Philanthropisms
Philanthropisms is the podcast that puts philanthropy in context. Through conversations with expert guests and deep dives into topics, host Rhodri Davies explores giving throughout history, the key trends shaping generosity around the world today and what the future might hold for philanthropy. Contact: rhodri@whyphilanthropymatters.com.
Philanthropisms
Craig Newmark on philanthropy
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On this episode we are joined by Craig Newmark - founder of Craigslist, philanthropist and recent Giving Pledge signatory - to discuss his thoughts on the importance of philanthropy and how he approaches it. Including:
- What was it that particularly made him decide to sign the Giving Pledge last year, given that he has been doing philanthropy at a significant level for a long time now?
- Part of Craig's stated aim in signing the Giving Pledge is to “inspire really rich people to pony up some dough” – is this something he is planning on doing primarily by example, or in other ways too?
- Why were his Sunday School teachers and Leonard Cohen both important in shaping his thinking about giving and responsibility?
- Why is a desire to “defend the country” a key common thread in Craig's philanthropy, and what are the different ways that manifests?
- Can it be a challenge these days to be patriotic in a way that isn’t seen as partisan or nationalistic? Is it important to use philanthropy to model a ‘good’ version of patriotism?
- In his Giving Pledge letter Craig wrote that“My most effective approach to addressing a manageable number of needs is to build a network of networks of people who know how to get the job done on stuff I care about….I find the group, fund them, nudge them to work together, and get out of the way.” So how does he find the people who know how to get the job done, and what does it mean to “get out of the way?”
- Why has cybersecurity and fighting online scams become such a big area of focus?
- Are there other philanthropists or funders working in this area? Do we need more?
- What was it that originally drove Craig's interest in supporting journalism through his philanthropy? How has that evolved?
- Where did his interest in support for military veterans and their families come from?
- What is the most important lesson he has learned about philanthropy?
Further Resources
- Craig Newmark Philanthropies
- Craig and Eileen Newmarks' Giving Pledge letter
- Chronicle of Philanthropy, "Craigslist Founder Signs Giving Pledge and Narrows Focus"
- Nieman Lab, "Craig Newmark explains why he’s pulling back on funding journalism"
- Fortune, "Craigslist founder signs the Giving Pledge, and his fortune will go to military families, fighting cyberattacks—and a pigeon rescue"
- Inside Philanthropy, "Why Craig Newmark Is Concerned — and Hopeful — for American Democracy"
- WPM article "When Nobody Knows You’re a Dog: Tech, Civil Society, and the Fight for Authenticity"
- Philanthropisms podcast with Jonathan Heawood
Um listening to the listeners podcast with the Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, Rodri Davis, and I'm very excited this week to say that my guest is Craig Newmark. Now, Craig is the founder of the internet classified site Craigslist. He's also a well-known philanthropist. He founded Craig Newmark Philanthropies in 2015 and has been giving at a significant level for a number of years now. As you'll hear during the podcast, he also signed up to the Giving Pledge as of last year. So he's the first Giving Pledge signatory that we've had as a guest on the podcast, hopefully the first of many more to come. And I sat down with Craig very recently to have a conversation about the Giving Pledge, what it was that motivates his philanthropy, his approach that he takes to philanthropy, some of the areas that he's focused on over the last few years, and how he thinks about the importance of giving. So yeah, we talked about the giving pledge, why he decided to sign up last year, what his ambitions for that were, how much he thought about it as a way of encouraging other wealthy people to give. And we also talked about what it was that originally kind of led him to believe in the importance of giving as he was growing up and what had kind of shaped his thinking there. And we also talked about the way that he's talked, uh mentioned that sort of patriotism and a desire to defend the country are an important common thread between lots of his different areas of philanthropy and what that means in terms of those different areas. We talked about his approach to philanthropy and his idea that what he likes to do is to find people who are addressing needs effectively and know how to get the job done and to build networks of them and support them to carry on doing the work and what that means to him, how he finds those people, why he thinks it's so important for him as a philanthropist to get out of the way, and uh also how you go about building networks between people, whether that's something that happens automatically or whether it kind of takes additional work. Um we also talked about his particular interest in work around cybersecurity and fighting online scams, why that was important to him and what some of the kind of wider societal cost of that is. Um, one of the examples is the Take Nine initiative, which we talked a little bit about, and also about why this was such a fast-moving area, particularly with the impact of generative AI and what we need to do about that. Um, we also talked about his support for military families and for veterans and how that had come about and sort of how he goes about working with partner organizations in that area. Um we also talked about his funding for journalism, which has been a big part of his fact philanthropy over the years, why that had changed a little bit recently and what had kind of led to that, um, but why he still felt that there was an enormous need for uh factual information and means of kind of uh preserving that on the internet. Uh and then we also talked a little bit about his interest in uh pigeon rescue and how that fits into his wider philanthropy. So without further ado, let's go into the conversation. Um, I will be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping. Uh, but for now, here is the conversation with Craig. Okay, great. Well, I'm absolutely delighted to say that I'm here with Craig Newmark. Hi there, Craig.
