Long-time newspaper journalist turned interactive media expert Joe Michaud recently left his post as president of MaineToday.com (part of the Portland Press-Herald in Maine) and joined the AIM Group/Classified Intelligence as senior analyst. Now that he’s settled into his home office outside Portland to work for AIM and consult for several New England newspaper clients, I had a chance today to catch up with him and pick his brain a bit about newspaper classifieds strategy. Here’s a tidbit…

What’s a smart strategy reflecting newspapers’ current (dour) situation? I asked. Answer: Rethink the printed classifieds section and treat it more like a “catalog.”

Here’s what he means: Online is clearly the best medium for classifieds in many respects, and if you’re a consumer searching for something specific, the web is the most efficient way to go. Print is not going to match online when it comes to utility. So in designing a printed classifieds section that makes sense for the times, it’s not going to work to try to compete directly with online classifieds.

Michaud favors the model of treating print classifieds in the same way as some retailers treat their catalogs. For example, L.L. Bean sends out printed catalogs in the mail, but they don’t include every product that the giant mail-order house carries. The catalogs include selected products, sometimes based on a theme (women’s fall clothing, kids back-to-school clothes, etc.), while clothing buyers would use the LLBean.com website to look up any item offered by the company.

What ultimately needs to happen, Michaud suggests, is that online is the repository of all classified ads; every advertiser coming through a newspaper ad ordering process is added to the website. Other channels, including print and mobile, may be paid upsells (or included in specific packages), so not every ad ends up in the printed classifieds section.

The key thinking behind this sort of strategy is recognition that the web (and in time, mobile) is how consumers now and in the future search for things they’re looking for (job, home, car, bicycle…). Print, as the catalog publishers have discovered, is best for creating enjoyable, browsable guides to shopping.

What is print best at? That, says Michaud, is the question newspaper publishers must ask themselves. The typical printed newspaper classified section isn’t very good when it comes to serving someone who is searching for something specific; the still-used narrow vertical column is not browsed easily or comfortably. Taking a “catalog”-like approach, you would redesign the section to make it a better browsing experience — and do a good job of guiding people to your website for expanded listings and the full ad inventory.

What do you think of this approach to reinventing printed classifieds?

Thanks to Henry Pollson for his comment here pointing out an article of interest to anyone who has to compete against Craigslist in their local market:

“Angie’s List: A better alternative to Craiglist for finding local contractors.”

Writer Henry Grimes points out his experience with finding local contractors to do work around his house. When he used Craigslist, he found that the people who placed ads there offering their services sometimes were unreliable.

However, using Angie’s List, he’s found excellent contractors. The difference: Angie’s List offers user ratings of contractors, while Craigslist just runs their ads.

Here’s Grimes’ description of Angie’s List:

“Angie’s List is similar to Craigslist, in that it’s a long-standing site (it was launched back in 1995) that has local listings for over 140 US cities and metro areas. Unlike Craigslist though, Angie’s List has ratings and reviews, and the site focuses exclusively on contractors and local service providers. It’s a far superior way to find high quality contractors.

“The downside of Angie’s List, however, is that you have to pay to access its listings. Membership costs $6.95 per month, or $53 per year, plus a $10 per month initial sign-up fee. … The way I look at it, though, compared to the hundreds if not thousands of dollars you’ll be investing with your contractor, an Angie’s List subscription fee is a small price to pay.

So here’s an example of a niche within classifieds (Services Offered) where Craigslist is vulnerable. It is certainly possible to create services that are better than Craigslist. Craigslist definitely has deficiencies, so look for them and try to create something much better that addresses them.

Now, Angie’s list is well established, so a local newspaper wanting to do a better job with community and customer ratings of local businesses and services will have to go up against it. Or reach out to Angie to explore a partnership.

I’m working on a white paper / report about how to redesign print classifieds sections for the modern world. (I’ll keep you posted on my progress and when it might be available.) And I have to say: It’s disturbing how slowly that’s happening, especially at U.S. newspapers.

If you look around at newspaper classifieds sections, most of them still look like they did in the 1960s. While page widths may have gotten narrower over the years to save paper, most classifieds are still in narrow vertical columns and not easily readable or designed with usability in mind.

For example, here’s a screen grab of a classifieds section page from the Dallas Morning News.

