I’ve said before that it’s important to learn the teachings of Craigslist. Use the lessons to compete more effectively. Lesson No. 1 from Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster: Pace yourself. In a podcast with OUT-LAW, he says keep costs of doing business online low and the margins healthy, then grow slowly.

You don't have to be in a big rush as long as the trend is going in the right direction, and if you keep your costs low it gives you far more flexibility than you otherwise would have.

Newspapers used to be good at patience, with a reputation for slow, almost lumbering changes. But my concern is that the more modern corporate think of cost-cutting and profit maximizing is reincarnating itself as page view greed. It is possible to over-maximize profit per page view if it comes at the expense of users.

Consider what Buckmaster said happened to our print counterparts.

Newspapers as an industry are still twice as profitable as the average United States industry . . . Journalism as practiced at newspapers has been hurt by an excess of money over the years as you've seen newspapers bought and sold and consolidated into large chains run by corporate managers to maximize profit, and increasingly over decades have resorted to running wire stories, putting an ever-greater proportion of advertising into their newspapers and . . .

Etc. Etc. We know the list of cuts better than Buckmaster. Funny that one of our most prominent new competitors is lecturing us about what used to be our core mission. Newspapers, like Craigslist, exist first as a reader service.

With the recent surge of pressure to quickly move newspaper business online, don’t lose focus on the service we’re providing. To some extent, that’s what Rob Curley was saying a few days ago.

Growth isn’t a goal; it’s the effect of being a good service.