E-Media Tidbits

cartooncottage.com What's the fastest way to sell a puppy?

Does Craigslist win in community classifieds? Or does the local newspaper?

Tony Dodero, general manager of online operations for Times Community News, which publishes the Daily Pilot in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, Calif., made a point about Craigslist and his local newspaper in his Sept. 1 column

Dodero discussed his need to find "a well-meaning and loving family" to adopt a puppy he and his family were given as a gift. He advertised in two places: the Daily Pilot, of course, and on Craigslist.

What was the result?

He says he got eight e-mail results from his Craigslist posting before his phone rang once from his newspaper ad. He finally gave away the puppy to a family that found him through Craigslist. "But it had nothing to do with the advertising and everything to do with the notion of first come, first served." Ultimately, he got more phone calls from his newspaper ad than e-mails from Craigslist.

"While Craigslist and Google and EBay and Yahoo, et al., can all take major chunks out of mainstream big media, the local community news franchises may prove a little harder, if not impossible, to capsize," he says.

Maybe so. But isn't the point that the underpinning of community journalism, especially in local markets, is the advertising revenue that supports it? And if that advertising support is eaten away by new media -- venues which need not necessarily shoulder the costs of community journalism -- will there be a paycheck to support Dodero's column in a few years?

I sure hope so. But I'm not sure his column about Craigslist inspires that confidence.