Yep, that’s what I remember classifieds looking like in the 1960s, when I was a kid. I could show you hundreds of other newspaper classifieds sections that look just like this.

Of course, there’s innovation out there, but my research is revealing that it’s not nearly enough. But at least some folks are trying to modernize paper classifieds. The Chicago Tribune has done some interesting work; the Baltimore Sun is reinventing its ink-on-paper classifieds. And the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times is being innovative; here’s a screen grab of what its classifieds front page looks like now:

While much of the emphasis these days is on online classifieds, newspapers need to pay attention to both online and print, making each the best possible in order to perform in what is now a hyper-competitive environment. I hope to have some great advice for you on the print side soon.

Meanwhile, if your newspaper is doing innovative work with print classifieds, I’d like to talk to you about it. Please e-mail me. Thanks!

With newspapers in deep trouble, it’s unlikely that they can climb out of their holes by themselves (especially as the holes keep getting deeper). If a solution or solutions are to be found, it will be in concert with other companies.

Google CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt is worried about the state of investigative reporting. Text version of Schmidt’s comments

One big opportunity may be in working with Google. Yes, the search giant that some publishers blame for their troubles also, just maybe, could be a newpaper savior. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is aware of and concerned about newspapers’ plight. He worries about the loss of investigative journalism as newspapers decline. Check out the video at right (from AdAge.com) of a recent talk by Schmidt to see what I mean.

Schmidt also has said publicly that he believes Google has a “moral imperative” to help newspapers figure out a new advertising model that will support their journalism. But how?

This page contains, below, an Open Letter to Google suggesting ways that the most successful company on the planet right now can help the newspaper industry. It’s a wiki, and we want YOU — readers of ReinventingClassifieds.com — to help write the letter. Add your ideas; edit or improve what others have written.

When the letter seems like it’s ready, well send it off to Google’s management team. So, what suggestions do you have for Google to come to the aid of newspapers, especially pertaining to classifieds strategies?

(Instructions: You can edit text in the large field below. When finished, include your name so we can see who has contributed, then click Update. To see a log of what’s been changed and by whom, look here. If you spot an abuse, you can fix it yourself, or alert me.)

Dan Pacheco’s Printcasting initiative, for which he and the Bakersfield Californian got a Knight Foundation grant to fund for a 2-year development cycle, is worth paying attention to if you’re in the classifieds business. While not a classifieds project, per se, Printcasting does have some implications for classifieds, which I learned when I asked Pacheco about it recently.

Here’s his description of the project:

“Printcasting will allow individuals to easily create ad-supported, customized publications with a mix of local news and information. The software will help aggregate feeds from news organizations, bloggers or newsletters, for example, so that would-be publishers can pick and choose among them to create a niche publication. The Printcasting model then will guide users through placing articles, photos and ads onto a template that either could be delivered by e-mail or printed at home and distributed. For example, a publication for reef-diving photographers could include ads for nearby dive shops or underwater cameras. The idea is to pair localized ads and content to create targeted publications.”

Pacheco says that he and his team are still thinking through the advertising components of Printcasting now, but he describes their thought process thus far as building “sort of a hybrid between self-serve classifieds and larger print display ad system.”

So how this might work for, say, a local auto repair shop, is that it would be able to create its own publication, and choose to include feeds of automotive news. Ads that others want targeted to the auto sector would show up in the shop’s little publication — along with many other Printcasting-powered publications on the topic of autos. (Publishers of these micro-publications receive a share of the ad revenues.)

The auto shop would get a widget to put on its website, which would feature new content posted to the shop’s blog. (That content can be included in the publication.) The widget would be the way that website viewers print out the auto shop’s publication or view it on-screen (PDF format).

Next, the auto shop owner could add “Advertiser” to his profile, which would allow him to create simple ads, which could be inserted not only into his own publication (possibly), but other auto-related publications by other Printcasting users, according to Pacheco.

Such ads are expected to be a good deal for advertisers. “We’re ultimately planning on tying the ad pricing to the number of downloads of the PDFs (download being a proxy for circulation),” Pacheco explains. “So the store-publisher’s ad cost would be proportional to how big their real distribution is.

