Former Rocky Mountain News president, publisher, and editor John Temple — now blogging from the perspective of a newspaper executive freed of operating within the risk-averse culture of newspapers — is putting out a series of 10 recommendations to the newspaper industry. There are some good ideas in his list so far, though at this […]

Media designer Alan Jacobson is not always a fan of the ideas presented on this website (he expressed his disdain for the idea in our Classifieds Manifesto, for example, for newspapers to actually start selling things like cars, in addition to just publishing ads), but he does agree that if newspaper publishers would just break […]

Attention! Classifieds are dead! Long live classifieds 2.0!!
Christopher Ryan and I have channeled our frustration as well as our optimism, and some concrete solutions, into the Classifieds Manifesto, an 11-point document that explains how newspapers can take the downward-sloping revenue line that represents their classifieds business, and turn it upward again.
We don’t believe that it’s […]

We all know that incremental changes won’t save newspaper classifieds. It’s time to try some truly innovative ideas and experiments. So check out the latest NewsInnovation blog post by publisher John Newby:
Now Here’s A Game Changer For The Industry?
I love this idea. OK, I haven’t thought Newby’s idea through carefully enough to say whether or […]

 
More great ideas…
Don’t miss descriptions of some of the best other ideas submitted by contest entrants who want to turn around newspaper classifieds. Scroll down the page or click.

Also see our student contest winner!

We were looking for innovative and unusual ideas to reinvigorating newspaper classifieds when we offered $500 to the media professional who sent […]

Earlier I wrote about the importance of “curating” ads from other sources, adding them to your own classifieds site (with credit and links to the original source, of course). I have an anecdote for you — from my wife, Suzanne — about why this is important.
She’s currently looking for a new school librarian position (after […]

As we’ve noted here recently, a growing number of newspapers are cutting out some days entirely from their print production schedule (or in the case of Detroit’s papers, stopping home delivery for all but three days a week and producing a newsstand-sale-only thinner edition on the other four days). Others are cutting out just their […]

Well, it looks like this is a trend we’ll be seeing more and more of. Earlier this week, the Boston Globe stopped publishing classifieds sections on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Print focus will be on the Friday and weekend editions with their jobs, autos, and homes advertising sections. Thursday regional additions also may have […]

Steve Rosenbaum has written a useful trend piece for AlwaysOn, “2009 - 5 Trends That Will Change Media.” Here’s an excerpt of his first trend, which has classifieds implications:
Growth of the Curation Economy
“As the cost of the creation of content continues to come down, more content creators will come online. This will create a huge […]

I’d like to point my classifieds readers over to an Editor & Publisher Online column that I wrote this week: “My ‘Crisis’ Advice to Newspaper Company CEOs: 11 Points to Ponder.” While it’s a prescription for what ails the newspaper industry overall, I think it’s worth reading through a classifieds lens.
Of the 11 points, classifieds […]