JP Morgan published a report concerning the state of the newspaper. In this report the analyst Alexi Quadrani posts the classified issue as one of the central problem of today’s print newspapers:
“The classified revenue plunge is one of the more worrisome aspects, since it represents about one-third of revenue and is the most profitable of […]

“Newspaper Classifieds: A franchise lost,” reads the headline of Bob Wyman’s latest blog post, which is an exceedingly pessimistic view of newspapers’ chances of recovering lost ground and lost revenues in the classifieds business.
Writes the long-time media-technology innovator and current member of Google’s technical staff, “I argue that (newspapers) shouldn’t put much effort into online […]

Dan Pacheco
Bakersfield Californian

Today people can publish anything for free online, including ads. That means that the act of publishing is not really what they’re paying a newspaper for, or anyone for that matter. They’re paying to get their message out to a specific audience.
A specific audience is different from “the largest audience possible,” which is […]

Robertson Adams

I think classifieds will take at least two routes forward. First, I think buyers and sellers will connect through web services such as SOAP, which means my mom would find an intermediary such as her local newspaper which would create a search agent that would find qualified buyers for her home or car, and […]

As we ramp up ReinventingClassifieds.com, I’ve been asking people within my professional media contact network to share their views about the future of newspaper classifieds and solutions for resurrecting them. After covering and being involved in the new media world for a decade and a half, I know lots of very smart people.
Alas, so far […]

The latest annual report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, “The State of the News Media 2008,” is out, and it paints a dire picture of the newspaper industry. Much of the reason things are so dire, of course, is because newspaper classifieds are in significant decline.

To save you from plowing through the massive […]