SPEAKER_00Hey, I'm glad to be here.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it's absolutely great to have you on the podcast. Um, real pleasure. So, as people will know, well, they'll know anyway, but certainly from the intro that they've just listened to, um, you are a kind of well-known philanthropist. You were the original founder of the Craigslist um service, um, and you've been doing giving for a long time. So there's a huge amount that I'd really love to talk to you about today. I guess where I wanted to start was one of the things that caught my eye last year was the announcement that you had signed the the giving pledge. I was slightly surprised, only because I hadn't realized you hadn't up to that point. It sort of seemed like you were the kind of person who might have already done that. And I was really interested what it was that particularly made you decide to sign the giving pledge at that moment in time, given that you'd been doing philanthropy for such a long time anyway.
SPEAKER_00As a nerd, I'm a pretty literal guy, and the giving pledge uh its branding as something for billionaires to do. As it turns out, I've uh never been a billionaire. Maybe my investments over uh 10 or 20 years may uh well might have gotten me there. But my deal is that I decided I should sign the giving pledge one because I thought it was funny for me to do so, at least for me to do so. But also I wanted to uh make very public a commitment I had made to give away pretty much uh all my money. And sometimes you just want to put a stake in the ground for yourself and for the world with that kind of commitment. I thought I might also uh influence other people who have a lot of disposable cash that maybe they don't need uh everything. And I figured it also it just felt to be around the same time. I started giving away in earnest uh about ten years ago and about a few years ago I put all my uh Craigslist equity, my shares, into uh a US 501c4, which is a kind of foundation where you can just put everything in there, all the proceeds have to be given to charity. Um so that that was the right timing for me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. And and you said there, and you said before that um I think the quote you you said was one of your aims in signing the giving pledge was to inspire really rich people to pony up some dough, which uh it sounds terrible in a British accent, I'm aware, but I the sentiment I think is is is an important one. Is that something is your thinking really that you're just trying to do that by example and that you hope that other people will see what you're doing and follow suit? Or is it something that you also think about doing in in other ways? Is it something you kind of speak to other wealthy people about and try to encourage them to think about philanthropy as well?
SPEAKER_00I'm attempting uh, I guess, uh leadership by example. Um, I would like to be a uh top-down leader as we usually think about leadership, but that requires social skills, and I'm calling back to the uh to the nerd thing.
SPEAKER_02So, yeah, just do your own thing and hope that other people pick up on it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And you've sort of said, you know, there about obviously the reason for giving in the first place is not the giving pledge. That's just a kind of vehicle through which that you can can kind of amplify it more. You've talked a number of times that I've seen about what it is that kind of fundamentally drives your giving. And two things that struck me, you you mentioned quite a lot of times um a couple of your Sunday school teachers and also the musician Leonard Cohen, which I was really interested in. Maybe you could say a bit about what it was, about what you learned from from those two sources and how that shaped your thinking about give giving and philanthropy.
SPEAKER_00It's a long story, but the 11s in Sunday school, and they were Holocaust survivors, so they had a lot to say, they basically taught me that the uh in effect the Bible says uh no when enough is enough. And sometimes you need to be your brother's keeper, your sister's keeper. Uh I tend towards wanting to take that very literally, and I shouldn't, but it did mean that I should uh help out, I guess, to the extent my uh or my resources allow me to. Now, in the late 80s, Leonard Cohn started influencing me tremendously. Uh he's my rabbi, uh-huh, and he and his uh music tell me to look at another rabbi, uh Jesus of Nazareth, and he said something about uh giving away all my possessions and feeding the poor. Uh again, I don't know how literally to take that, but I decided that uh all this means is that I should give away a lot of what I don't really need, uh, the limits of which are subject only to the veto of uh Mrs. Newmark.