“Advertisers will do this because it will be so damned easy and affordable since they only pay for a target audience. In this way, we hope the ‘long tail’ businesses who can never afford to buy ads in the daily newspaper that reach the 100 people who want their stuff along with the 70,000 who don’t want it will be able to advertise in some fashion. Today they basically check out unless there’s a niche publication we produce that matches their target.”

While what was just described may not sound like a traditional “classified ad,” Pacheco asks: “What’s the real difference between what I just described and a classified? And what’s the real difference between that and a display ad? It’s a hybrid of both, but way better because of the targeted delivery.”

Pacheco also thinks that RSS feeds for classifieds may be able to be incorporated into this model, but he won’t guarantee at this point that this will make it into the Printcasting launch. And he points out that this could be a nice upsell to a newspaper classifieds customer; they’d pay to additionally get their ad in a large number of Printcasting-powered niche publications. For example: “I’ve placed my ad for my car, sofa, rental, whatever and I’m told that for $20 I can have my ad show up in 5 other niche publications that have the kind of people I think may want my stuff.”

Because the Printcasting initiative is foundation-funded, the outcome at the end of the 2-year development cycle will be open source. The development process also is transparent, so other publishers can learn from what Pacheco and team are doing.

Keep an eye on it. Printcasting looks to be a promising model for advertising to the Long Tail.

While Craigslist is the 800-pound gorilla of free classifieds (well, mostly free), it’s far from perfect. Even its top executives admit that the site is not on the cutting edge of web technology. While Craigslist does respond to user needs and some requests, there are plenty of features that could be added to make it better.

Does that leave an opening for someone to create a Better Craigslist, by doing a better job with technology and features?

Because Craigslist has been complacent for so long in terms of innovation (you can’t even post video classifieds there), some entrepreneurs believe that it’s vulnerable. And while Craig’s loyal following may not be ready to replace his list with something technologically better, building a Better Craigslist might lure enough of them away — or grab duplicate ad placements by Craigslist users wanting more exposure — to build a decent business.

So believe the founders of Texas-based Jicka.com, a Better Craigslist currently in beta and only now starting to emerge from under the radar. If you look at the site, I think you’ll have the same reaction as I did at first viewing: “Oh, they’re copying Craigslist.”

Click image to go to Jicka.com.

(Of course, they’re not the only ones. The biggest free-classifieds Craigslist competitor is Kijiji.com, which is owned by eBay, which also owns a chunk of Craigslist.)

Jicka co-founder Craig Agranoff, who lives in Florida, readily admits that he and his business partner (who is staying under the radar for now) studied Craigslist in order to design Jicka. He’s looked for all the things that could be added to make Craigslist better, and put them on a list to be created for his site. Some examples:

• All categories are free to place ads on Jicka. (Craigslist has a very small number of categories that charge a fee — and only in a few large cities.)
• You can post an ad in up to three cities that are within 60 miles of each other. (Inability to do this is a problem for advertisers wanting to cover multiple communities in some Craigslist cities. And you’re not supposed to post duplicate ads in multiple cities.)
• You will be able to pay an upsell fee in order to move your ad back up to the top. For something like a $1 fee (that’s not a firm amount), an apartment advertiser, for example, will be able to have the system move his ad back to the top of the category at a scheduled time. (On some Craigslist sites, new ads move in so quickly that your ad can get buried in a short time; and the sites prohibit multiple postings of the same ads.)
• A notification system will allow buyers to subscribe to fine-tuned alerts when new items matching their criteria come on to a Jicka site. For example, you’ll be able to watch for blue Saab convertibles in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
• Advertisers will be able to post video, as well as photos and text. (Craigslist doesn’t yet support video.)
• User profiles will allow sellers and buyers to share information about themselves, which can serve to ensure more trust by users when making a transaction. It’s akin to going on eBay and learning about a buyer before making a bid. (Craigslist has no such public profiles.)
• Each category will have a featured item, which will be determined by a bidding system; highest bidder gets the slot. Ergo, it’s another revenue source for Jicka, and a way for advertisers to pay to be featured prominently within a category. (Craigslist has nothing like this yet.)

There’s one other key feature, not offered by Craigslist, that Agranoff believes will entice people to advertise on Jicka.com, and it’s a key part of the plan to attract classified advertising in an online world dominated by Craigslist: free limited warranties.

