What I mean by that title, of course, is that the classifieds battle is far from over.
A lot of people who work in news have a tendency to wave their hands and go “well, that’s gone,” with a sort of frustrating fatalism that makes me want to shake people and say “take control of your own destiny!”
Benjamin Spillman recently shot me an e-mail to check out a post he’d written advocating that we “keep the paper in newspapers.”
While I disagree with his fundamental point, I happen to think he’s 100% dead-on with regards to classified advertising:
Newspapers should continue to charge for classifieds, they just need to make sure they deliver a better product and service than the free classified listings like Craigs List.
Anyone who has used Craigs List knows what needs improvement.
There needs to be better screening to weed out scams, there should be a way for non professionals to get a professional photo with their ad, there should be customer support by phone, the ad listing service should cross reference your listing with others like it so you can see where your price fits with the marketplace and the listing service should offer a central voice mail service so you don’t have to give out your own phone number if you don’t wish to.
This fits right in with Kevin Kelly’s insanely brilliant distillation of things that are better than free: the newspaper has an opportunity to add non-copyable value to their classifieds product.
Like Yahoo! in 1999, craigslist is now a sub-par industry standard. There is room for real improvement in the experience, and I think newsbrands could take real advantage of that space if they wanted to.
Eat Sleep Publish is a Seattle-based blog that explores the difficulties and opportunities currently facing the publishing industry. 
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