During a recent speaking engagement caught on video, Craig Newmark shared his reasons for financially supporting efforts such as Daylife, which has nothing to do with classifieds and more to do with news. The Craigslist founder says his donations are, “so small they don’t matter.” But I have a feeling they’re worth mentioning.

Newmark shows an affinity for hard-nosed journalism:

(Newspaper chains) are cutting back on stuff like investigative journalism because that's very expensive and they think people don't care about it. Cause, as you've seen, the whole nature of news media is changing, and newspapers are becoming less and less popular. People are getting their news from alternative sources.

Newmark offers kudos to a short list of alternatives: HuffingtonPost.com, Gawker Media and Dan Gilmore’s Center for Citizen Media.

Newmark praised citizen journalists for not being afraid to “speak truth to power,” something he chastised the White House press corps for failing to do during the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Still, he said citizen media has its foibles. Namely, the facts. Newmark is a fan of big media for its stringent dedication to professionally fact-checking before publishing.

Newmark clarifies that he does, “actually support mainstream media in a lot of ways.”

Thanks goes to a reader of this blog for tipping us off to the video.