By placing a free ad on Jicka.com, an advertiser will get a free warranty for a trial period. Home sellers get a 6-month limited home warranty. Auto sellers get a 30-day limited warranty. (That is, the buyer gets the warranty when they purchase something advertised on Jicka.com.) Anyone placing an ad of any kind gets a 1-year identity protection plan.

That’s an interesting strategy. It’s like, giving away free ads isn’t enough anymore; now you have to offer “better than free.”

Of course, that’s a marketing strategy by companies that offer warranties — which will pick up new customers when some of the Jicka advertisers renew after the free trial period — and it doesn’t cost Jicka anything.

Agranoff says he and his partner are considering various marketing strategies to get Jicka.com some attention, one of which is a direct-mail campaign touting the site and the free trial warranty offers.

The company, which is self-funded by the founders and has no outside investors at this point, seems to be focused on low-cost ways to develop the business. Another helpful strategy: outsourcing web development and programming to India, where costs are significantly lower than hiring U.S. developers.

Frankly, going up against Craigslist with a network of city sites that are directly competitive with Craigslist is going to be really tough. Craigslist has almost a psychological hold on many people who use it. Not only is it effective (and I know that from personal experience), but the company has fostered an image that they are good guys out not to make a buck but to help people get good deals and sell their stuff.

But I do think Jicka has a chance by doing some things that Craigslist is ignoring because they (apparently) don’t think they need to. For instance, Agranoff says his company is developing a Jicka application for Facebook, as well as for the iPhone. Craigslist doesn’t have a mobile edition, but Jicka will soon. That kind of innovation in the face of Craigslist’s conservative approach to changing its sites could build a base of users that sustains a viable business.

Also, Agranoff says that he’s willing to enter into relationships with publishers and other entities, where Craigslist remains averse to that.

I’ll make no predictions about Jicka (or Kijiji) catching up to Craigslist, however. In the free classifieds space, Craig has a huge lead. But Craig & Co. have left the door open by choosing not to take part in the technological arms race.

American media designer and consultant Alan Jacobson has had some luck convincing newspaper publishers outside the US to sign off on some fairly disruptive redesigns for classifieds. One interesting example is aviso-oportuno.com.mx, which (via Jacobson’s firm) redid its web classifieds in a way that severely simplified the interface.

aviso-oportuno.com.mx is the separate classifieds brand for the Mexican newspaper El Universal, which also publishes four other, separately branded online verticals.

Take a look at the new interface (click image to go to the website), compared to the original which follows. Mousing over one of the colored category blocks expands the box down to show more fields; in this image the red category (autos) has been expanded.

Obviously, the site’s main page is much more Google-like in its simplicity. The old design — which is fairly typical of newspaper classifieds homepages — is complicated and confusing. Jacobson believes that such cluttered design hinders users, and is part of the reason that alternatives like Craigslist are favored by many online users.

Jacobson describes the thinking behind the redesign in a comment elsewhere on this website. There he notes that such changes are harder to make at US newspaper websites:

“These changes may seem elementary, but we’ve found that even simple changes to improve usability are difficult or impossible to make at papers in the US. That’s one reason why users prefer Craigslist — it’s easier to use than newspaper sites.”

What do you think? Is there merit in “Google-izing” online classifieds sections?

When is the newspaper industry going to stop reacting and start to act? Maybe we should be first with something.

We want someone to SAVE the oldest news gathering and communications industry in the world? The rest of the world should be saying, “How do we keep up with newspapers?” Who started the classified business? NEWSPAPERS DID!

There was probably some smart classified manager out there, several years ago, with an idea much like Craigslist but the publisher or the parent company would not invest because it was not in the budget. Now they are budgeting for less of a return on the dollar, or cutting the quality of their product to make sure they do get the same return.

This industry needs to fund a central developmental organization to promote the current products and develop, not just new twists, but new innovations. Waiting for the next threat, and reacting with some wimpy promotion is NOT a plan!

If you ride a dead horse long enough you will eventually be forced to dismount.

To: Craig and Jim
From: Steve (on behalf of the newspaper industry)

(OK, no, I do not actually speak for the newspaper industry; nor does ReinventingClassifieds.com. But I write this letter to you with the newspaper industry’s, journalism’s, and consumers’ best interests at heart. If any of those folks don’t agree with me, I’m sure they’ll let me know.)

