Craigslist CEO "Feels Terribly" but tells CNN no real changes planned

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster certainly has had better weeks.  When a Boston University med student was arrested on suspicion that he killed a masseuse he met on the Craigslist community bulletin board, he was quickly branded by the media as "the Craigslist killer" and the media began jumping on the angle of a killer using an Internet social media site to find his victims more than they were covering a murder. Buckmaster was video taped on CNN addressing the situation.  I pulled out the trusty Executive Communications Scorecard to see how he did under this enormous pressure.

Anchor Points:  Based on my viewing of the video, I think his "anchor points" were the following: we feel awful about this, people should use our personal safety tips, but we're not going to stop running these personal ads. His actual quote was not as crisp as I'm sure he would have liked it and it's ambiguous whether his primary regret was for the tragedy of the loss of life, or the association of his corporate baby with this murder: 

We feel terribly (sic) and it is quite sad that anyone would lose their life and it is horrible that Craigslist in any way be connected with a violent crime of this nature and it just causes us to redouble our efforts to try to get across to users to take a few common sense precautions that eliminate most of the risk.

Grade: B+   A crisper response would have raised this to an "A," but he stuck to his messages throughout and was consistent.

Sound-bites:  He didn't do as well here.  "We feel terribly" was under his photo when I first viewed the video and someone corrected it later to "We feel terrible."  The sound-bite that stayed with me and I don't think is what Buckmaster intended (I hope not, anyway), came later in the four-minute segment when he was asked how he feels about the fact that Craigslist is being used as a conduit through which predators can find prey online: 

We think quite the reverse is true.  Fifty million Americans are using Craigslist each month -- most several times during the month -- and anytime you have that amount of human activity there is always the possibility of something going wrong despite everyone's best efforts to protect people.  That being said, no incidents of violent crime are okay.  We are looking to see if there is anything to do to make it safer.

Okay, let's take this attempt at a sound-bite apart.  What I got from it when I first heard it was -- hey most of the 50M users each month are still alive and the occasional murder is to be expected, but what the heck, we'll keep trying to make it a safe place for everyone to use.  Do you think I phrased it right?  I don't think he really meant to say it like that.

Grade:  D

Anecdotes/Analogies:  He didn't really do much here.  An example of one he could have used was to refer to the personal safety tips referenced on the blog post he just did.   If the blog post itself had been shown on the screen, it would have reflected the company's concern about this sad event and its continuing efforts to safeguard its users.  He did talk about the push from users in 2005 to move ads for erotic services to a separate category and he made reference to them doing this, just as the Yellow Pages has done before them.

Grade:  C

Pace:  Buckmaster -- who reminded me of Thomas Haden Church from the movie "Sideways" in his open-collar shirt -- had a good pace, but a rather leaden, emotionless delivery.  Given the nature of the discussion, I think more voice inflection would have made us believe he truly did "feel terribly" about all of this.  Part of that may have been due to the fact that he was interviewed remotely and was wearing an ear piece and looking into a camera rather than talking face-to-face with his interviewer.  It is always hard to engage and be more human in your demeanor in those circumstances, which raises his overall grade.

Grade: B-

Pausing:  Since he was hampered by the remote interview issue of delay, he was forced to pause before responding. He didn't have uncomfortable pauses.

Grade: B+

Answer and Stop:  I think the run-on sound-bite I noted (and disliked) above could have been avoided if he had adopted this technique of answer just the question asked, concisely, and then stop and listen for the reaction of the interviewer and prepare to answer the next question.

Grade: C

Conciseness:  He was not bad, but some of his quotes would have benefited (as noted above) by being shorter.

Grade: C

Bridging:  He was clearly trained to try to bridge away from uncomfortable questions.  When he was pushed to answer why Craigslist just doesn't refuse to take these ads in the first place, he bridged, but it was an awkward place (in my view) that he bridged to. 

He said, "The great thing about Craigslist is when there is criminal activity, which we don't condone, it is easier for law enforcement -- they tell us -- to spot bad apples, root them out and get them off the site, which we really appreciate." 

I take that as a "no, we don't intend to remove these revenue-generating ads from the site," although he did stress earlier than "100% of net revenue goes to charity."  I guess I'm confused then.  He couldn't mean that it's okay because it helps charity and the police and most of the time no one gets killed.  Could he?

Grade:  D

His overall grade was passing, a hair higher than a "C." 

Given how charged and slippery this situation is for this company, combined with the fact that Craigslist seems to have no plans to rethink running the erotic services ads fingered in these incidents, I would have recommended a statement strategy, staying with the blog post, which was handled well, and saying "no thank you" to the live broadcast opportunity.  What do others think?