September 18, 2009 by ggackle
A recent article on wired.com about craigslist, the hugely popular online classified advertising site, prompted a revisit to craigslist quadcities to see how it's faring versus the two local online newspaper sites.
Craigslist quadcities has attracted a significant number of classified ad listings, but both qctimes.com and qconline.com have rolled out competing "free" online ad listings to try to stem the flow of listings to craigslist.
The qconline classified ads and auction site appears to be besting the local craigslist at least in the sheer number of listings. For the site's "Clothing Apparel," qconline lists more than 1,500 items for sale or auction. Not sure how many people actually participate in an "auction" for a second-hand boys t-shirt with a minimum bid of 25 cents, but the site obviously attracts quite a few posters.
The qctimes.com site offers a "no charge" option for a 7-day online posting, which can include one photo. Items eligible for free listings cannot exceed a $500 value. The number of Times classified listings aren't anything to write home about, and many are likely are generated by an online option for people placing ads in the printed newspaper.
Both the qconline.com and qctimes.com processes are very simple, but do require more personal information than needed with craigslist. On the positive side, requiring a bit more registration/personal information also keeps out many spam postings which crop up regularly on craigslist sites.
As anyone who has listed anything on craigslist can attest, its process is nearly transparent enabling users to create and post an ad with multiple photos in less than a minute. No hassles, no charges and very little personal information. Craigslist anonymizes your email so you won't end up with spam. Listings are good for 30 days.
Both qctimes.com and qconline.com have separate listings for homes and jobs, unlike craigslist, and both charge for job and home listings. Craigslist charges a very modest amount for job listings ($75 in San Francisco and $25 in most other metros). There's no charge for posting a job or a house on craiglist quad cities.
The old fashioned "print" classified ads still generate hefty revenue for newspapers. For fiscal 2008, classified advertising produced more than $234 million in revenue for Lee Enterprises, the chain which owns the QC Times, compared to $55 million from its online advertising.
'Accuracy' viewed as rare commodity in news coverage
The latest Pew Research Report on the Media reports just 29 percent of Americans think news organizations "generally get the facts straight," and nearly two-thirds (63 percent) say news stories are "often inaccurate."
While discouraging for journalists, the research findings are probably not so surprising given the range of "news organizations" - from the conservative Fox News network to the more liberal New York Times and CNN - all lumped together in the survey.