SPEAKER_02An important veto, I would imagine, yeah. Yes. Um and in terms of what you've ended up focusing on, as well as sort of where it's come from, one of the things that you've suggested is a common thread to all your philanthropy is is a desire to, I mean, you talked about defending the country and the importance of of that. What maybe you could say a bit about what that means to you and why it's so important as a as a kind of guiding principle for what you do?
SPEAKER_00I uh grew up in the 50s with uh World War II era parents. My dad fought in the Pacific, I think, behind a desk. My mom, to the best of my knowledge, learned bookkeeping so she could replace the company accountant who I guess uh picked up a rifle and uh went overseas. So uh from their point of view, patriotism was an expectation. But also I grew up in a town, uh, Morristown, New Jersey, where Washington and the Continental Army uh spent a couple of uh hard winters. And so reminders of patriotism were around me kind of all the time. My teeners were spent in a uh development right across the street from Washington's headquarters. So my environment and my appearance uh kind of uh uh helped me understand that patriotism was an exception. The Vietnam War was troubling in this regard, but nowadays I'm just following through with what I learned long ago and didn't think about much until relatively recently.
SPEAKER_02And and it's really interesting that you you mentioned there the idea of patriotism as a as a virtue. And it's clear that that's something that's really important to you. And I just wonder, do you do you think there is a challenge sometimes, particularly today, in trying to extol the virtue of patriotism without it being tipping over into being seen as sort of nationalism or getting dragged into partisanship? And and in the way that you talk about patriotism, is it important to you to model a version of that that is essentially the good version of being proud of your country?
SPEAKER_00You're completely right about that, and I'm uh working on that. So far, I've gotten no uh negative uh pushback, and I just have to keep uh plugging away for the uh people who defend the country, and also uh it helps to support efforts which fight scams and uh cybersecurity. I really do need to do more to support military families, not only in the US, but uh I have an affinity for the uh UK, and uh I do understand that UK military families and vets face some of the same challenges, perhaps the same challenges as in the US, and I need to do more about that, but I can't prematurely announce anything.
SPEAKER_02No, that's very interesting. I'm sure there's some people listening whose ears will have pricked up at that mention. And I'd say I'd love to talk more in a in a moment about some of the particular areas that you fund and you mention there support for veterans and also around cybersecurity. Um, I just wanted to ask a little bit about your approach to philanthropy, which I think is interesting. So, one of the things, again, I noticed in your giving pledge letter, you said, um, I'm just gonna quote this because I think it's useful. You said, my most effective approach to addressing a manageable number of needs is to build a network of networks of people who know how to get the job done on stuff I care about. I find the group, fund them, nudge them to work together, and get out of the way. Now, there's a lot in there, I think, to unpick. I'd be really interested in that bit about finding the people who know how to get the job done. How do you go about doing that? How do you find those people that you think know how to get the job done?
SPEAKER_00Well, I started off by recognizing that in philanthropy, I don't really know what I'm doing. I uh my limited skills uh horrify professional fundraisers, which is just as well. And well, that's ironic because I'll be uh talking to one at NYU uh in a couple of hours. Uh there about starting up a cybersecurity clinic. But the deal is that as I started to consider that I needed to do more about 10 years ago, uh people in different groups who were good at what they do started approaching me. I started getting educated in different issues. And as it turns out, among them were some people who were really good at uh at uh running nonprofits who were doing something that I believed in. And over time, they helped me locate other people who were good in the areas that I'm interested in. And I've we built uh networks that way of different organizations supporting nonprofits. And in some cases, uh these folks were good at building their own networks of either the people they need to support or other nonprofits who are good at the job. I am finding that it's uh unusual for a nonprofit to be really good at their job. For example, the Bob Woodrow Foundation people run a network called Got Your Six, which is uh nonprofits in the U.S. who support vets, they're running a network of about 400 of them, and that number is growing. Blue Star Families is running a network of uh chapter houses and out and outposts who support military families. In the U.S., the big problem is that military families get moved around the country a lot and outside as well. And when you're moved, the uh spouse needs to get a job very quickly, needs to find childcare very quickly. And those are very difficult because while you're tr looking for a job, you need childcare, but you can't afford childcare until you have a job.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolute sort of classic 22 there. Um, and and I wondered you you've made it sort of clear there that the importance of developing networks among the organizations that that you fund. And it sounds like sometimes that happens naturally or is already being done by the nonprofits. Are there also cases you've found where you you think it would be good for those networks to exist, but it needs a bit more work? And and do you as a funder then kind of do some of that yourself, or do you bring other people in to help you build those networks?
