Peter Zollman reports on a local editor who did a little comparison between craigslist and his own paper when it came to giving away puppies.

In selling our house, the response from craiglist in Bakersfield has not been impressive. The post generated one e-mail: from a real estate agent wanting my listing. There have been no phone calls, and about two dozen referrer links. Most of the traffic to the Web page has come from links from other bloggers and search engine optimization. I haven’t tried the newspaper yet.

Zollman says:

But isn’t the point that the underpinning of community journalism, especially in local markets, is the advertising revenue that supports it? And if that advertising support is eaten away by new media — venues which need not necessarily shoulder the costs of community journalism — will there be a paycheck to support Dodero’s column in a few years?

But is craigslist really cutting revenue from community journalism sites? Most of what craigslist, and some other new media sites, have done is create new markets. The bigger threat newspapers are facing, I think, is just the general erosion of interest in the printed product. It’s not all craigslist.