Guys, congratulations on your continued success. Your ideals of putting service to the community above profit and personal gain are admirable. You have created a public service that benefits millions of people and saves them many millions of dollars. Craigslist is now the 7th most trafficked site on the Internet, and seems to exhibit no signs of slowing down. Bravo.

Craigslist has done much good. How about saving journalism, too, guys? (Photo: mulmatsherm, CC license)

That said, you have to know that Craigslist has played a role in the downturn of the newspaper industry. I’ve read your quotes and heard your speeches about Craigslist having only a minimal impact on newspaper classifieds. And I can buy that, to a degree. As both of you have said publicly many times, specialized employment, real estate, and auto sites have had a much greater impact; their sales reps have aggressively pursued traditional newspaper advertisers (while you have no sales force), and the growth of those companies has siphoned off billions of dollars that previously went to newspapers. (Although some of those companies now partner with newspapers.)

But there’s a reason I’m writing this letter to you guys, and not those niche ad online giants. I think you might want to help.

Let’s be clear here. I’m not suggesting that you help to save “newspapers.” Readers and advertisers are turning away from print at an increasing rate, and any publisher expecting you guys to help support an outdated medium would be crazy. (Or would they? Print editions of selected Craigslist content?) And I’m not suggesting that you should want to help newspapers save their traditional form of classified advertising. That old, weak model can’t stand up to Craigslist, which as you have acknowledged publicly many times is not at the technological bleeding edge, and especially not against niche job/home/car/dating sites that do live on the bleeding edge.

No, what I’m suggesting is that by helping out the newspaper industry, you’ll be helping save journalism — and thus helping out Craigslist’s users, who deserve to be kept well informed by a viable news media. For while newsPAPERS may be slowly fading from the scene, the type of journalism that is produced by newspaper companies is still sorely needed. The ability of the Fourth Estate to execute its watchdog role over government and business is being badly eroded by the thousands of newspaper journalists walking out the door in the last couple years, and continuing to do so at an alarming rate.

Do we really want to trust our democracy to emasculated newspaper journalism, plus TV and radio news? While broadcasters do produce some outstanding journalism, much TV and radio news is pretty weak, especially at the local level. It’s been the newspaper industry that has carried the banner for investigative journalism (and paid the costly bills for it). Independent web journalism in time may make up for the journalism we lose with newspapers’ decline (ProPublica signals a start; perhaps HuffingtonPost.com can help), but in the meantime things could get ugly.

Aren’t I being presumptuous in thinking that you guys would want to help out the newspaper industry? Am I suggesting that it’s your responsibility? Both answers are No.

Craig, I’ve been seeing your public statements, for some time now, where you’ve expressed concern about newspapers’ plight as it affects watchdog journalism. I noted Craigslist’s $1.6 million donation to endow a faculty chair at the Berkeley Center for New Media. I’ve heard your enthusiasm for ProPublica. I’ve read your comments urging newspapers to do more investigative reporting, not less. (”We need investigative reporters to ask tough questions.” Boston Globe, 6/15/08)

So I think that you want strong journalism. And you are in a position to create more of it. I will not assume that you feel as Google’s Eric Schmidt does; he says that for Google there’s a “moral imperative” to help newspapers. But if you do feel that way too in regard to Craigslist, outstanding.

What can Craigslist do? I hope this open letter succeeds in making you open to having some conversations with the newspaper industry about how to work together. Whatever the two of you do together, if anything, it should benefit Craigslist as well as newspapers and journalism, of course. Here are a few of my ideas. I hope that other readers of this open letter also will share their ideas.

Allow local newspapers to scrape Craigslist ads. I realize that you’ve kept Craigslist closed to this type of activity all these years, but how about opening up the walled garden a bit for a good cause? Allow the local newspaper(s) in the cities you serve to include Craigslist ads — just from that city, if that makes you more comfortable — in with their own classifieds. Ads from Craigslist would include the Craigslist brand and drive traffic back to the local Craigslist site; that’s good for you, in that it exposes your brand to (mostly older) newspaper readers who may not use Craigslist. (You’d think everyone knows Craigslist by now, but anecdotally I know that some older folks still don’t.) For the newspapers, adding Craigslist ads into newspaper classifieds sections reinvigorates them. “From Craigslist” ads could even show up in print classified sections of local newspapers (not just newspaper websites), reversing the shrunken sections’ relevance again. With a reinvigorated newspaper classifieds section, a newspaper could sell contextual display or banner advertising around it (which might support hiring back some of those lost journalists).

