven us back behind locked doors?

I don't think so.

I suspect we're all waiting for someone to give us a signal.

Well, consider this: The week after Christmas doesn't have to be a dead week for the haves and a deader one for the have-nots.

We could get a jump on the Obama years. We could step up, help the least of these, help ourselves. We could make a statement that's so simple nobody can miss it: People matter.

In the media, all I hear is the chilly, cruel language of abstraction: property, jobs, liquidity, contracts. Meanwhile, small businesses and homeowners beg for crumbs from the rich man's table. And the families of millions of workers are just collateral damage in a war against unions. It's shameful, this pageant of politicians and pundits.

So it would be wonderful if a counter-message got sent during a week of service. And if it got big and loud, because the idea that people matter is more than a charity slogan, it's something fundamental. But for that to happen, this idea needs helpers.

It would be terrific if, say, Craig Newmark of Craigslist could point me to clearinghouses for local projects -- and my wish came true. Craig has presented really useful suggestions, right here on Huffington Post. .

I read a recent interview with Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, in which he talks about corporate responsibility and communities. And I thought: It would be fantastic if the 11,000 Starbucks stores across America could be gathering places for impromptu crews of caffeinated volunteers. Up for it, Howard?

And then there's the me-and-thee piece: What would we do?

The need is local; from here, I can't possibly know. Beyond Craig Newmark's links, I have every confidence that there are churches, agencies, online lists and neighborhood loudmouths to point you to people and projects that could use some help.

My thing is kids. School will be out, and, among other things, it means that lunch may not be happening. So I'll be looking to help out at a New York City program that offers sports or an outing --- and a meal.

Care about seniors? Homes for the elderly will surely be short-staffed during that holiday week. You could read. Write a letter. Or just listen.

Concerned about the suddenly jobless? If you cleaned out your closets, culled your kids' old toys, edited your bookshelves.....

The other day, our daughter and I dropped a carload of her outgrown books at a charity that serves homeless and poor kids. It felt good to do it. But not good enough. A little more service, though, and I might just feel okay about these holidays.

If you too are suffering from guilt, sadness or thwarted idealism, this remedy might work for you too.

[cross-posted from HeadButler.com]