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 switching careers and going back to school again for another degree). I’ve quizzed her on how she finds out about school-librarian job openings, which typically are posted at school district websites (and they don’t usually pay for job ads in local newspapers or place ads on Craigslist).

Ergo, she has to remember to manually check the district websites’ job boards. (If she’s lucky, one might have an e-mail alert service for new openings.)

For newspapers, the curation opportunity is to link to those ads by employers (like school districts) that only post on their own website job boards. If the idea is to make newspaper classifieds relevant again, then providing a public service that would be useful in situations like Suzanne’s is a smart thing to do.

How to make money from this? Selling contextual display ads around the “classifieds as content” is the obvious one. Another: Charge for a custom job-search automated agent (e-mail or phone text message alerts) that looks across job listings that are only on government or corporate websites, as well as paid listings from your own classifieds or partners’.

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 classifieds sections on selected days of the week (Mondays and Tuesdays being the most obvious days to drop), while still publishing a paper 6 or 7 days a week, as always.

Retired newspaper publisher turned media blogger Martin Langeveld goes so far as to strongly advocate that papers publish only a couple times a week and go exclusively digital the rest. (Emphasis: That’s coming from a seasoned print executive, not some crazy media pundit with new-media stars in his eyes like Jeff Jarvis, or me.)

Y’know (to borrow a phrase from Caroline Kennedy), I think there’s a very positive side to this trend:

It will force newspaper classifieds operations to shift their focus, attention, and resources much more on online and mobile classifieds services. If anyone in a newspaper classifieds department needed a wake-up call that digital is the focus for the future, this is it. It’s a loud call for more and aggressive innovation.

If you need suggestions for enhancing your digital operation, there are plenty of ideas scattered around this website. I highlighted a few of the best ideas in this blog entry a few days ago. Also check out the recommendations from our Guest Experts here.

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 some classified ads.

Just prior to the Globe’s decision, Gannett’s Cincinnati Enquirer stopped printing classifieds on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Expect to see more of this.

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 influx of unfiltered material, and create a significant demand for filters and editors who can find/sort/select and recommend contextual quality content within verticals. This ‘Curation’ function has the potential to give media enterprises whose current business models are under tremendous pressure a new and important role in the web media world. What makes the Curation Economy so powerful, and so disruptive, is that the core resource required to building a high-quality curated experience is not capital, but knowledge. This will drive an emerging class of content entrepreneurs — people who are able to turn their trusted personal brands into high-quality filtered content destinations. As the number of publishers grows dramatically, content consumers will hunger for new trusted sources. These many creators and consumers on the move will fuel whole new businesses and categories.”

I think he’s right about that from the editorial content perspective. And though he doesn’t mention advertising or classifieds, I think the model of “curation” presents an opportunity for newspaper publishers to help resurrect their fumbling classifieds operations. (It’s an opportunity for entrepreneurs, too, of course.)

How’s that? A newspaper’s classifieds website could expand its reach to search across multiple sources of ads, beyond what it may already be doing.

Sites like Oodle.com already work with some newspaper websites, which can add the ads that Oodle aggregates from 80,000 websites (filtered by location) to the newspaper website’s own ads, and the newspaper gets an additional revenue stream. The newspaper industry already curates some categories of ads with its jointly owned services like Careerbuilder, which gives one newspaper website’s readers access to job listings from all the other papers in the network as well as many niche websites.

But consider that some categories of classified ads are pretty much dead from a revenue perspective — with Craigslist dominating in some categories and effectively forcing newspapers to give away free ads. (E.g., look at your local Craigslist for a bicycle for sale and at your local newspaper’s classifieds; the paper’s bike listings are probably scant.) So for such categories as general merchandise, curating for classified ads from other sources can grow the utility of a newspaper’s classifieds website, by keeping ad readers from having to go elsewhere when they don’t find what they want with the newspaper site’s ads.

