Steve Outing, of reinventingclassifieds.com, has posted an open letter to the folks at craigslist, essentially asking them to open their platform to newspapers.
Steve asks for the following:
Allow local newspapers to scrape Craigslist ads.
Allow consumers to place ads on Craigslist via newspaper websites.
Add links on Craigslist to newspaper website classified sections.
Add a news component to Craigslist.
None of these seem unreasonable, they even have the potential to make Craigslist some money.
Steve is not asking the world, and who knows, there might be some really money-making ideas here. The problem, as commentors have posted, is that newspapers are not setup to accept outside support. Therefore, even if Craigslist listens to Steve chances are that no one will care.
This just goes back to the main problem of the Newspaper industry – they need to stop behaving like corperations and more like the smart and nimble web 2.0 companies that they are striving to be.