Craigslist Gives $1.6M for New Media Chair

Internet mainstay Craigslist is giving $1.6 million to help the University of California-Berkeley set up a faculty chair devoted to new media, the San Jose Mercury News reports. The gift will help create a setting "where scholars and students can explore the powerful effect of new media and think rigorously about how new media will continue to change our lives," Berkeley's chancellor said.

"When we were looking for a new chair, someone joked, 'Why don't you go to Craigslist?'" said Ken Goldberg, the professor who will direct the Berkeley Center for New Media. "That's what happened." The donation is the largest ever for the non-profit arm of Craigslist, founded in 1995 as an e-mail update on events in nearby San Francisco by Craig Newmark. (More Craigslist stories.)