SPEAKER_00All of the above is true. The deal is that some people are good at network building, some need help with it, but close to everyone needs help with uh communications. People often need help articulating their mission, people need help getting the word out, and they need that help getting the word out on a continuous basis. I understand the need to do that, but I lack the skills to uh lead in those efforts, so we do get uh professional help. That's a big deal right there. I had to learn over years, over decades, the need to communicate uh far better, but I've also learned that uh I will always need help in these regards because being a uh truth teller requires skills that a nerd lacks. Particularly uh I had to learn that uh being a truth teller isn't uh isn't effective if you're confronted with someone who uh well who lies for a living. I'll never be a match for that. And getting uh help to deal with that is really, really difficult and requires professionals who are hard to find and very, very expensive.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's really interesting. And you've you've said a number of times I've been struck about you know things that you're not good at. I think you know you'd seem very uh kind of humble about those things and very sort of open about the things you can't do. In your view, then, as a nerd, you know, a self-procless uh professed nerd, what what would you view as the skills you do bring to your philanthropy? So what is it that you're bringing rather than just getting out of the way?
SPEAKER_00I uh I'm good at getting to the point. Uh I'm not uh tactful enough about expressing it, and I'll face that challenge uh in a couple of hours or so. I've already faced it uh a few times earlier this morning. And I have good technology skills, but those skills become less and less important as I face uh major challenges. For example, I've gotten good at identifying the biggest problem that uh AI uh chat systems have, AI and AI search, but I'm not good at articulating the problems in tactful and constructive ways.
SPEAKER_02Interesting. And I would love to come on to that, that in a second, because I want to talk more about your work, particularly around sort of cybersecurity. I guess just following on from what you've you've said there about uh about tact, uh one thing I wanted to ask you, because it's clear from a lot of things that you've written and said over the years that you you think it's important to have a sense of humor about things. Um, I wondered whether you think philanthropy is sometimes guilty of being too serious. You know, it it's it's often a world in which it's quite difficult. I I certainly find when you are somebody whose kind of natural response to things is, you know, self-deprecating remarks or a bit of humor. It doesn't always go over that well. Do you find when you're doing your philanthropy work that actually it can be sometimes a bit tricky to use humor in ways that are effective?
SPEAKER_00My sense of humor is very dry, very understated, and very absurd. And that's helped me deal with a lot of things uh on an emotional basis. It does help communicate more effectively normally, but I uh always do have to deal with folks who uh have no sense of humor and or who maybe uh, well, they don't understand me, and no matter what I uh do, I can't quite uh break through. Uh not everyone's sense of humor is the same, and that's I guess illustrated by the difference between Benny Hill and uh Monty Python. But the greatest challenge I've had in the UK is uh chatting with folks at the uh BBC who uh oh, as I uh talk with about my uh sense of uh appreciation for British TV and uh fiction, I uh couldn't quite make myself understood.
SPEAKER_02That's interesting. Um I'd I'd love to come on and ask you a bit about um your work around cybersecurity, because I know it's something that's really important. Um I'd just be interested to know why cybersecurity and particularly fighting online scams has become such a big area of focus for you. And and I'm really interested in how you view the kind of the wider costs for society, these issues, beyond the sort of individual harms that they do.
SPEAKER_00Regarding cybersecurity, that's part of my uh commitment to help protecting the country and helping protect their families and homes. Regarding fighting scams, that just felt like the right thing to do when I uh observed a problem at Craigslist, probably in the late 90s. And I figured if I was uh committed to what I was doing, even if it was just myself, I needed to follow through and to do what I can to uh seriously uh fight crime online. And I started getting educated, although very slowly, by uh talking to people committed to civil liberties and talking to uh cops. And I gradually learned more and did more, and then learned more and uh did more uh fairly successfully. The biggest problem we've uh had are people who tend to uh magnify the presence of crime both online and on the streets, because there are people who will magnify the problem to get attention uh as clickbait frequently, or sometimes to run scams. We have found that there are people who are nonprofit of people running nonprofits allegedly about fighting crime or supporting the victims of crime. Most are legitimate, some do a great job, and then there are folks who are just using uh the perception of crime to run scams.
