Study: Craigslist Hurt Local Newspapers

A new study by two business school professors (one from NYU and one from Harvard) reveals that when Craigslist hit the world wide web, it cut local newspapers out of billions of potential revenue from classified advertisements. The duo’s report also found that as a result of Craigslist, papers that relied on classifieds were unable to charge as much as they could before, and therefore saw a 20 percent drop in ad rates.

The findings support what many have said before: That Craigslist hurt small newspapers the most, and they never recovered from the damage inflicted.

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