He once described his evolution through the characters in Simpsons in an interview- from being brilliant and reserved like Lisa to a handful like Bart to bemused like Homer and said at the start of this interview that now he finds himself being more and more like grandpa Simpson. But beneath that self deprecating sense of humor, Craig Newmark, the founder of Craig’s list is a very down to earth, super intelligent, “what you see is what you get” kinda guy.
In an exclusive interview, Craig Newmark says that Craig’s list stands for the success people can achieve when coming together to work as a community. Newmark also talks about his relationship with and opinion of President Obama, what social responsibility means to him, and more in our continuing series on social responsibility.
As children, we often learn from our parents and extended family about social responsibility. What were the early influences that affected the way you looked at charity and being socially responsible?
I honestly don’t remember all of my childhood. I do remember going to a religious school and I guess something sunk in like the idea that you wanna treat people like you wannna be treated, give the other person a break and live and let live. I don’t think there is anything noble or altruistic about that. It just seems pretty basic.
I’ve never really thought that much about charity in the usual sense. I figured that I’m just operating on the basis of what feels right and what the internet is good and effective at doing. What internet allows people to do is to get together in large numbers and work together to make things happen and hence my work with Kiva (Kiva.org), Donorschoose (Donorschoose.org) or for that matter Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
The culture of working together has become the reason for Craig’s list being such a success.
Just the way we run the company sends a message. And the message we send is that our business model is more or less doing well for the company by doing something good; and then we follow through visibly on our values like treating people like we want to be treated. That seems to really matter to people. Beyond that, without even thinking about it, we encourage a culture of participation where everyone helps each other out on the website and people help us run the site by policing the website, flagging the bad stuff and help getting rid of it. All these are ways people help each other out- it works.
But there have been opinions about the “erotic pleasures,” section. People have had mixed opinions with issues of human trafficking raising their head. Some people say that they found love and friendship through that section, and if it wasn’t on Craig’s list it would be somewhere else. The fact that the earnings from that section go to charity was appreciated, but then there were others who said why keep that section at all.
This is an area where we as a company and I need help, so we speak to people who really notice stuff-the National Center for Missing and Exploited children. We speak to cops, we speak to Attorney Generals across the country and they tell us that material is going to be on our site anyway-they like the idea where we have a distinct section where people who have legitimate services can live their lives plus the bad stuff will be concentrated-that’s what they tell us. Meanwhile we are working with the cops and NECMEC to figure out what’s the right way to do this-hence our recent actions which have been very successful. There’s more to go on. I can’t talk about any of that but the deal is that what we do is, we take the lead of the law enforcement; we do what they tell us is right, and its working, but we need to do more.
Corporate social responsibility has become a big buzz word. What does it mean to you and how do you choose the initiatives you support. Being in the limelight must mean a lot of requests from everywhere.
I can’t speak for anyone else. Our take is that instead of using the phrase or talking too much about it, we just listen to our community, we do what they tell us is right, we spend sometime helping these efforts which seem to get stuff done. So we don’t talk about it-we just figure out what our values are and then we practice them inside and outside the company. Other people have to make decisions based on their own values. A good example of a company that really tries hard to do the right things in a lot of ways is Google.
I basically have two approaches. If something feels right in terms of my knowledge and interest then I’ll take it seriously and consider it. Then what I’ll do is find the people who know the area. I’ll get their advice and act on that. I have agreed to help out in two more areas. One has to do with microfinance to help Palestine businessmen. The other has to do with international effort to study how to counter radicalization because sometimes bad guys talk good people into bad things.
How easy is it to find like-minded people in a global, strife ridden world, especially in relation to something like One voice which you support, that focuses on bringing together moderate voices for resolving Israel-Palestinian issues? And then there is Corporate and entrepreneurial America where the issues of moral compromises happen all the time.
I’ve got personal encouragement from a lot of folks and people who are doing the big efforts like the US-Palestine partnerships. They have asked me to work with them to make something happen. We are talking now. I have a feeling a lot more will be happening in the future but so far they have asked me to be discreet about that.
I have a distorted view because I’m finding it very easy to find people. I don’t have anything emotionally invested in any partisan issues. I just want to get to the point and help people. In general I suspect it’s hard when someone is a stake holder in some effort and if they are competing with other stake holders-that’s tough. If I’m involved and I’m not a stake holder, I’ve had some success, cutting through the turf wars.
How has the role of the media evolved especially now that the internet has become such a powerful medium? It still seems to be more of a numbers game and less about what is socially responsible media.
As far as I can tell, often in journalism, they are more concerned about what might be newsworthy one day and as a result they refrain from asking tough questions and then following through on them. A democracy needs people to ask tough questions and then they need to follow through on that. Like-what was the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
Let’s talk about your relationship with President Barack Obama and the mutual admiration. You have been a strong supporter and I saw an interview where you said that you had learnt some things while running Craig’s list about how people get together and help each other and you imparted that knowledge to the campaign last year. I’m curious to know-what did you teach the President’s men?
First I should say there have been some very flattering articles which are greatly exaggerated-about the influence, I have on Obama. The deal is that he believes for real, about connecting with people of this country. His team is building ways of doing that in a big way and I’m marginally involved. Everything that may happen in the future is something I can’t talk about now. One idea is simple-he’s doing the real stuff, he’s for real and he’s following through and I want to help.
And finally, in your life what are the lessons that are important for you and ones you would like to pass on to the future generations as well as those wanting to do the kind of work needed to make this planet a better place?
It speaks for everyone to recognize some universally shared values like the notion that you want to treat people like you want to be treated, live and let live and give the other person a break and then figure out how it applies to government. We can all participate in that, we can all make it happen, working together. The only way we can do it in practice is through the internet because that is how we connect with each other in large numbers.
Kavita thanks Ashish N. Thakur for arranging this interview.