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I hope you’ve noticed that ReinventingClassifieds.com is running a couple contests, soliciting ideas for saving newspaper classifieds from continuing to spiral downward: one for media pros and another for college students. We’re giving away some cash prizes for the best essay submissions.
Quite a few folks shared their ideas over the weekend after I put out an announcement. There are some thoughtful ideas in the mix, and we’ll share them here once we process and make sense of the submissions.
I want to quickly address one issue, though, which was brought up in a (frankly) cranky submission, which read:
“It cost five hundred to run one newspaper ad. F you they think I am going to solve your 64billion dollar question for five hundred dollars.”
While I might well have ignored that, I think it’s worth addressing, actually. As I’ve written here before, it’s unlikely that any one person or group has The Answer to resurrecting newspaper classifieds. And while we’re working on some ideas here on ReinventingClassifieds.com that will be presented in the coming months, we’re not so presumptuous as to think we can fix everything.
We’re big believers in the power of the smart crowd. So we devised these modest contests to try to tap your collective intelligence in attacking a formidable problem. The few hundred dollars we’re offering is meant to entice you to participate, of course. But I suspect that you’ll participate and share your ideas on saving newspaper classifieds foremost because you have some good ideas to add to the mix, and you want to see newspapers generate enough revenue that they can stop laying off so many journalists.
Tags: contests
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