This Thursday, 50 newspaper company CEOs met in a closed-door “Crisis Summit” at the American Press Institute (Reston, Virginia). With no publicly available recordings of the proceedings, we don’t have much information, though API staff produced a written summary. Also, one of the participants, Gazette Communications CEO Chuck Peters, posted to Twitter through the day […]

If you look at the innovation being tried at newspaper companies, most of it is on the editorial, content and technology sides. But according to Kyoshi Martinez, that’s not the right approach at this point in time, when newspapers’ business model is under attack and the industry is struggling. Concentrate on reinventing the ad model, […]

The other day I posted some thoughts about growing an online classified service’s utility and usefulness to its customers and users by linking to other sources of ads. (Yes, to the old way of thinking about newspapers and classifieds, that’s heresy. Now it’s becoming a necessity.)
Media consultant Steve Safran, who co-writes the Media 2.0 Intel […]

Something I’ve advocated for some time in my “other” job as digital-media blogger and Editor & Publisher Online columnist is for news websites to stop being online islands and provide links out to other sources of news, in addition to playing their traditional news role. Google has proven beyond a doubt that there’s much value […]

Last week I got to sit down at lunch in Boulder and chat with David Herrold, online and mobile media expert for the Houston Chronicle (whose recent project has been spearheading the Chronicle’s transition to using Kaango for some of its classifieds). He mentioned a mobile idea that I too have pondered, and we’re both […]

Recently I wrote a column for Editor & Publisher Online espousing the idea of enhancing classifieds sections in printed newspapers by turning them into high-quality editorial sections integrated with classified ads. (”Print Classifieds for the Internet Age.”) It profiled a couple of new attempts (St. Petersburg Times and Baltimore Sun) to have their printed classifieds […]

I had an interesting e-mail exchange today with someone who follows ReinventingClassifieds.com. He objected to some of the ideas that were presented by Tim Windsor as being too radical, too crazy to be taken seriously. And he warned me that by presenting ideas that are too “out there,” newspaper classified advertising managers might decide not […]

Tim Windsor

Tim Windsor (fortunately) has a little time on his hands after recently leaving his post as VP interactive for Tribune Co.’s Baltimore Sun. So he’s been increasing his blogging on Zero Percent Idle, and has written a great post with suggestions for renewing newspapers’ classifieds business, focusing specifically on the troubled recruitment component. (He […]

Tim Windsor, who recently departed his position as VP interactive for the Baltimore Sun, is taking up our challenge to offer a good idea or two for reinvigorating and reinventing newspaper companies’ classifieds operations.
On his blog today, Windsor makes the case for first defining the crisis. Check out his chart, crafted from Newspaper Association of […]

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 […]