Last week's winner, Bay Guardian: Craigslist is destroying the fabric of America. We love this new news shorts column: Daly! Mocking Jordana Thigpen. Tim Goodman the TV critic was on Nancy Grace the other day? About the murder rate? Was this an interview about Nash Bridges? British grocery stores. Cover article: indie boy and Mission resident Kelley Stoltz. Rilo Kiley overhype begins. Hey Trimethldioxypurist, check out this article on the French-press Starbucks challenge! Indiefest! Color a Curious George to win a family four-pack to see the movie. And SFist Eve's horoscope: recognize your own inner strength and don't be distractible (hey! look over there!)
The SF Weekly: Cover article: Rilo Kiley overhype! Matt Smith on the central subway plan. PUNI suggests a "Folsom St. Prison Fair." Ha! In what was clearly going to be the cover article until the Rilo Kiley overhype began, an SF group producing radio shows for Nepal. Hey, the guy who produces the Daily Show is coming to town. Ced on Meredith (you're lucky he was busy on Wednesday, Mer.!). ...and oh no! Music columnist OK Then is leaving the Weekly too! What in the Tom Walsh is going on over there?
After the jump: the East Bay Express and the Metro.
The East Bay Express: "Happy Birthday Culo" -- ha! (you may need to click on the picture a few times; we still can't figure out these new New Times websites.) Asian speed dating, where the author runs into someone from her high school class. Cover article: photographer Todd Hido. Special bonus: pictures of naked ladies [NSFW, but if you get caught, you can be all like, "it's arty!"] The Oakland Magic Club is meeting, which is the oldest continuing magicians' club west of the Mississippi. It's so Carter Beats The Devil! (Where do you think the oldest continuing magicians' club east of the Mississippi is?) Haggis. Rob Harvilla calls that band the Editors "assclowns." A review of the KRS-One show. Did you know KRS is short for Krishna?
And the Metro: Since we couldn't get a hard copy, we're reading the version online. See how much we care, San Jose? We're like Live 105 -- reaching out! (We can't wait to see the comments we get for this!) The Fly reports that Howard Dean was hanging out with the Santa Clara assessor-recorder last week, and the San Jose State bookstore had a guy selling cheaper textbooks outside the store arrested. Any more news on that missing SJSU weather professor? We're totally obsessed! Cover story: The Intra-Hindu fight about their religion's depiction in school textbooks. More misery in New Orleans. Vegan proselytism. And it's Cinequest time next month!
Weekly of the week: Two weeks in a row! It's the Guardian! San Francisco's oldest alternative newspaper, let's see if we can make it a three-peat next week! (The article about the debate about teaching about Hinduism in the South Bay is really interesting too, though we're not particularly fond of the title "No Direction Om.")
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Good thing the Guardian's new ugly-as-sin design hasn't hurt its quality in the process.
Wow, so both the Guardian and the weekly have run pieces attacking Craigslist and using all sorts of cute slurs (love how Craigslist is "stealing" ads -what does Craig have hired thugs who break into the Guardian and rip the ads outta the reps' hands?)
Too bad both papers don't realize a central fact - Craigslist does something people want and need, for virtually free. It is simply not productive for me to spend money on the Guardian or the Weekly for ads that don't get responses and don't have the reach of Craigslist.
If the Guardian wants to complain about CL, fine. And if they wanna complain about the New Times chain, fine. But here's a hint, Guardianistas - instead of sitting around and whining and complaining about how the world is just so mean, why not try, oh I dunno, CREATE A PAPER WITH SOME COMPELLING CONTENT THAT WOULD MAKE ME WANT TO READ IT like they did once upon a time.
As it stands there is absolutely nothing in the locally produced and owned Guardian that I can't get either online or somewhere else. For a paper that is taking hits on all sides, it sure seems strange that in this time of peril they've spent most of their time reinventing mediocrity.
And that redesign? Please. However much they paid, it was too much!
The redesign is a cost cutting measure, they are bitter about craigslist taking their ads. And Redmond's point about CL being akin to walmart is ridiculous. Yes, CL creates community: it might be foreign coming into Burlington, VT, but it does not take anything OUT of Burlington. No money goes from Burlington to SF. What happens in Burlington stays in Burlington. CL only charges for ads in selected markets. That column was pure crap. The weeklies don't react well to CL. Why don't they take their aim at sanfrancisco.citysearch.com which charges for ads from local business?
