Incidentally, I’m worried that this project casts out rhetoric in the name of blowing the box off what we think about classifieds and how to change them, without offering any real solution. You can say “It’s certainly not just the printed and online listings,” but what is “bringing people together to do business?” In the end, the best form of communication we, as media types have is printed or online listings. If we leave our office to talk with people and interact, we need some way to communicate what we’re doing. So we turn around and “publish” it online or in a paper.

I think the classified in idea, if not in letter, will be around longer than people would like to believe. Perhaps it wont be the cash cow it used to be, but what if instead of being a cash cow it was considered a gateway to get people to use a website or to read a paper. When someone is looking at advertisements in the auto classification, maybe we need to throw a link in which leads to our story about that crazy car wreck two months ago. When they click on the story to read more, *bam* there’s a current ad for an auto dealership and a link to their website where their cars are offered with dealer guarantees at only a little bit more than the classified prices.

Then again, maybe they wont click through and the classified will get the win. That needs to happen sometimes, otherwise who would take out a classified? It’s all balance, and it’s a function of how much money you *need* to get from an ad (classified or targeted) and how much you *want* to get. I suppose *want* could also be replaced with *feel you ought*