Allow consumers to place ads on Craigslist via newspaper websites. If a newspaper classifieds customer wants to place an ad via the paper’s online ordering system, permit them to also post it to the local Craigslist site as part of the process. Since ads coming from a newspaper site will be vetted, you know you won’t be getting spam ads. While most ads coming into Craigslist this way will be in no-fee categories, some will be for the few categories that Craigslist charges for. A newspaper site could collect that money, along with the fee paid for newspaper print/online placement, and send it to Craigslist, minus a commission. So while this is mostly a convenience for the consumer that makes using the newspaper classifieds more relevant, it’s also a revenue source. Craigslist users benefit by seeing more (high-quality) listings on Craigslist.

Add links on Craigslist to newspaper website classified sections. For example, on a Craigslist “bicycles for sale” category, add a link to the bicycles classifieds in the local paper’s website. This is good for Craigslist users; if they haven’t found the perfect bike on Craigslist, you point them to a good source for more bike ads. And of course this is great for newspapers, in that you drive traffic to their classifieds sites, helping them to be relevant again.

Add a news component to Craigslist. This is something I’ve heard you ponder in the past, Craig: some sort of community news component to be added to Craigslist sites. I’ve also heard you muse about wanting to identify the best news sources, and support the notion of citizen journalism. And I’ve read your comments about community: “Effectively, we’re a flea market, and flea markets I think are more about socializing than about commerce.” Craigslist represents a huge community in each of the cities it serves, and members of that community know a lot about what’s going on. It makes sense to add “news” to the Craigslist community, and tap that valuable local information resource that is the many Craigslist users.

So how about letting the local newspapers in your served cities help with that? I haven’t entirely thought this one through, but I think that by combining the oversight of a newspaper’s professional editors and reporters with the members of the Craigslist community, you’d end up with some real depth of community coverage at an acceptable (and possibly quite good) quality level. I’m no longer a fan of free-for-all citizen journalism — I can’t point you to successful examples — so I think that the best way for a Craigslist Local News component to be worthwhile is to combine the contributions of professional journalists and regular Joes and Janes. Newspapers will benefit by having a visible ongoing presence on one of the busiest sites on the web in their markets.

Those are a few of my ideas. Perhaps some of the people reading over our shoulders here will have more and better ideas. (Hint, hint … please comment!)

I know that the newspaper industry’s flagging health isn’t your responsibility, Craig and Jim, and I’ll agree that it’s not directly your fault. But with a little cooperation, we might find that Craigslist can help to turn around newspapers, and bring back some of those lost reporters and editors. I believe that Craigslist’s millions of users would appreciate that.

Will you help?

How bad do things have to get before publishers and classifieds managers are willing to do a complete (and badly needed) remodel of newspaper printed classified sections?

‘No one wants to be first. It’s amazing to me that they can’t/won’t/don’t want to try something different!’ -Bill Ostendorf

That question kept popping into my mind as I interviewed Bill Ostendorf, long-time newspaper designer and advertising consultant, about how to improve and save printed classifieds. As CEO of Creative Circle Advertising Solutions and Creative Circle Media Consulting (Providence, Rhode Island), Ostendorf is in the business of coming up with new ideas for improving newspaper operations and growing revenues, including lots of work with classifieds (print and online, but for this article I’m focusing mostly on print).

He and his team are creative folks, and just in the classifieds space they have at least a dozen concepts for improving and growing a newspaper’s classifieds that get presented each time they walk through a new door. Well, they’ve got many more ideas than that, of course, but those are the ones that Ostendorf is convinced will work at making a newspaper’s classifieds more successful — but haven’t been tried yet. As often as he’s pitched them to newspaper executives and gotten positive signals that they are good ideas that probably will work, no one has yet had the courage to implement them.

“I know they would work!” he says, and has the research to back it up. “But no one wants to be first. It’s amazing to me that (newspaper classifieds and advertising managers) can’t/won’t/don’t want to try something different!” (Ostendorf likens newspaper executives to lemmings, and says he wishes he could just push the first lemming over the cliff so the rest of the industry would follow.)

