Classified Secrets

Getting back to the Indy Star's local-local sections:

One of the things that has struck me in the ongoing Death to Print debates is: A lot of the Death to Print people don't read the ads. I read them a lot less than I used to. As journalists, we look at the journalism. As a copy editor, I look at the headlines and layout. But we are not the readers. And as the NAA and others repeatedly point out, print advertising, when compared to radio, TV, and banner or floating Web ads, is the only type that is not an interruption. (Although click-through ads probably aren't either.) Journalist savants probably miss the role newspaper advertising plays for the general reader, even as they decry its loss.

So what does the Star offer in the North Indy Star? The display ads are an interesting mix, from J.C. Sipe Jewelers, which has been in Indianapolis forever, to a really gross ad for a shingles vaccine. There are a couple of pages of restaurant ads accompanied by an advertorial on one restaurant; but the Star has had this since I was in high school. These are zoned, but even so there are restaurants Downtown on the one hand and 20 miles away in Noblesville on the other.

No, what's remarkable is that even though, as we know, Classified is Dead, the Star is still trying to make it work with Community Classifieds. Dogs for Sale is a particularly hot one. And while generic real estate classifieds have largely disappeared, the weekend's Open Houses still work well in print -- you peruse Realtor.com to see what's available, but the newspaper, because of timeliness, still has a role in saying what you can walk though on Sunday.

What really strikes me, though, is "Jobs Close to Home." In the Friday issue there were eight tab pages. We've all been told that professional recruitment ads don't work in print anymore, and why: If you're an accountant looking for an accounting position, easier (and more professional) to look online. But blue-collar jobs still work effectively in print, because the person may not be looking for a specific position -- he or she is looking for a job.

"Jobs Close to Home" is a wonderful idea for a zoned edition whose focus, as noted before, seems to be largely on families with the parents in their late 20s and 30s. You don't want to work 30 miles away, because how will you pick up the kids? So there are a lot of medical, nursing and billing jobs on the North Side here, as well as retail. And there is a territory manager for a cigar company, welders, truck mechanics. utility locators.

A big company in my area, like Merck, probably won't find newspapers a good bet anymore for the sort of high-level jobs it used to advertise in papers like the Inquirer and the Star-Ledger, because it is trying to recruit highly trained people from throughout the Northeast. Why buy all those papers when you can just post online? If the Public Service company is looking for a lineman, though, the newspaper starts looking better. Finally, these classifieds have color ads scattered all through them, and it's a tab. Newspaper classifieds are usually so depressing because they are lines of small black and white type. These ads look like something you might actually want to answer.

Local-local success doesn't mean you have to open a bureau of 40 people. You just have to figure out what "local" really means.