$500 for best answer: Why should consumers & businesses use newspaper classifieds?

Attention media and classifieds professionals: ReinventingClassifieds.com wants you to share your ideas and wisdom to help solve the newspaper industry’s classifieds crisis. So we’ve devised a competition — 1st prize is $500 — to coax out of you the best idea for resurrecting and reinventing the classifieds business model.

(College students: We have a separate contest for you.)

Here’s how to participate in the competition: Answer the following question by the deadline, December 31, 2008.

WHAT CAN THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY DO TO 1) BRING BACK CLASSIFIEDS CUSTOMERS (BUYERS AND SELLERS) THAT HAVE BEEN LOST TO ONLINE COMPETITORS, 2) ATTRACT NEW CUSTOMERS WHO HAVE NOT USED NEWSPAPER CLASSIFIEDS BEFORE, AND 3) RETAIN ITS REMAINING CLASSIFIEDS CUSTOMERS?

We’re not looking for campaign slogans or propaganda. “Why newspaper classifieds are still great!” won’t do. The winning idea will help steer the industry toward recrafting or reinventing itself such that revenues start growing again.

Don’t box yourself in with your thinking. Focus can be on print, online, and/or mobile solutions, or an integrated approach. Be creative.

Brief is good. You decide on length of your essay, but a few paragraphs is best.

Do you have a good answer? Fill out the form below. And good luck!

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Contest rules

1. To be eligible for consideration in this contest, entries must be submitted using the form above no later than midnight EST, December 31, 2008.
2. This contest is open to media and classifieds professionals, consultants, academics, and others with a professional interest in the newspaper industry and classified advertising.
3. College students are not eligible to participate in this contest. (See separate contest for students.)
4. Selection of the winning entry will be made by the editors of ReinventingClassifieds.com. Their decision is final.
5. The grand prize winner will receive US $500 (five hundred US dollars).
6. Entries must be received via the entry webform on this page. Essay submissions may be in any form including: text, video, audio, multimedia.
7. By participating in this contest, you are granting to ReinventingClassifieds.com the right to print, publish, broadcast, distribute, and use, worldwide in any media now known or hereafter developed, including, but not limited to, the World Wide Web, in perpetuity, your submission, name, picture, and biographical information, without any compensation.
8. You continue to own copyright to your submission; you are only granting ReinventingClassifieds.com rights to publish its contents.
9. By submitting an entry, each entrant represents and warrants that his/her entry and materials submitted with the entry, in whole and in part: (i) are his/her original creation and have not been copied in whole or in part from any other work; (ii) do not violate or infringe any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary right of any person or entity; (iii) are his/her sole and exclusive property; and (iv) are true and accurate in all respects. Entrants assume all risk of lost, late, misdirected, incomplete, or illegible entries.
10. THIS CONTEST IS GOVERNED BY THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE STATE OF COLORADO, WITHOUT RESPECT TO CONFLICT OF LAW DOCTRINES. As a condition of participating in this contest, participant agrees that any and all disputes that cannot be resolved between the parties and causes of action arising out of or connected with this contest shall be resolved individually, without resort to any form of class action, exclusively before a court located in Colorado, having jurisdiction. Further, in any such dispute, under no circumstances will participant be permitted to obtain awards for and hereby waives all rights to claim punitive, incidental, or consequential damages, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, other than participant’s actual out-of-pocket expenses (i.e., costs associated with entering this contest), and participant further waives all rights to have damages multiplied or increased.
11. ReinventingClassifieds.com reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to cancel, terminate, modify, or suspend the contest.
12. CONTEST ORGANIZER: ReinventingClassifieds.com and Future of News LLC, 5922-A Gunbarrel Ave., Boulder, Colorado 80301.