Jim Buckmaster told weekly technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio that his business was not responsible for publishers' problems. He said a focus on money and profits is what is damaging the newspaper business. "I think it's exaggerated to say that Craigslist has had a devastating impact on classifieds revenue," Buckmaster said. "Newspapers as an industry are still twice as profitable as the average United States industry."

Newspapers had a pre-Internet monopoly on readers' attention that meant classified advertising became an integral part of business. Since the almost entirely free Craigslist became dominant across the United States, newspaper publishers say margins have plummeted.

"Journalism as practised at newspapers has been hurt by an excess of money over the years as you've seen newspapers bought and sold and consolidated into large chains run by corporate managers to maximise profit, and increasingly over decades have resorted to running wire stories, putting an ever-greater proportion of advertising into their newspapers and shying away from writing hard-hitting stories about corruption in high places," Buckmaster said. "The financial position of newspapers has not declined, it has more plateaued."

Craigslist is run on unique lines. Though it is a company and it does generate profits, the aim of Buckmaster and company founder Craig Newmark is explicitly not to earn money. "Our goal is to maximise utility for users, so we concentrate on doing what users ask us to do and little else. We do want to run a healthy business and we do have a healthy business, but beyond that, maximising profits and revenues has never been a primary goal. It's unfathomable to the financial community and Wall Street, it's antithetical to their whole world view, it's sacrilegious."

While almost all of the commercially minded dot com companies of the first Internet boom went bust having never made a profit, Craigslist has been profitable for seven years, Buckmaster said. It is in the top 10 English language Web sites by traffic, it serves six billion pages a month to 10 million users, yet it only employs 23 staff. The low costs are what have kept it in business.

"It was fairly ironic, 100 percent of dot coms were geared toward trying to achieve an IPO and make a lot of money, and 99 percent or more of those companies went bust without making a nickel," said Buckmaster. "Craigslist was never about money, and yet we were one of the very few that came through the bust and have done well year after year." http://www.out-law.com/page-7800; February 23, 2007