We recently wanted to get rid of a Little Tikes desk complete with chair that my daughter used all of about 10 times. So, I went to Craigslist for Portland and placed the ad, complete with a couple of pictures. The post took me about 10 minutes including the taking and uploading of the pictures and I was done. That was about 2pm on Thursday last week. By 4:30pm, the same day (that’s about 2.5 hours for those of you in Rio Linda) the desk was gone and I had a $10 bill in my hand to replace it.

Craigslist rocks!

About a week before that, I found a sleeper sofa on Craigslist (actually, I found a dozen or so) and bought one at a great price.

About the same time, I needed an assistant for my Santa business to help out a couple days a week. I found her about 4 hours after placing a Craigslist ad for help. (The best employee I’ve had to date, bar none.)

A little before that, I needed someone to come and fix my sprinkler system. I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. I placed an ad on Craigslist. I had my sprinkler system working about 5 hours after I placed the ad, that same day.

I also recently used Craigslist to find some people to pass out my new linkpaper, door to door. I found 8 people in a matter of a few hours after posting it on Craigslist.

Message to newspapers… when a core part of your revenue stream (classified advertising) is holding on by a thread and ONLY because of the ignorance of your readers (they don’t know about Craigslist or are not web centric yet) you have a major problem. I mean a MAJOR problem.

Did I mention all that amazing advertising I used was FREE?

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. If you own stock in companies that depend on newspaper advertising in any way for their income, SELL, SELL, SELL, SELL, SELL!

The Arizona Republic recently reported on how Craigslist is kicking **s and not taking any names in the process.

I know some of you are following the news regarding my latest “linkpaper” project. Just wanted to let you know I’ve updated the blog that relates to that project over at Blog County News.

I read DailyKos along with a few other liberal blogs to try to understand the “other side.” I typically come away more confused about the other side after reading the left leaning blogs because of their innate distrust and hatred for anything that puts America in a good light. They leave no room for “benefit of the doubt” or anything. (I’m generalizing, but in general, it’s true.)

I’ve NEVER agreed with any post that I’ve ever read on DailyKos. Never. Not once.

Until today.

Here is the post that I agree with Markos on.

It totally disgusts me as well. Military service should be something ALL walks of life in the US should seriously consider as a duty. It should not be looked upon as a crutch for the economically challenged. I know for me, it was a calling. Something that I was very proud of.

Case in point. Dr. Laura’s son, Deryk. Here is a young man from an extremely well to do family. He had every opportunity in the world to do whatever he wanted with his life. He chose military service straight out of high school. Not only military service, but special forces training in the US Army. You know… those guys that get killed alot during conflict.

Now that I think about this… the liberal blogosphere is very keen on deriding conservatives for their “not wanting to send their own sons and daughters into war” but yet when there are high profile cases such as Dr. Laura’s son, they are absolutely silent on the issue.

I’ve been alluding to this project in several of my previous posts. I’m officially unveiling it to my blog readers here and now. Hopefully, there will be others that will pick up on it from here and post it on their own blogs… and the news will spread.

I’m getting a bit excited about this project. I’ve been working on it for a while now. In my never so humble opinion, I think I’m about to launch what will amount to a ripple in the pond of journalism that will change the way we are exposed to news offline.

It’s called the “Linkpaper” and as far as I know, I’ll be the first to launch such a news delivery medium. You can read more about it over at the blog that I’ve set up for it here.

In short, a Linkpaper is a newspaper of sorts, but only the first 250 or so words of the article/news item is printed. Kind of like a blog that’s set up to deliver the first 250 words (or whatever) when read via an RSS feed.

It assembles news items from across the internet, from any and all sources, including a heavy reliance on blog entries. It’ll be delivered to people’s door steps for free.

I know you will have many questions, and I’ve answered many of them on my new Blog County blog. So, be sure to visit there if you get a chance.

Here’s to trying to change the face of offline news delivery… cheers!

Our first issue will be printed and delivered on August 8th. Wish us luck!

Update: If you’re interested in being a local Blog County business center (meaning you print, distribute and sell advertising in your local area), shoot me an email to myself (at) dansherman.com. It’ll require about $1000 in start up capital (equipment and initial working capital.) That isn’t something that can be replaced… so please don’t ask if you can make it up in sweat equity. You gotta have the right equipment and some working funds to get going.