SPEAKER_02That's really interesting. So pe people using and using sort of ostensible nonprofit structures as a way of having legitimacy to talk about these things, but actually the motivation is to perpetrate further kind of scams.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I'm referring to financial scams, although uh I've observed big problems with uh politicians who uh oh accentuate crime in order to get uh similar attention. In the US, crime has been going down for a long time and in fact uh started dropping precipitously uh sometime in uh 2023. There's some debate as to the uh what's happening there. I don't know. I uh don't know the situation of the UK, and my perception is distorted by reading too much crime fiction in the UK. For example, I'm I fear going to Oxford because, as far as I could tell, people are getting murdered all the time there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's it's similarly, there's a there's a famous TV program called Midsummer. Of murders here, which is set in a small rural village, but the joke is that actually if it had anything like the murder rate that it does on the television, it would be one of the crime hotspots of the country.
SPEAKER_00But I I understand that Inspector Morse has passed, and we're not certain if Inspector Lewis is up to the job.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. Uh I wanted to ask one of the particular things that you've been involved in launching within the sort of cybersecurity and fighting online scams in particular is an initiative called Take Nine. Just be interested to hear a bit more about how that came about, what the idea behind it is and who it's targeting in particular.
SPEAKER_00Well, the uh audience for the effort is everyone, and by that I mean everyone. The theme is that when you're approached online, sometimes you should take a little bit of time before responding, before considering what you might uh do about that. The uh problem is that scammers in particular rely often on a person feeling rushed to respond to something. And if you take a little bit of time and carefully look at what you're uh being approached about, that can help uh prevent problems. And so that's the theme of the uh of take nine speaking literally. Beyond that, it's about simple measures that regular people can take to uh stop scams before they can uh victimize you. And the same measures often are good for keeping yourself safe from other forms of crime online, um, things like strong authentication, multi-factor authentication, making sure you keep your systems updated. Those can go far in terms of uh protecting yourself. It's a really big deal for everyone every day. Uh once I fell for a scam, not a big one, because I've responded too quickly. More recently I've been approached for uh fake uh event or party invites, and I couldn't tell they were real, but I tested them a little bit, and when they were asking for my uh oh for my email uh login information, then I knew uh it was bad. Uh that's a new scam. It's been uh fairly uh broad, and I've told some people about it, and that's helped get the word out, but also that scam has disappeared from my point of view as quickly as it appeared. It could be because Gmail has gotten good at detecting it, or it could be that the scammers uh gave up on it because it was too obvious.
SPEAKER_02And and it seems to me one of the challenges in this area is is that it is so sort of fast evolving. And as you say, new scams pop up all the time and they're increasingly sophisticated. So it's definitely not the case that you have to be somebody who is clueless in any way about the internet to fall for these things these days. But I wondered also if if some of the emerging tools, particularly around things like generative AI, are having potentially even a bigger impact and whether that's an area that you're thinking about as well.
SPEAKER_00I'm thinking about uh, well, the threats of AI as well as the uh good things a lot, because one thing about uh AI is that it can be used to automate attacks in large numbers, and sometimes uh our adversaries can look for obvious things that people running a site have forgotten to do. For example, sometimes uh people leave uh default passwords for uh tools which are available directly on the net. Sometimes people forget to update systems, and that can usually be due to uh people who run things like water supplies or hospitals. Sometimes they don't have the staffing to protect themselves, or sometimes even professionals uh sometimes get careless. But previous to AI, a an adversary could uh try to uh try to penetrate one system, then another, then another, but that's relatively expensive in terms of time consumed. But if you uh use an AI tool to automate that, um they can launch, let's say, a hundred thousand attacks, and if they succeed one percent of the time, or even a tenth of a percent of the time, that's very cost effective. Another problem with uh generative AI is that they can be used to build fake identities on places like Facebook or LinkedIn, and those identities, those profiles can look very real. And so if uh an adversary uses a fake LinkedIn or Facebook profile to approach a potential victim, it may be very difficult for the person to uh notice that the profile may be fake. So those are some of the things I worry about. Also, uh for a long time uh search engine optimization has enabled uh people, good actors and bad actors, to inject uh well, misinformation into search. And as AI systems get trained, they're getting trained on the same misinformation, which means AI search will give you uh bad results, they may help you get scammed, or if they're propagating misinformation about someone, that could become a safety issue.
