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Umm, it took seven years for Craigslist to become "an overnight success". Newspapers knew about it--we did and I was working for a newspaper at the time--but they ignored it.

If every newspaper in America would have gone to a free + paid model they could have saved at least half of their revenue and craigslist would still only be in 7 cities. But they wouldn't embrace change a lost big.

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I don't think it's reasonable to expect any business to cut their revenues in half because they see something coming that might hurt their business more in the long term. Especially without any assurances that cutting revenues now will defeat the new threat. It's so easy to sit here now and say "oh the papers should have done x y and z", but even then you don't know if it would have worked. I remain unconvinced.

You sound like a newspaper publisher.

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