Tear down the factory. Start with classifieds.
Despite all the talk of newspapers as information companies, the current round of cost cutting makes it clear what publishers think their real business is: Running factories to turn out paper products.
I’m picking on Ottaway, but we’ve heard the same line from every publisher in the country. Classified revenue is tanking, so what to do? Lay off newsroom employees, of course. Here’s a graph from a Cape Cod Times story:
The Standard-Times newsroom absorbed more cuts than any other department, losing three full-time and three part-time employees. The other full-time employees are from the advertising and marketing departments. Two other positions, currently vacant, also were eliminated.
Why not instead try shedding the albatross that is dragging down the industry? Why not instead try beefing up what brings people to the paper in the first place?
A good place to start is with classifieds. Classifieds always have been the sacred cow because they were the cash cow. But lately they have started to look more like the lame, diseased cows we see being prodded into slaughterhouses.
Yet instead of intentionally shedding print classifieds to cut production costs, publishers shed newshole and the reporters who fill it.
And no, I’m not forgetting classifieds’ other contribution to newspapers: Drawing readers, especially younger readers. But the cold, hard fact is that they’re really not doing a very good job of that anymore, either.
So here’s the plan:
- Make private-party classifieds free. Slash the cost for contract advertisers.
- Charge for ads that require human intervention, for priority placement and other enhancements. Many Craigslist ads are poorly written. Maybe charge for expert advice on wording, which also then buys priority placement.
- Stop running daily classifieds as they exist today. Run all car ads one day a week, all real estate another, all garage sales another (or at least all that pay a small upcharge). That helps give the ads the bulk to compare to Auto Trader and other publications and gives readers a call to action to buy the paper on a specific day. It also slashes costs. (All ads would be available at all times online.)
- Instead of a big, gray page of liners, publish the ads on letter-sized paper inserted into the paper. That makes the ads more attractive and easier to carry while driving around to garage sales, open houses, etc. It also eliminated the need to balance sections, artificially fill the classified section, etc.
That’s a start. It’s a good way to break the obsession with the manufacturing process. It’s a way to start viewing classifieds as information, not a section. It reduces revenue, but that revenue is disappearing anyway; this at least helps preserve the bulk of information to draw eyeballs.
It’s a crazy plan, I know, but it might just help pull papers out of the death spiral so many are in right now.
Update: Somehow until today I have missed a new site called reinventingclassifieds.com. It’s run by Steve Outing, so most of you probably already know about it. If not, take a look.
Tags: Classifieds