Where newspapers need to get creative is curating ads from other sources. Pull in RSS feeds of ads from, for example, bike shop or cycling club websites; if free Craigslist ads are killing your apartment-rental ads, look for sources of ads like university housing websites. If they’re no longer spending money with you for newspaper ads, bring in the ad feeds from housing rental services to beef up the quantity of ads that apartment seekers see on the newspaper website. Then sell contextual display advertising around the enlarged sections of free ads.

Since many newspaper publishers have been forced to give away ads free in some categories, they’ve had to resort to treating the ads as content and selling ads around them. (There are also upsell opportunities.) But that strategy won’t have much success if your free-category ad quantities are 1/10th that of the local Craigslist site. Aggregating or curating ads from external sources can solve that problem.

(As for ads placed directly with the newspaper classifieds, they of course can get top placement or highlighting. External ads will be credited to the source, linking back to it.)

In the short life of ReinventingClassifieds.com, a lot of outstanding ideas have been floated for helping newspapers resurrect their classifieds businesses. As the year 2008 has closed out (and is there anybody out there in media land who isn’t happy to have seen it pass?), we thought we’d save you the time of combing through old blog items and summarize what we believe to be some of the best suggestions that newspaper publishers and classifieds managers should implement in 2009. (In no particular order.)

1. Put design talent on the job of redesigning classifieds

There have been some high-profile print-edition newspaper redesigns this year (e.g., some Tribune Co. newspapers), but often the design teams were kept busy on the editorial product and ignored the classifieds section. Many print newspaper classifieds sections still look like something out of the 1970s or 1980s. They still cram in as much ad text on a page as possible, with little thought to usability and ease of searching for something specific.

So put your design team to work on a total modernization of the print classifieds section. A decent example of this was what the St. Petersburg Times (Florida) did in 2008, rethinking, redesigning, and renaming their classifieds section as BayLink.

And while the design team is at it, make sure they are doing the best job possible in designing links, tie-ins, and promotion to the online and mobile components of the newspaper’s overall classifieds experience.

Finally, your design team could probably improve your online classifieds. Many newspaper website classifieds are still archaic in their design and functionality, and can’t compete with some of the better online-only classifieds operations.

2. Use print cutbacks to reposition resources to digital

As you’re no doubt aware, a growing number of newspapers are cutting the number of print editions that they publish each week in order to save money. The Cincinnati Enquirer hasn’t cut print editions from the weekly line-up yet, but it will stop publishing the classifieds section on Mondays and Tuesdays.

This is not all bad news; consider the silver lining. A successful reinvention of newspaper classifieds will mean doing a much better job with website classifieds and developing new mobile classifieds services. As a newspaper staff and management’s demands for producing the daily print edition decline, there will be more energy (and urgency) put into creating killer online and mobile services. Classifieds managers should make sure they’re a big part of that.

3. Stop being timid, dammit!

2009 is going to be a rough year for the newspaper industry. On the digital front, until now the majority of newspapers have made incremental moves toward developing and offering more and better online and mobile content and services. This year will require that more radical change occurs. So start experimenting. Experiment some more. Kill the failures quickly and move on to another. Experimentation can include print; must include online and mobile; and ideally should integrate them all.

It’s abundantly clear that some newspapers are going to die in 2009 (many largely due to the debt sins of their parent companies, an economic situation that makes it unlikely that buyers can be found, and investors’ overall perception that newspapers are no longer a reasonable place for their money). In order not to become one of the casualties, classifieds managers must start innovating radically.

