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Classify under: Inevitable

On page 1 of today's Globe is a
NOTE TO READERS:

The Globe is no longer publishing a standalone classified advertising section Monday through Thursday. A classified section will appear in the paper on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and local classifieds may also be found in the Thursday regional sections. Classified ads can also be found 7 days a week at www.boston.com/classifieds.

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I guess craigslist is eating their lunch. How much do they charge per word?

On the other hand, I don't anticipate job adverts to leave the globe anytime soon.

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There used to be Help Wanted ads in the classified section every day. No longer. I think Monster.com and HotJobs.com and other websites have taken a big bite out of this category.

The Globe's annual "Big Help" will run next Sunday. Let's see how large it is.

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As in "you can't find what you want because we encripted it" unsorted mess of a classified that is. Most city papers sorted their job advertisements into much finer categories than the two or three catch-alls the Globe used. That's because they wanted to make it simple for the reader to find the ads for their profession.

With the Globe, all the job ads for seventy thousand different types of jobs were vaguely lumped up and so jumbled together. The two or three categories were also out of date. Professional Help - yeah, the Globe could sure use some! What a waste of pulp.

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How many of us can recall the last time we used a newspaper print classified section???

It almost sounds like a quaint practice of days gone by...

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I heard that a couple weeks ago, the Globe didn't publish a Sunday Magazine.

Can anyone confirm this? And know the real reason why?

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There was no Globe Sunday Magazine the Sunday after Christmas. This is not a new policy; the Globe has been doing this for several years. I think they omit one or two other issues each year (maybe the Sunday before or after Thanksgiving? and another around July 4th?)

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The problem is its so slow compared to the modern way of doing it. Normally when I do business on craigslist (except for job postings) everything is generally said and done before the end of the day. The speed is actually quite amazing if you think about it, it used to take days to get the classified ad up in the paper, then someone would look through it and call you. I actually remember as a kid we would get the "Want Ad" paper every week (or was it every month???) and everyone in the family would take a turn looking through it. My first car came from that paper, what a piece of junk lol. It did a much better job then the Globe and even back in the 80's I dont remember anyone running to the Globe for their classified section.

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If you're referring to the Want Advertiser, it failed last October. Their bankruptcy is still causing problems for advertisers who paid in advance.

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I remember seeing that, it was also inevitable, but while it was alive and kicking it did a much better job the Boston Globe classifieds. The one thing that I notice with Craigslist is that it kind of pushes us to only look for things close to us, where as the Want Advertiser seemed to encourage far and wide searches. The loss of something like that paper must hurt those places and people in areas like NH where the concentration of people is very low. I often find myself looking at craiglist and narrowing things down by location, cutting out anyone who isnt within a few miles of where I am.

The Want Advertiser should have seen Craigslist coming when it first came to town, they could have set up a vibrant online site that worked using paid ad's in the form of banners. Assuming it was set up like Craigslist where most ads are free, there would be an option of running ads on the right hand side of the page (ala google.) The death of the Want Advertiser reminds me, on a smaller scale of course, the problems Kodak and Polaroid have had in the past decade since Digital Cameras came into the market. Once again these companies were poised to be able to capitalize on their name recongnition and instead just assumed everything would be ok. Kodaks on again off again love affair with Lexmark is quite entertaining, so are its new attempts at getting into the market by using old D list celebs to push their goods.

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Didn't the Want ADvertiser also publish a couple of stand-alone cars and motorcycles for sale magazines? Are those still being published?

It seems as though specialized magazines such as those would continue to succeed. I think the market for these includes people both on and off the internet, plus many people want to know where the sellers are located and want them to be close by to check out. ebay and craigslist don't seem as easy to use.

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They published Want Ad Powered... which was mostly unpaid advertising to keep the private party content up. (if you still have one, count the number of dealer ads. Not many).

Wheels Etc (Powered's predecessor) was a dog since 2002-3.

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The bad news is that the Want Advertiser failed. The good news is that Uncle Henry's is reviving it under the name Uncle Henry's Mass Edition. This new printed book will be in stores on March 5 and will be out weekly thereafter.

Part of the reason that the Want Advertiser failed was their business model. Uncle Henry's will allow ads to be placed at no charge using the free ad form in every book.

Uncle Henry's and Uncle Henry's Mass Edition will still have something Craigslist doesn't and that is a hard copy in addition to www.unclehenrys.com. There are people who want to take it with them and don't want to spend even more time on a computer.

People always talk in absolutes and how craigslist is hurting newspaper classifieds - the reality is newspaper classifieds set themselves up for this by not staying current. Every venture has it positives and negatives - the newspapers just didn't find good positives to highlight. Uncle Henry's has and is looking forward to taking the place of the Want Advertiser.

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The booklet should be free, not the ad's.

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...that is, unless you're using "Craig's List" as a metaphor for the much larger Digital Revolution and the hide-bound thinking of those in the journalism biz.

For data, see http://analyticjournalism.blogharbor.com/blog/_arc...

-tj

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Losing this source of income has got to hurt.

Still, to follow up on an earlier thread, I don't think (based on absolutely no first-hand knowledge) that classifieds could have brought in that much money. Meaning, even if they were back at the levels pre-internet, I don't see how that would help them that much.

Adam, as you pointed out, I think it's the display ads. There are fewer ads in the front section than ever before because there's no Filene's and limited Macy's and Lord & Taylor ads. It seems as though the auto ads are still steady.

Paying $1 per subscriber per month for online access (Boston.com) would bring in ... $250,000 if you look at current circulation, but perhaps a lot more, since a lot of people who read it online weren't subscribers, but even if you got 1 million people to pay, a million bucks a month isn't going to help the hemorrhaging, I don't think.

The Globe (and, to a certain extent, the (ahem) Herald) have great blog sections - which bring in readers and therefore pageviews, but there's just no way that this would ever become a revenue stream, no?

Obviously, the geniuses on Morrissey Blvd and in Herald Square have thought long and hard about all of this; apparently, without any bright ideas.

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Classified ads have been. by far, the most profitable advertisements for newspaper publishers. There were so many on each page, the revenues per column-inch were immense. I've seen numbers that indicate most metropolitan dailies got about one-third of their ad revenue from classifieds. And that is all going away. Yellow pages publishers are facing the same issue. Most people looking for a plumber or a chiropractor in a geographical area nowadays use Google rather than flipping through the Yellow book.

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