and if all else fails, we'll raise the price...
Posted on 01/17/2008 8:14:39 PM PST by Milhous
The Chicago Tribune has announced that it is ending help wanted ads on weekdays. In its place will be a section on Tuesdays with basic information and Web IDs that will point people toward online listings in the Tribune’s CareerBuilder section. (The Web ID concept has been used at other newspapers with reportedly mixed results.) What is noteworthy about the announcement is not that a newspaper is dismantling something else within the paper and either sending readers to its Web site or giving up on it altogether. Newspapers have been making such moves aggressively in recent years to cut costs — but almost always in content such as stock market, TV, movie and event listings. What is unusual about the announcement is the dismantling of an advertising section, especially something as important as employment. Print decline is inevitable and continuous for readership, circulation, revenue and profit. The only real questions are the pace of decline and to what extent media companies can compensate online. The most likely answers: fast and not enough.
CHICAGO In the most radical move from print to digital advertising by a major newspaper, the Chicago Tribune announced Monday it is eliminating help-wanted ads from the newspaper on weekdays.
Instead, there will be a listing of basic information in the business section every Tuesday. The listing, called "Careerbuilder QuickFind," will refer readers to the full recruitment ad on chicagotribune.com/careerbuilder through a Web ID.
Print help-wanted classified will continue to run in the Sunday paper under Careerbuilder section title, but the Tribune said the section will have "a bold new look with fewer columns, larger ads, and clear headings that enable easier page scanning and navigation."
The new Sunday section debuts Jan. 20, with the weekly QuickFind launching Jan. 22.
"Chicago Tribune and the rest of the newspaper industry face the same challenges with shifts in help wanted advertising, and we are taking the lead on reinventing the way we present our job listings," Ellen Glassberg, the paper's director of recruitment advertising, said in a statement. "We see this challenge as an opportunity for us to retool our recruitment advertising offerings and fully integrate the online and print job search experience to be hyper-focused on the needs of job seekers."
As reported, the Tribune launched its redesign Monday with a new nameplate, narrower page width, and some changes in section head typefaces.
and if all else fails, we'll raise the price...
With the terrible economy, there probably aren’t many help-wanted ads, and even those few likely will disappear rapidly as the Greatest Depression continues to intensify over the next several years. Destitute job-seekers moreover cannot afford necessities like adequate nutrition, let alone the luxury of a copy of the Chicago Tribune.
Buh....bye.
They gotta use their coin for life's necessities - a spliff and a brew.
This is the first major step into the vortex of nothing for the Trib..
There is two reasons they are doing this:
1. This is minimal readership of the classifieds.
2. Because of #1 and Craig’s list, very few idiots are willing to pay for paper classified ads.
CareerBuilder is the only viable job search tool in some places (like Fresno). When someone builds a competitor with credibility, a huge revenue source for the Fresno Bee will be gone.
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