What a horrible headline. That makes it sound like US newspapers were somehow entitled to that $5 billion. In actual fact, the newspapers had the same opportunity as Craiglist to earn (or try to earn) that revenue, and they dropped the ball. Boo hoo, cry me a river.<p>It should, instead, read "failure to adapt to new technology and a changing environment results in $5 billion loss to US newspaper industry". Or something roughly like that.
Newspapers forfeit $5 billion badly needed dollars to Craigslist by totally failing to notice how bad they were at their jobs, and how technology has changed information delivery. Continue to insist upon sending patrons pounds of waste paper every month.
Cost per inch, classifieds were always a big rip-off. Worse? Obituaries. Now many papers charge a fee for print, plus a web fee. Adding insult to injury. Who's going to disrupt the obits?
First, the article is talking about data for 2000-2007 (so the title is a bit misleading). The prime collapse in the newspaper industry began after 2007.<p>Second, if you ran it to 2013 it would clearly be at least several times $5b based on the spectacular collapse of the classified industry.<p>Third, losing the lucrative classifieds business chopped the legs out from under newspapers, the net cost to them was much wider than just the raw classified business itself.<p>As others have noted, Craigslist has saved people and businesses at least as much as they've cost newspapers. The efficiency gain alone of Craigslist is likely to have produced a significant net gain for the US economy.
I wouldn't mind if newspapers went out of business. Hopefully most of the industry's jobs could move online. And it sure would save a lot of paper.