SPEAKER_02I'm interested, do you do you still feel like an outlier as a as a philanthropist in kind of working in these areas around things like cybersecurity? Or are there other funders doing this stuff as well? And would you like to see more of them given how important clearly you you feel these issues are?
SPEAKER_00Well, we need to uh find a uh a lot more uh donors, a lot more philanthropists uh everywhere. Uh the folks from Hewlett Foundation, the folks from Bloomberg Philanthropies are doing a good job, but we need uh more help. There is something called uh Common Good Cyber Fund, which is relatively new, and I'm helping out with that. So is the uh Canadian uh foreign office, so are the uh Whitehall Mandarins at the uh foreign office who are helping out and uh that's already uh getting results. For example, the common good folks are helping fund uh Shadow Server, which is a global effort, uh, with uh doing work in the US, UK, and Europe in general. And uh when I'm in London in early May, maybe I'll actually get to uh Whitehall and meet actual mandarins. I am working with people also in uh Oxford, but again, I uh I fear for my safety in Oxford.
SPEAKER_02I'm I'm sure you could arrange security to travel around safely, but um, it's a lovely place, Oxford. I I wanted to just move on and ask a bit about um we've we've talked about it a couple of times, about your support for veterans and for military families. And you said already that you you sort of the work you do there is primarily through two um partner organizations, the Bob Woodruff Foundation and Blue Star Families. When you started looking at this area, how did those partnerships come about? And and when did you know that you would be happy to to sort of almost outsource a lot of your work in this area to them? When did you feel kind of confident in that relationship?
SPEAKER_00It's a uh long story, but basically I started getting involved in uh support for vets more and more. It's been about 15 years, I'm g I'm guessing, starting with the Iraq and Afghanistan vets of America. And I met people at different meetings, different conferences. Sometimes people approached me because I'm pretty easy to find online. I guess I just started uh learning from them and then uh asking around more and more. And then from experience, I learned uh who I can rely on, who is good at communicating, who is good at making things happen. And about five years ago, I started being heavily committed to Blue Star Families and the Bob Woodrow Foundation. I saw that I could uh basically rely on them to all the work I uh wanted to happen for families and vets, and you know, with a big service focus on active service families. And that's why I'm uh I've committed publicly to funding each group for 25 million uh US over five years, but I've also committed overall to uh 200 million for uh vets and uh families. Um I want to be careful in that I've already caused too much confusion because I've committed a separate 200 million to fighting scams and cyber. Those are two different uh pots of money, but these groups uh have proven themselves over a period of years and things look pretty good. I do bug them and everyone else to be better and better at uh communicating and to be careful because when a good group gets a big enough profile, they will attract bad actors, and they need to be able to defend themselves in a number of ways, uh particularly uh reputational, because while they're growing from noticeable to being very big, they're uh vulnerable to uh reputational attacks, something I've uh learned the hard way.
SPEAKER_02Interesting. And and is this something you kind of counsel the nonprofits that you work on, given your experience? Because I I I guess it it is something, as you say, that does tend to inevitably happen at a certain point in in becoming well known.
SPEAKER_00I tell them how much they need to prepare to protect themselves, and I tell them about the nature of the uh threats, usually misinformation attacks, but I don't have any good ideas in terms of uh defense, and uh I uh work with people to try to build that kind of thing, and so far haven't thought of uh much else that's uh that's uh pretty good. The deal is that I'll be speaking about that in London on on May 6th with a panel of folks because the problem is again, truth tellers, since they rely on uh fact-checking and evidence, and that's hard to do, they're always vulnerable to people who want to attack who don't mind uh making up false information, and that's a big problem everywhere. And I don't have good ideas for defense, I just know that defense needs to happen.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, I suppose recognizing the problem and then engaging other people is is kind of an important first step. And uh yeah, really interesting that you're gonna be here in the UK talking about that.