4. Act like your CEO (is supposed to)

Out of the recent industry Crisis Summit of newspaper CEOs held by the American Press Institute came some excellent tips for newspaper leaders. The list applies well to those who run newspaper classifieds operations:

• Act like an entrepreneur; stop thinking first about why a new approach won’t work.
• Create a portfolio of initiatives; recognize that some will fail and kill those quickly.
• Don’t wait for every data point before taking action. “Ready, fire, aim” should be the operating principle.
• Use downsizing as a tool when necessary to achieve a larger strategy, not simply as a cost-cutting goal.
• Figure out how to leverage core competencies into new directions and new niches.
• Be honest with employees, and get ideas from those on the front lines.
• Don’t sit and cower and weep about your problems. Inspire.
• Collaborate with outside entities that can bring expertise or resources.
• Pay attention to, and leverage, the brand.

5. Think outside the ‘walled garden’

One of the biggest mistakes that newspaper publishers and classifieds managers can make is in thinking that their product is a single destination for the reader/consumer. We’re in an age of information overload. That old Bruce Springsteen song, “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On),” is a joke today. Media consumers have millions of destinations to choose from in all forms of media. For 2009, focus on getting your classifieds out beyond just your own newspaper’s website(s), print edition(s), and mobile services. How can you help your classified advertisers to share their ads on social networks that they participate in? Can you facilitate getting the ads they place through you in other (even competing) newspapers by sharing revenue? Can you get their ads placed on other relevant classifieds websites? That’s a big thing you should be focusing on in 2009.

6. Become a classifieds portal

For lots of newspapers, Craigslist has decimated some of their classifieds categories, especially in the merchandise categories, but it’s also hurt in areas like apartment rentals, personals, non-skilled jobs, etc. Online, consider pulling in RSS ad feeds from other classifieds services, so your website becomes a place where consumers can find what they want, even if it may not be an ad that you sold directly. Consider working with vendors like Oodle and iList, which can facilitate that. Again, get your mind away from the walled-garden model, which is a dead end in the digital-dominated, over-saturated media environment that we now live in.

7. Get serious about mobile

You know that iPhone thingie? They’re selling pretty well (16 million at last count), and they’re spawning competitors like the Storm from Blackberry, and upcoming smartphones using Google’s Android mobile-device operating system. Within a year, iPhone-like phones (that is, handheld computers with fast Internet connectivity, GPS-based location services, and a huge and growing number of incredibly useful applications) will become the norm as consumers trade in their old(-fashioned) handsets.

Classifieds managers should not be content with letting smartphone owners use their web browsers to search or browse the ads on the newspaper’s website. (That’s clunky.) They must develop easy-to-use applications for the phone. Particularly promising are apps that utilize the phones’ location abilities. Develop an app that a consumer can search for, say, 2003-2005 Honda Civics for sale locally and see the locations of each pinpointed on a map. Click the pin for phone number and car details; click the number to call the dealer or owner; then click again to get road directions from current location. Apps like that already exist from independent developers. Hire or contract them to get you up to speed on mobile opportunities and apply that to classifieds.

8. Rethink your ad rates, and simplify them

We hear complaints (and heartily agree) that many newspapers are holding on to complicated rate structures that turn off ad buyers. Especially with website placement of ads by the user (you DO have that, right?), keep it simple. Easy-to-grasp package deals (price A, price B, etc.) are preferable to the complicated piecemeal approach ($1 extra for bold headline; $5 for placement at top of section; $3 for a grey screen; $10 extra per photo; etc.), which can tire and annoy the customer just wanting to quickly place an ad.

Is Craigslist strong in your city? If it’s selling job ads for 30 days at $75 and you’re charging 3 times that, well, take a reality check and get competitive. Some of your categories may have to go free if they haven’t already, since most Craigslist ads are free to place.

9. Treat print classifieds more like a catalog

Media and classifieds consultant Joe Michaud suggested an intriguing approach to printed newspaper classifieds: Treat them like a retail catalog, which doesn’t feature every item in the retailer’s inventory but rather promotes a set of select items (e.g., clothes based on the season). His idea is that the printed classifieds become less of a mass of tiny, unreadable type, and more of an effective promotional vehicle for some products and services, and a way to drive consumers to the full inventory of ads available on the newspaper’s website or via its mobile-device service.

