If the
community newspaper of bygone days could be viewed as an economic engine, its
premium-grade fuel was the classified ads. Display advertising fluctuated by
the season and with the economy, and subscriptions barely covered the cost of
the ink and paper. But classified ads were there day in and day out, a steady
stream of dollars that certainly contributed significantly to many of my past
paychecks.
It was a
stream of revenue that was almost untouched by economic hard times; after all
that was when people might think of selling the second car or the couch sitting
in the garage. And they were the people’s ads, affordable to all. The Glendale Independent, a twice-weekly
local paper where I grew up used to advertise that it would print three lines
three times for $1.09. Five of those ads provided my paycheck for covering a
high school football game and left the paper with 45 cents profit.
They were
also the subject of jokes. In Howard Hawks’ His
Girl Friday, Rosalind Russell tells Cary Grant, “So he took the gun and
shot him in the classified ads.” You probably get the drift.
Invincible, But Vanquished
Classified
advertising was the one thing that people in the newspaper business always
figured that television and radio could never take from us. We were right about
TV and radio, but there was this thing called the Internet that we never saw
coming.
(For the
record, I also figured the weekly grocery ads would never go away, and I was
wrong about that, as well. But that had to do with the decline of the full-time
housewife, who had the time to comparison-shop those ads.)
The deal
that the Internet has given to newspapers is about as one-sided as the deal the
robber barons gave their factory workers before unions came along. The
newspapers bear the cost of hiring people to gather, write and edit the news,
then the Internet puts it out for nothing and uses it to attract customers and
sell advertising. But the unkindest cut of all was when Craig’s List and
similar websites did what TV and radio couldn’t — undercut and destroy the
classified ad section. This morning’s local paper had a scant quarter-page of
classifieds; 20 years ago it was six pages, minimum.
When the Unimaginable Happened
Technological
advance is notoriously unkind to the status quo, and classified ads are now as
obsolete as a buggy-whip factory. Posting an ad online has so many advantages
over print: It costs nothing, reaches a wider audience, and when the item in
question is sold, the ad can be taken down right away, rather than showing up
in the paper the next couple of days and generating numerous annoying phone
calls.
Two years
ago, when my son Nick decided to leave college and work for a while, we used
Craig’s List to find a cheap car from him. It eventually led us to Raul in
Fremont, who had a nice little 1990 Ford Ranger he was willing to part with for
my roll of $100 bills. It has served Nick (and us, since we’ve used the truck
for some hauling) very well.
Early next
month Nick will be going into the Army, and we’ll be putting the truck up for
sale again. My inner newspaperman would like to shell out the $1.09 (or
whatever it is now) to run an ad in the paper, but the businessman in me knows
we’ll be advertising on Craig’s list instead because that’s where we have the
best chance of making a quick sale. Sorry, newspapers. Nothing personal; it’s
just business.