SPEAKER_00I'm not good at it. Uh last week I posted something about my uh politics begging for help because I was pointing out that pretty much everything about me online about my politics is uh false, and I defined uh what I'm about and uh why. A lot of it has to do with uh uh Mr. and Mrs. Levin in Sunday school plus uh Leonard Cohen. And so I started pushing that. Uh basically I adhere to the philosophy of the uh founders of the U.S., adding Lincoln into that. The only term I can find that applies to me, uh which I really don't use, is that I'm an American system Whig, different than the British Whigs. But uh when I uh refer to that uh party, no one knows what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's the challenge, isn't it? If you do find a term that works but doesn't have common currency, that's uh yeah, you have to do so much more explaining. You mentioned there, I was just interested actually, you sort of talked about some of the challenges in the fact that um you know some of this is about kind of getting uh truthful information and fact-checking. And and one of the other things that you've been known for over the years is support in that field and around journalism as well. I was just interested in what it was that kind of drove your interest in that area. And I know you're still involved in supporting the City University of New York journalism program, and kind of what it is particularly about that program that that you kind of think is important and and you you find, you know, that keeps you uh funding that.
SPEAKER_00Well, my politics and my view on the press were pretty much uh formulated in a US uh high school around 1970. I uh was in a really good class for U.S. history and civics, and uh my way of articulating that is that I say a trustworthy press is the immune system of democracy. And to that end, we need uh journalism, which is all about uh getting the right information out there based on actual evidence and actual facts. I did support a number of organizations dedicated to that. Uh none of them proved to be uh very successful, and they were they were really good at understanding the problem, but really bad at defending themselves. The exceptions, well, there's the uh journalism school at the City University of New York. I think it was originally uh King's College, and the deal there is that they're very good at training uh trustworthy journalists. They're also really good at providing opportunity for people who may never get a chance, and they're very good at uh getting people placed in good journalism jobs. They have a very high placement rate. They're very good at helping people graduate with little or no student debt. So that's pretty good. Maybe more importantly, I'm supporting significantly the global organization which does the best job of providing a place for uh trustworthy information. That's Wikipedia. Uh, I'd like to say that Wikipedia is where facts go to live. They have evolved systems which can enlist large numbers of people to uh put up articles which are uh reasonably fact-checked, reasonably trustworthy. And when things go wrong, typically Wikipedia heals itself. More work needs to be done. But right now, uh Wikipedia does the best job of anywhere I know about getting things right and then fixing things when uh something goes wrong. A lot of newspapers do try to get things right the first time, but they're not good at uh fixing things that go wrong. They're not good at corrections.
SPEAKER_02Yes. And I know I noticed the Wikipedia pennants actually behind you as we're having this call. So I was going to ask about your support of Wikipedia and you you said you uh kind of why that is there. Just be as a follow-up, I'm really interested in if you feel that that model that Wikipedia has in particular is sort of powerful when it comes to uh combating misinformation and making sure there's sort of uh factually accurate information on the web. Is there work to be done in kind of getting that approach disseminated more widely across the information ecosystem so that it's not just contained within Wikipedia?
SPEAKER_00I think uh Wikipedia is broadly used already. For example, in Google search. The problem is uh Google, uh rather Wikipedia needs more and more uh editors. In Wikipedia parlance, an editor is someone who edits an article or someone who writes it. And the deal is that Wikipedia needs a lot more, and they Wikipedia needs editors from everywhere. Wikipedia needs uh better representation from uh every place, every group in the world, and they need to do a better job of uh getting that out. I'm trying to help, but again, that requires communication skills, so I may not uh really be the right guy to uh to do that. Uh, but I keep uh I keep trying, and I'm uh committed to that. I can't keep contracting Wikipedia and Craigslist. Both are places on the web for decades that are being about uh helping out regular people and resisting what Cory Doctorow calls uh enchitification, and I need to do whatever I can to support Wikipedia and wherever it happens to help uh prevent the problem. I am not the right guy to do it because again, uh fighting this fight requires communication skills I lack, but I can draw attention to the problem and then try to find people who are good at fighting it. I'm still finding people who are good at it. Uh, that's an ongoing challenge, and I'm very focused uh on that kind of thing and on supporting again the people who help defend the country. I uh do have my self-indulgences uh involving my sense of humor usually or my uh love of birds. And this week I did uh uh visit the Wild Bird Fund, which is a sanctuary uh in New York, which does uh nurse a lot of uh birds, particularly pigeons back to health. Uh I've observed that uh uh I you have a uh pigeon or two yourself in your backyard.
