There's no genius behind it. It's persistence and listening to people. Craig Newmark More Quotes by Craig Newmark More Quotes From Craig Newmark Finding a good cause is incredibly hard and time-consuming. Craig Newmark consumingfindingscauses We don't think of ourselves as do-gooders or altruists. It's just that somehow we're trying our best to be run with some sense of moral compass even in a business environment that is growing. Craig Newmark runningtryingthinking I look at what the phone company does and do the opposite. Craig Newmark phonesoppositesdoe I had one simple idea about telling friends about arts and technology events. People in the community suggested everything else to us, and that's our theme. We're really run by the people who use the site. We just run the infrastructure, and help out with problems. Craig Newmark runningfriendshipart We don't have much in the way of a business strategy. Like no business plan. Which I say to torment all my friends who are VCs or MBAs. That's always entertaining. The deal is, it's a mixture of luck and persistence. Craig Newmark persistencembaluck People everywhere have the same needs and values. They need a place to live and a job. Beyond that, they may need to sell stuff or get a mate. Craig Newmark jobspeopleneeds From the very beginning, I was involved in talking to people, listening to people. And it hasn't stopped. The idea was that people send me information; I'd ask them about it, listen, try to do something about it - and then ask for more feedback. Craig Newmark talkingpeopleideas My understanding from talking to a lot of people in the business has been that it used to be that a newspaper was considered a community service. Now they're being run as profit centers, and they're trying to get pretty high profit margins. As a result, investigative reporting has been seen as a problem. Craig Newmark runningtalkingpeople A lot of publishers have close relationships with people in power. So the press, which used to speak truth to power, doesn't. The big result of that has been the erosion of trust. Craig Newmark erosionspeakpeople The country is in some trouble, because the media, which is supposed to provide a check and balance on government, has decided to stop doing that as a collective entity. Craig Newmark mediagovernmentcountry I rely on Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It's an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading. Craig Newmark wirepoliticalreading I want you to know, at this very moment, I am simulating normal human behavior. Craig Newmark normalmomentswant I'm not in the news business and won't tell people how to do their job. I'd like to restore trust in the news business, though, and feel that restoring fact-checking will really help. News business realities mean that such fact-checking has to be practical, it has to be fast and cheap. Craig Newmark jobsmeanreality Milestones aren't what I think about much. Craig Newmark milestonethinking A lot of people, myself included, are excited about blogging and stuff like that, citizen journalism, but I do remind people that no matter how excited we are, there's no substitute for professional writing, no substitute for professional editing, and no substitute for professional fact-checking. Craig Newmark editingwritingpeople Okay, I'm not in the news business, and I'm not going to tell anyone how to do their job. However, it'd be good to have news reporting that I could trust again, and there's evidence that fact-checking is an idea whose time has come. Craig Newmark newsjobsideas My take on the whole dot-com bubble was that a lot of people who wanted to make a lot of money got too excited and hyped up the commercial aspects of the Internet prematurely. I think the vision of the Internet as a democratizing medium - as everyone's printing press - is real. We got distracted from that by the mass hallucinations of the bubble. Craig Newmark moneybusinessreal Right now, the biggest shared value that I can think of is that you should treat others the way you want to be treated, and just have some good sense about what matters to you. Craig Newmark treatvaluegoodyou I do think the biggest problem newspapers have is loss of trust, and I feel that's a result of failure to speak truth to power. Craig Newmark trustfailurepowertruth The problem is that with blogging, the model is publish first, maybe fact-check later. In newspapers, the model is you fact check first and then publish. But those models are merging. Craig Newmark factfirstyouproblem