10. Upsell and place classifieds in editorial sections

This idea has its critics, but some newspaper designers and consultants think that it’s a smart idea to get select blocks of classifieds into appropriate editorial sections (print and online). The print sports section, for instance, could feature a tabular block of sports cars that the advertisers have paid an extra fee to be included. Services classifieds could be set to rotate on pages in the website’s gardening area. Upsold product-specific blocks can even be placed in other publications or websites (your own or competing publishers’).

11. Take video seriously

There’s lots of opportunity with video ads, so start to take advantage of it. Nowadays, most people have either a digital still camera that also shoots video, a video-capable cell phone, or a video camera, so it’s simple for anyone to shoot their own video to sell their house, car, bicycle, or whatever. Consultants like Alan Jacobson and Janet DeGeorge believe that newspapers still have an opening to create video classifieds services and incorporate them into their existing classifieds offerings, especially since many online-only classifieds competitors (like Craigslist) don’t support video ads. Print classifieds for homes for sale, for instance, should point to online video tours of the properties. A newspaper could even hire a videographer to shoot video home tours for Realtors who don’t want to do it themselves. Video WILL play a growing role in classifieds soon, so move on this quickly.

12. Treat classifieds as content

Especially with Craigslist affecting so many newspapers by offering free ads, newspapers in Craigslist cities have seen some of their classifieds categories decimated, and as a result some have switched to various forms of free ad offers (usually limited to individual sellers and for limited length). There are several strategies for dealing with this, including offering upsold premium services to enhance the initial free ad: premier placement, extra photos, additional fee publication in print and not just online, etc. Another is to treat a page of free ads as CONTENT and sell relevant display ads around them.

Taken a step further, allow other web publishers to grab feeds of your free ads, which they can use to sell display ads around. But if you limit the feeds to those ads that pay you for wider-distribution, you and the participating publishers win.

Dive in to the site…

You can find more detail about the ideas above by diving into this site deeper and reading the articles posted by us and by an impressive list of guest experts. Click on.

Just a last-minute reminder: The deadline for ReinventingClassifieds.com’s Best Idea for Reinventing Classifieds competitions (one for media/advertising pros, one for students, each with a $500 cash prize) is the end of the day on Dec. 31, 2008.

We’re not looking for lengthy proposals (though it’s possible one might win). We’ll judge on the merits of the idea. So if you can bang out a couple paragraphs of absolute intellectual brilliance about how the newspaper industry can revamp and get back into the classifieds game and get it submitted by the deadline, we could be sending you some money.

Remember, we’re not asking you to envision how to magically make printed newspaper classifieds successful and relevant again. (Good luck with that!) Think more about how online and mobile technologies can be leveraged alongside print. But don’t let that limit you. Be creative.

Pro contest entry form

Student contest entry form

The latest trend in the beleaguered newspaper industry is cutting print editions from some days of the week. In recent weeks we’ve seen the Christian Science Monitor decide to publish only one print edition a week on Sundays, with the rest of the week covered online only; a number of newspapers have cut back on printing the paper on one or more days a week to save money; and Detroit’s two dailies decided to halt home delivery of newspapers four days out of the week.

The latest twist: Via the AP and E&P, Gannett’s Cincinnati Enquirer will cease printing classifieds sections on Mondays and Tuesdays, “part of a cost-cutting response to falling revenue and a decline in spending by advertisers.”

For many newspapers, classifieds sections have become embarrassingly thin on some days, so this is a logical move. Focus can (and should) be on those days where special category sections — autos, careers, homes — are published. That’s where the money (still) is, anyway.

If your newspaper is contemplating a Cincinnati-like move, however, make sure that on those days with no printed classifieds that the newspaper promotes the hell out of your online (and mobile, if you have them) classifieds services.

