David Mastio: A 6-step prescription for reinvigorating newspaper classifieds

David Mastio of BlogNetNews.com

Here’s what I would like to see happen in pretty broad strokes.

I start with the idea that classifieds have value as content as much as they have value to advertisers.

Step 1: The local daily puts its entire database of classifieds live and constantly updating on the web (no waiting for the next print edition) in a format that anyone can pick up and publish.

Step 2: Local blogs and other websites will republish the classifieds on their sites and sell display advertising against them. Each of these sites will also have the ability to offer its users free online classifieds that flow into the database and out to all the other participating sites.

Step 3: When advertisers buy newspaper classifieds in the print edition, they get inserted automatically in the free distributed system and can buy better placement in the distributed system.

Step 4: Whenever someone signs up for a free ad they get offered a paid deal for better placement in the free system or can be upsold to the newspaper’s print edition. The site where they sign up gets a share of the transaction.

Step 5: Other local media with paid classifieds can buy in — adding the alt weekly, outlying newspapers, shoppers, into a regional hub of classifieds.

Step 6: In key categories where demand is high, the system can start making the changeover to all ads being paid (just as Craigslist has done).

Benefits for newspaper: If the newspaper creates and owns this system, it can get a cut of all the action. Immediately upon implementation, its customers get a boost in their ads’ reach and they’ve created a bulwark against Craigslist. As the system develops it brings on new revenue streams.

Benefits for local bloggers/websites: Immediate boost in content that could increase advertising revenue, immediate new service of free classifieds for readers, and eventually a new revenue stream.

David Mastio has worked in Washington as a writer and editor for more than a decade, mostly for newspapers including USA Today, the Detroit News, Knight-Ridder and the Washington Examiner. He also worked as a speech writer for the Bush administration. More recently, he started a new media company called BlogNetNews.com focused on finding ways to make social media more useful to specific communities of readers.

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