Hey, hey now -- you're not gonna get a weekly screed about PG&E from CL...
Redmond is a smart guy, so I'm going to assume that he's not missing the point, he's just ignoring it: CL builds and reinforces community, and it, like most other free services (like the Guardian) is supported by paid advertising. It's not a news source, and it doesn't purport to be. Money doesn't have to flow back into a city for the city to profit from CL's presence. Now with Wal-Mart or Starbucks, that's a different story entirely.
Full disclosure: I met my wife on CL, so I'm predisposed to being sympathetic to the site. We're also in the doc 24 Hours on Craigslist.
I also hear where the Redmond and the other weeklies are coming from: advertising dollars are scarce, and they need them to survive. But it seems to me that their main advertising -- nightclubs, movies, and escorts -- isn't hurt by CL's presence. Furthermore, the weeklies could more aggressively court advertisers who don't buy anywhere, such as small theaters. Display ads are simply too expensive for little advertisers, but we'd do it if it were more affordable. Papers like the Express, however, just aren't that interested. And believe me, I've tried.
My advice to the weeklies: stop whining and find innovative ways to court new advertisers who wouldn't be appropriate for CL.
Cheshire: of course escorts advertise on CL.
http://www.craigslist.org/cgi-bin/personals.cgi?category=ers&SID=
And nightclubs and movies also advertise on other places, mostly the internet: google targeted ads, google local, citysearch, sfist-like sites, etc. Same with the restaurant ads, another big advertiser. Since their advertising budget is a fixed share of their budget, what goes there does not go to the weeklies.
The only way for the guardian to survive would be to use their notoriety thanks to the print business to drive traffic to their site: offer services like CL for free there, etc. You are right to say that bitching won't get them anywhere though. There should have been a quality blog on the front page of the guardian for more than a year, like slate or washington monthly are doing, get the traffic up there. But they sit on their hands.
Off the Craigslist topic, as it's been pretty well worked, but Rilo Kiley overhype ain't just beginning. The Rilo Kiley woman's face has been here, there, and everywhere between Spin and the beauty magazines for the past month. Crap - Jane did a whole page on Jenny Lewis' snowglobe collection. A whole page on a frickin' snowglobe collection. You know you are overhyped when ...
Don't forget the one stab the Guardian took at "blogging" was a bad rehash of Tim Redmond's column or random postings, including a suggestion that the US Gov't negotiate with Al Qaeda.
Since then it's clear the Guardian's grasp of the online world is rather limited - SFBG.com's site design is circa 1998....as for compelling content...hmm.
When does Craig start his citizen journalist initiative?
Oopsy -- didn't catch those ads on CL. Um, like I said, I'm married.
Hey... the link to the Guardian's story on the "Starbucks French Press Challenge" is wrong... it goes to a caesar salad story instead :(
Also... I totally agree with Mr. Smith that the Central Subway is a big waste of money which could be much more wisely spent on other public transport projects (hello... Geary light rail makes 10000% more sense than a duplicative, short subway to chinatown.
Caesar salad's all right too! Thanks for pointing out the link -- fixed in the text, and you can read the Starbucks Challenge article here.
Craig Newmark! Won't you think of the children?
Tim Redmond may be a smart guy, but amazingly, I think he's missed the boat here on what makes CL and online media attractive: to the average reader, they DO in fact create a sense of community. And community, by its very definition, involves various individuals and entities coming together and merging, digressing, reconfiguring, etc. Those who read and participate on CL can actually respond or correct or amend an advertisement. But the newspaper medium, by contrast, is permanent and intransigent. It is slower to react both in terms of news and in terms of advertisements.
Jack Shafer had a pretty good column on media transformation over the past 30 years that I think might apply to advertising too:
http://www.slate.com/id/2134918/?nav=fix
There’s a great video with KRS-One on SF Iam. KRS-ONE is one of the pioneers in rap, and hip-hop, back in the day with it was called “the jam.” KRS-One tells it like it is to a group of students at the Academy of Art in San Francisco.
KRS has got a great philosophy on school and life. You can check out the vid here:
http://www.sanfranciscoiam.com/videos/dcf9d7860fc4