A love-hate relationship with Craigslist

IF YOU happened to be one of the nation's many print journalists recently "reorganized" into unemployment by the online competition, chances are you've tossed out your "old media" objectivity and replaced it with an uncontrollable urge to hurl revenge-seeking eggs at someone's front door.

But whose door? And would they even notice? Do bloggers even go outside?

Well, you might want to buy a carton of Grade A's while you've still got a dollar or two and write the name "Craig Newmark" all over them.

As the founder of Craigslist, a free online classified ads service, his front door is as good a target as any to vent your woes.

OK, don't really do that. I would never encourage vandalism, though I have to admit watching a typical journalist try to throw anything any distance would be pretty funny.

Craigslist users hawk everything from Hyundai Sonatas to sensual massages across more than 450 cities. The site reportedly gets 5 billion views a month and hosts more listings than all U.S. newspapers combined.

Though owning a newspaper is still a license to print money, you can see how something like Craigslist would fade the green ink on the presses just a tad.

Craigslist's instant publishing and its potential for immediate callbacks, combined with its centralized URL that works no matter where you live, are features that make it almost unbeatable.

The site is actually a community that is almost always online, searching, waiting, reacting.

In fact, if I were really lonely, I could probably put up an ad saying, "Hi, I'm Justin Timberlake, and I'm on a six-hour layover, killing time at the airport bar. Wondering if anyone wants to hang out. I'll be the skinny guy with stubble on his face holding a box of duty-free peanut brittle and four Grammies."

You can bet I'd get company within the hour -- instantaneously disenchanted company, and maybe a camera crew from NBC's "To Catch a Predator" series, but company nonetheless.

The point is, with Craigslist you get results.

And like the Coca-Cola worker caught drinking a Pepsi while on break, I found myself guilty of feeding the hand that bites me. I used Craigslist as my weapon of choice last week in the cutthroat apartment-rental game.

The ad was posted at 12:12 p.m. last Tuesday. I saw it at 2:15 p.m. I called my wife. She was first on the scene to fill out an application at 2:42 p.m. Though a pack of also-rans were only minutes behind, we won the mixed-pairs house-hunting relay gold medal (I understand this will be an actual event at the 2012 Olympics).

As a lifelong newspaperman, do I feel guilty? Of course. But last week Craigslist had 47 local listings in my narrow range that took 10 seconds to find; local newspaper online sites and print editions had less than a dozen (as far as I could tell) that took more than 10 minutes to find.

My new abode was never even advertised in print (probably because we snatched it up so fast ... oops, sorry ... again).

Maybe it's best if I stay out of the newsroom and work from home for a while. At least now I'll have the room -- as long as I can keep paying the rent.

Curt Brandao is the Star-Bulletin's production editor. Reach him at cbrandao@starbulletin.com. See also: www.digitalslob.com