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Over the coming days I’ll be writing up some early results from our extensive survey of classifieds professionals and media managers, where we tried to gauge industry attitudes about the outlook for saving newspaper classifieds and collect ideas for solutions to reversing what is a disturbing decline in this important sector of the newspaper business.
This is kind of early; there are only 40 responses as I write this. But even now the responses are interesting and valuable. There’s still time to take the survey, so please do! Click here. Your participation will make this survey more useful!
Can this be saved?
We asked survey respondents which of the following statements they most agreed with (they could only pick one). Here are the results:
- 53% - “Newspaper classifieds are in trouble, but probably can be saved.”
- 6% - “Newspaper classifieds are doomed; there’s no hope.”
- 1% - “Newspaper classifieds’ ‘problems’ are overhyped; there’s not a problem.”
- 1% - “Newspaper classifieds will recover and be fine.”
We also offered an “other” option for those who didn’t agree with any of those statements. Here’s what they said instead:
- “Newspaper classifieds need a TOTAL reinvention.”
- “Newspapers are the problem, not classifieds. Stupid rates. Horrible online software. Bad thinking. Unwilling to spend money.”
- “Classified can be retooled to excel once again.”
- “Newspaper classifieds are challenged, but only because the marketplace is bigger than general-interest news print products.”
- “Newspaper classifieds are in trouble… If some well thought-out action is taken, maybe they can be saved.”
- “Newspaper classifieds have a future online.”
- “Newspaper classifieds will settle to a very low level, but will survive.”
- “Newspaper will have a smaller share of the market, but keep a share.”
- “Newspapers classifieds have to reinvent themselves to survive.”
- “Print is doomed, but not newspaper online classifieds.”
- “They’re transitioning to online.”
- “‘Classifieds’ is too broad a term to describe this issue, since each vertical is unique.”
- “Agree to disagree.”
I’m not sure what to make of that last statement. But otherwise, our first group of survey takers seems to think that either newspapers will settle for maintaining a smaller classifieds business than they’ve had in the past, or they’ll undergo a dramatic transformation/reinvention and rise once again.
That pretty well sums up our own view here at ReinventingClassifieds.com.
I’ll post some more survey results on Monday. Have a good weekend everyone.
Tags: Surveys
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