Quotes from Craig Newmark

I'd like to build a way for people doing good work to connect, to learn from each other, protect each other, and then I want to get out of their way.

I am committed to doing customer service for Craigslist for the rest of my life. The exit strategy is death.

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.

What works on the net works for people in general. The net has very little to do with technology, what matters is how people use the technology.

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.

Finding a good cause is incredibly hard and time-consuming.

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.

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.

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.

Treat people like you want to be treated; live and let live; and also give the other person a break now and then.

I want you to know, at this very moment, I am simulating normal human behavior.

Milestones aren't what I think about much.

In business, there are times when you disagree, and sometimes it turns out that you're just plain wrong. Humor takes away tension and helps you realize you're wrong.

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.

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.

I feel that one of the best things a person can do for another is to create a job. So you do OK commercially, and then you try to make a difference of some sort.

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.

Death is my exit strategy. I'll be doing significant customer service only as long as I live.