As we end 2008, we media people can only hope that 2009 will be an improvement. Of course, all signs indicate that it’ll be even worse. Well, whatever happens (ad sales and circulation for newspapers plummet even more; some media companies follow over-leveraged Tribune Co. into bankruptcy; some newspapers, in big towns and small, shut down as investors no longer want to take a chance on a declining industry, even at fire-sale prices), it’s sure to be an eventful and stressful year ahead.

Reinvent! … but save the core.

What’s the life of a newspaper classifieds manager going to be like? Here’s a guess. They’ll either become super innovators, trying out new approaches, new partnerships, new technology, and new solutions — or get out of the business, retire, or get booted out the door by their anxious bosses. I don’t think there’s much room in the newspaper business in 2009 for complacency. It’s innovate or die. (More specifically on the latter, innovate, fail, then die; or fail to innovate and die.)

The word of the year: radical. It’s no longer reasonable to make incremental changes and hope that they can turn around a declining classifieds operation. This is especially the case at newspapers owned by over-leveraged media giants that went on acquisition spending sprees a couple years ago, expecting revenue numbers to decline modestly but still produce enough revenue to service the debt. Now that the ad declines for many of those companies turned out to be much worse, and some newspaper parent companies are beginning to fail at meeting their debt service requirements, the pressure is on to get newspaper advertising back on a growth track.

In the year ahead, we’ll offer up ideas, strategies, and solutions that we hope will help. We still believe that newspapers have a strong position in classified advertising (in print, online, and mobile — though mostly the growth must come from the latter two), but they must act smarter and more aggressively with innovation.

For when you return from your holiday breaks and ponder how to survive — even beat — the year ahead, here’s one tip that we at ReinventingClassifieds.com believe is vital to your survival. (We’ll have more suggestions soon.)

Reinvent your classifieds operation with digital at the center, if you haven’t already done that. When an advertiser calls your classifieds rep, contracted call center, or places an ad via your website or mobile phone application, you are collecting all the information you can so that it can be used in appropriate ways in multiple media formats — the print edition being just one.

In 2009, the print edition is NOT king, even if print classifieds are still bringing in more revenue than digital classifieds. Place bets on the future, not the slipping business model that is the past.

Once past that psychological barrier, start thinking about how to get your advertisers’ messages out to as many places as possible, not just the print edition of the newspaper and its website. Become THE place that advertisers come to reach potential customers wherever they may be spending time (PCs, phones, game machines, Kindles, you name it). You are no longer in a company that runs a newspaper and a website. If you still believe that, it truly is time to move on.

Good luck in 2009. We’ll be here to help.

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 managers should find these ones most relevant: 1, 2, 5, 9, and 11.

A point I make in the column is that for many daily papers, it’s pretty much inevitable that they’ll at some point cut back on the number of days that they publish a print edition. As papers begin to trim to the point where some days’ printed papers are alarmingly thin, it makes sense to consolidate and publish fewer substantial editions — and to beef up online and mobile services for breaking news on those non-print days. It’s the combination of print and digital that will persuade consumers to believe that the newspaper brand is still a powerful one that’s important in their lives.

Here’s a classifieds strategy that can be implemented should your newspaper reduce its print frequency. Focus on each print day to offer a powerful category classifieds section: Autos on Friday; Real Estate on Sunday; Recruitment on Monday; Stuff on Wednesday … whatever makes the most sense. Yeah, you’ve probably always done that; but you’ll have less room to push those categories on other days.

Then use print promotion to drive readers to the classifieds for other categories that are presented smartly online and for mobile devices (phones). That is, if Autos is the special section on Fridays, also promote the other categories by pushing people online or to mobile.

If this happens at your paper, you MUST do a better job and be more creative and useful with your online and mobile classifieds services. While print won’t go away and those weekly category sections can continue to be big money makers, the new emphasis must be on digital. With fewer print editions and a weak online/mobile classifieds offering, your outlook won’t be good.

I’ll have more to say on effective print + digital classifieds strategies soon.