For example, one of the key weaknesses of most newspaper classifieds is that they are put off in their own section, which is read usually only by those people who are looking for something. Ostendorf believes, and he’s hardly alone in this thinking, that classifieds should also be included in other relevant sections throughout the newspaper:

• In the Sports section, add a featured grid of cars for sale. These ads can be from the regular Autos classified section, where advertisers have paid an extra upsell fee to be included in Sports.
• In the Gardening weekly section, include upsold ads from nurseries, landscape designers, and landscape construction companies.
• And so on.

Such classifieds-in-editorial-sections also present an opportunity for newspaper classifieds reps to sell some new and effective inventory outside of the traditional classifieds section, such as display ads from athletics stores and gyms to accompany the classifieds in the Sports section example above.

Ostendorf also advocates doing regular category classifieds specials, such as a weekly weddings and engagements ad special to accompany editorial content in the Lifestyles section. Or a special Graduates package in Lifestyles, where parents can buy classifieds ads — including photos — to celebrate their kids’ achievement. Do it in a classy way, he urges, with sophisticated design and graphics; avoid the cheesy balloons and flowers clip art.

The key point, says Ostendorf, is to add exposure of classifieds to newspaper readers who don’t know they want to buy something (like a set of golf clubs, say, spotted while reading the Sports section). That approach adds power to a classified ad beyond being in a section that a minority of newspaper readers don’t open because they’re not looking for something that particular day.

Stuck in the 1960s? You’ve got to be kidding

Getting such common-sense ideas implemented is tough in large part because of the conservative nature of middle-level newspaper classified managers, Ostendorf says. The typical classifieds section in a newspaper, after all, still looks like it could have been published in the 1960s. Not much has changed over the decades other than narrower columns and smaller type. There’s seldom color; there are seldom photos. “That’s so stupid, it’s hard to believe,” he says. (My head is nodding in agreement.)

And speaking of dumb, that would be a good way to describe the tiny type that many newspaper classifieds sections continue to use. I dare say I don’t need to explain why, as the average age of newspaper print readers continues to get older, small type is a really bad idea.

Ostendorf’s company does regular national surveys of newspaper readers on behalf of its clients. A 2006 survey focused on print classifieds found:

• 40% of classifieds readers said it’s hard to find things.
• 41% said classifieds sections are too hard to read.
• 38% said they’re too disorganized.
• 57% said they would use classifieds more if they were more legible.
• 59% said they would use classifieds more if photos accompanied ads.

That last point is a good innovation that more print classifieds sections should implement. (Though, frankly, to call adding photos an “innovation” is a bit silly. It’s more like an obvious feature that’s been ignored by many newspapers.) But the problem, complains Ostendorf, is that many newspaper front-end systems can’t accommodate classified advertisers uploading photos to accompany their ads.

That’s also a huge road block for many newspapers to effectively integrate print and online classifieds. “We’ve come up with lots of strategies (to do that), only to have newspaper executives say, ‘Our system can’t do that.’”

One key feature that Ostendorf would like to see is the ability for advertisers to change their ads from day to day; for example, for a 30-day run of a house for sale ad, the seller should be able to modify the price (or anything else) and have the change show up in the print edition the next day, as well as be reflected online.

Stamp out risk-averse thinking!

What is it going to take for newspapers to get serious about redesigning print classifieds so that they are relevant and successful in the Internet age? Ostendorf blames a risk-averse culture at many newspaper companies, where entrepreneurialism within the organization is still punished rather than rewarded. Many classifieds managers are compensated based on gross revenues or revenues minus costs, so trying something new and risky that has no guarantee of revenue success can mean personal loss. “It’s no wonder we’re not going anywhere,” he says.

What’s needed is for publishers to start providing incentives for classifieds managers to launch new initiatives, Ostendorf says, recognizing that two out of three may not work. Without a dose of entrepreneurialism, newspaper classifieds will continue to decline badly.

“Many of today’s classifieds managers were brought up in a culture where money was easy, so they didn’t take risks,” he says. They must not only be taught to take risks, but be incentivized to do so.

Newspaper classifieds are in a bad way. Things are truly awful enough that publishers and their classifieds managers can take some risks, try out some new ideas. Ostendorf has some for you to try.