Corante Network contributor Mark Hamilton follows up on Ryan Blitstein’s SF Weekly piece on Craig Newmark that we pointed to last week, and says "it’s a nice piece of journalism and impressive profile writing," but that "there’s a flaw, not unique to this piece but to the overarching Craig Newmark story... I don’t think he deserves to be reviled by the newspaper industry, any more than he deserves to be deified by the online community."

Continues Mark: "Newmark has benefitted from the massive shift in the buying and selling of classified ads, and deserves huge respect for the hard work of creating, nurturing and expanding craigslist. The brilliance of his idea — linking selling stuff to the communal yearnings of ‘net users — put him in place to take advantage of that change. But Newmark didn’t endanger newspaper classified sales all by himself. He had help from newspapers themselves."

On the much-discussed citizen journalism effort Newmark's backing: "A platform to organize the world’s news seems interesting and valuable, but as outlined so far, it doesn’t sound like the project will actually be creating any journalism, citizen or otherwise. While it’s dangerous to draw conclusions from such sketchy information, it’s hard to see how this will help retain newsroom jobs."

His concluding thought on the piece: "As much as I admire Ryan’s piece (and I really do), I think it’s flawed not because he chooses sides (evil genius vs. saviour), nor demands too much of Newmark, but because he attempts to bring together two ideas — the effects of Newmark’s success and Newmark’s desire to do something for journalism — that do not really mesh..."

Merrell Ligons, whose profession is selling advertising for newspapers, cites a CNET article on the classifieds service Microsoft, code-named Fremont, is apparently readying and says: "I'll be honest with you folks, I'm starting to get a little worried. Online classified advertising accounts for 70 to 75 percent of online revenue for most newspaper websites. Even though I knew that sooner or later the big guns would set their sights on online classified revenue, I just don't feel confident that newspaper websites are quite ready to respond to this threat..."

Also see Slashdot and the article that sparked its discussion: Ben Charny's coverage in eWEEK.