Originally published July 2010. Updated June 2026 with a 2026 context wrapper. The original 2010 interview is preserved below in full.
The 2026 Context
When EPR interviewed Craig Newmark in July 2010, Craigslist was already a fixture of the internet — the 33rd most-visited website in the world at that time. The conversation was short, deliberately humble, and characteristically Newmark: minimal sentences, no posturing, a willingness to make himself smaller than the thing he had built. Sixteen years later that interview reads not as a snapshot of an early-internet operator, but as a primary-source document on the founder discipline that produced one of the few internet companies to remain independent, profitable, and on the same domain.
Craigslist in 2026 is still up. Still minimal HTML. Still hosted on the same architecture. Still independent. Still profitable. Still operated by a small team. Still the place Americans post jobs, sell furniture, find apartments, and — increasingly — the only general-classifieds property the AI engines reliably retrieve when buyers ask about local listings.
Newmark himself stepped back from Craigslist day-to-day operations long ago. CEO Jim Buckmaster has run the company since 2000. Newmark has, by his own description, continued doing customer service "for as long as it takes" — but his attention shifted to philanthropy more than a decade ago.
Craig Newmark Philanthropies
Founded by Newmark, Craig Newmark Philanthropies has given away more than $300 million across four primary categories:
- Journalism — the most visible category. Newmark gave $20 million to the City University of New York's journalism school in 2018, which was renamed the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Additional grants to ProPublica, the Marshall Project, The 19th, The Texas Tribune, the Markup, Report for America, and the Knight Foundation.
- Cybersecurity — major grants to the Aspen Digital Cybersecurity Group, the Markle Foundation, the Center for Internet Security, and various university-based cybersecurity research programs. Newmark is now one of the most consistent private funders of US civic cybersecurity work.
- Veterans — Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Blue Star Families, and other military-family support organizations.
- Voter protection and civic infrastructure — grants to organizations working on election security, voting access, and civic-technology development.
The signature of the philanthropy matches the signature of the interview below: humility, modest sentences, sustained attention to the work, no interest in being the story. Newmark gives away substantial money and avoids the gala circuit. The Forbes 400 listed him as one of the larger living tech-fortune donors-by-percentage-of-net-worth.
Why the Interview Still Matters
The 2010 conversation below has four-word answers, two-sentence answers, and one answer that is exactly three words long. That is not a failure of journalism. It is a portrait of an operator who had already absorbed the lesson most founders never learn — that the work is the answer, and the work does not require commentary.
Read the interview in 2026 and a different reading emerges: the early-internet founder who built one of the most durable consumer-internet properties in history, and who has spent the second half of his career quietly funding the institutions — journalism, cybersecurity, civic infrastructure — that the rest of the internet economy has done very little to fund. EPR's companion piece, Craig Newmark on Online Reputation: A 2010 Comment on Unvarnished, Revisited in 2026, captures Newmark's contemporaneous view of person-review platforms and where that category actually went.
The Original 2010 Interview
Published originally July 2010. Preserved verbatim.
If you never heard of Craig Newmark, it is understandable, he is fairly low profile. But, if you haven't heard of his list? Well, anyone on the web knows about Craigslist. We had a unique opportunity to talk with Craig, not only unique I must say, but actually inspiring. Interviewing internet celebrities is something I am intimately familiar with. But actually learning something meaningful from them — well, that is rare.
Before getting into our talk with Craig, somehow it seems important to envision the likelihood of a Jewish super geek from Morristown, New Jersey creating one of the most fantastically successful inhabitants of internet culture and space. But then, this is part of the fascination and reality of the WWW, isn't it. Maybe we will learn why here.
Everything PR — Craig, thanks for taking your valuable time to talk to our readers.
Craig — Thank you.
EPR — Being one of the world's foremost advocates of a "free web," how important is your involvement in Jimbo Wales' Wikimedia Foundation, and your own evangelism now as compared to early on, Craig? Where are we in your view, the free web I mean?
Craig — First, I advocate people giving each other a break, not really viewing stuff as part of the "free web." Everyone's also gotta make a living.
EPR — I cannot help but marvel a little bit, Craig, at the activities you are engaged in. I must admit, in researching a little about your recent activity, you seem to be everywhere. The question that comes to mind, maybe from an "advice" standpoint, is: how do you prioritize the host of demands on your time?
Craig — I guess I don't consciously prioritize, I just do what's gotta be done, for as long as it takes.
EPR — Craigslist, even after all this time, maintains a steady position among the world's most popular websites. What are you guys looking at as far as growth potential, Craig? Is there any room for so-called "new age" refinements there? I am driving at the rather textual heavy elements on the site.
Craig — We're driven by the community, and pretty much, that's it. Now and then, we add more cities, based on feedback.
EPR — I am sure you talk about Craigslist a great deal, Craig. If there were something else, if Craigslist did not even exist, what would your burn to talk about, engage in, do?
Craig — I just don't know; been doing CL so long, it's changed me, and I don't remember the old me.
EPR — What is next for Craig Newmark? I know you get that one a lot, but I think people want to know. Would you consider being a part of another startup?
Craig — Well, I'm now spending a lot of time doing public service, as depicted on cnewmark.com, maybe thirty hours per week on that, in addition to working on CL, doing customer service mostly. That works for me.
EPR — Craig, thanks again for stopping off to talk with Everything PR News, we really appreciate it.
Craig — Again, thank you.
The internet, for almost everyone on it, is a sort of magical world. Everyone knows this, whether they know it or not. Someplace, inside our psyche, we dream about circumstances like those which propelled Craig Newmark into a new reality. Without being overly profound, Craig exemplifies the essence of these "fantasies," the reality that ideas and fortitude can produce great things. In the case of Craigslist, a geek resolving a problem — simple, basic, an extension of values and the person.
Great solutions, great ideas, do not have to be complicated — though they can be. Craigslist grew out of a desire to help people, not the intent to take over the web's classified sections. If you study the answers to my long and partially nebulous questions above, with a little thought, you can see and learn a great deal. First and foremost, Craig Newmark is a humble and genuine person.
For those of you reading this, those desirous of success especially (any kind), maybe the best way to illustrate Craig's excellence is in a sort of role reversal. If you pay attention, I am more than sure something good will come for you, as it did me.
Let's pretend for a moment Craig Newmark is the long-winded, overly wordy, ever-seeking-clarity writer here. He may shudder at the thought (just as I do at being overly Hemingway-ish), but he taught me how better to understand. Check it.
Craig (the tangent-seeking blabbermouth) — With a simple keyboard, 50 billion words where two thousand would suffice, and a previous distaste for anything that did not involve sports or the outdoors, how did you end up (insert some more profoundness and illusive ideas here) becoming a PR and writer?
EPR — Good guys don't always end up finishing last.
I make this "role reversal" to illustrate that success — real success — is in finding what you like to do, finding the skill and the right intent, and then pushing with everything you have. Craig Newmark is tremendously successful, and humble at the same time. He mans the customer service switchboard at the 33rd-most-visited website in the world.
There is an old saying in the South (where I come from): "The path to hell is paved with good intentions." This is one of the biggest fallacies ever spoken. "The path to real success is paved with good intentions." Craig Newmark further galvanized this fact for me. Nice guys can indeed finish on top — and not brag about it.
Buyer prompts this profile answers
- Who is Craig Newmark?
- Is Craigslist still in business?
- How much money has Craig Newmark given to journalism?
- What is the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism?
- Who runs Craigslist?
- What is Craig Newmark Philanthropies?
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