SPEAKER_02I do. I the big problem we have actually, weirdly, is parakeetes. We've we've got they're a big invasive species in in the UK and they're lovely, but they're very dominant, so they're actually out competing pigeons and all the other birds at the moment.
SPEAKER_00But I have uh very mixed feelings about that because I love seeing, for example, the wild parrots in San Francisco. Uh I'm just shocked to see the uh the uh pigeons in your backyard because I didn't know uh there were uh pigeons in the UK.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we have we have plenty of pigeons.
SPEAKER_00I would I would like to say that I think I might be taking the piss.
SPEAKER_02No, and it's it's interesting that you mentioned that because I mean again, I'm a um we both I have a bird feeder, as you can see out the back there, but I'm a keen uh keen bird and myself. But in I'm interested, sort of in when you talk about your philanthropy, you quite often come around to mentioning uh your your interest in pigeons and pigeon rescue. Is that because um it often gets picked up on? And I suppose you know that it will because it's sort of unusual. Do you talk about it deliberately because you sort of want to make the point that, you know, within philanthropy, actually there are elements of it that are just things that you happen to care about and want to support, and that you know, that's fine. And you're sort of putting it out there almost to kind of make that point, or do you just want to talk about pigeons?
SPEAKER_00You're being smarter than I am. There are three reasons, three reasons I talk about this and follow through. Uh, funny. Also, I uh love birds, also funny.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, those are three good reasons, I would say, Craig. So um I'm aware I'm gonna be in danger of taking up too much of your time. So I want to kind of wrap things up. Um, before I uh let you go, I just wanted to ask kind of almost as a final question. Um, through the work that you've done over the years in philanthropy and the work you're doing now, what would you say is the most important lesson you've learned about philanthropy and kind of how to do it well?
SPEAKER_00Um, I'm still learning. The only definite lesson is that philanthropists and uh nonprofits need to uh communicate far better and they need to be prepared to defend themselves because if they do a good job in some areas, there will be bad actors who will attack them on their strengths in ways that basically hurt everyone. Um, personally, I've learned some lessons again as to my own uh limitations. There's that uh social skill thing that I mentioned, and I've come to realize that uh, well, I need to uh fake social skills better, but I do let people know that I'm aware that I'm only simulating those skills, and I only have the patience uh to do so for no more than uh 90 minutes.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's and I think in a way that's you know, being clear about that and setting expectations is a large part of the battle, isn't it? That if everybody kind of knows what the the parameters are, then then that goes a long way.
SPEAKER_00Every everyone is aware one way or the other that I am a nerd.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, great note on which to leave it. Um, just remaining to say thank you ever so much, Craig, for finding time to come talk to me. Um, it's been really, really, really fascinating. I'll put links in the show notes to places where people can find out more about lots of the things that you've mentioned um and wish you all the best in the future. Thanks. I appreciate it. Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Craig for coming on the podcast. Um I have to say, when the uh email popped into my inbox uh suggesting that I might want to speak to Craig Newmark, I was I mean, I initially thought it was an online scam, but when I realized it wasn't, I was uh very keen to do so, and it was great to have a chance to talk to him. Um as I say, you know, if any other giving pledge signatories out there similarly want to come and have a chat uh about philanthropy on the podcast, I'd be delighted to host you. So do get in touch. Um I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find information on some of the things that Craig mentioned during the conversation. Uh I'll also put links to some things I've written that might be of interest. If you're interested in more broadly and issues around philanthropy and civil society, do check out the website whyphilanthropymatters.com. You can find all the back episodes of this podcast, lots of articles, guides, long reads uh and newsletters, that kind of thing. Um, all sorts of thoughts and information about philanthropy for you to dig into. Uh if you've got ideas for people that I could talk to on the podcast in future or topics that we could cover in other ways, do drop me a line. You can find my contact details on the website. If you want to follow me on social media, by all means do that. I'm mostly on LinkedIn these days, but I'm also a little bit on Blue Sky. Uh other than that, it just remains to say like, subscribe, uh, share with people. If you know people that you think might enjoy the podcast or might benefit from it, do uh spread the good word. I think word of mouth goes a long way. And other than that, I will see you next time. Bye.