So I am going to start off my first Burlington post by saying that I really like the SevenDays weekly newspaper, and for more than just the kinky ads that you can find in section B.  They are a little light on the news but who the hell reads their news from a paper anymore.  They do a great job reporting on local stuff, you can find their local rss feed at the bottom of this page.

The Burlington Free Press… not so good.  Businesses in Burlington can’t stand them, less and less people are reading their crap that is almost all AP, and there are rumors that their own employees have been jumping ship just to avoid sinking too. I have a real issue with the Free Press and am going to do my best to resist a case of typing tourette’s.   My main issue is that they won’t let me say “eBay” in any of the ads that I had previously run with them.  Now this might not seem like a big *shit* *whore* issue, but it really shows the underlying factors contributing to the paper’s decline.  They won’t let me say eBay in ads because it is Gannett (parent company) policy.  The idea is that eBay has cut into classified ad revenue so badly that their only choice is to blacklist my company and no doubt hundreds of other sellers across the country.  This is foolishness for the following reasons…

a.)  The $300/wk that I was running in ads with the Free Press far exceeds the amount of revenue they would make from the 1-2 people a week that use my service instead of placing a classified ad.

b.) I know the number is 1-2 a week because these people come to my shop with stuff to sell after complaining that the ads did not generate a single call and that classified ads suck.

c.) Newspapers need to make moves make them more accessible and viable in an increasingly wired world.  You are not going to hurt eBay by refusing to run ads mentioning their company, (especially when you run stories about them,) you are only turning away revenue and making yourselves look like a bunch of ignorant gray-haired pricks.

Ok, that did not go so well.  It should be noted that SevenDays allows me to run my ads that say eBay in their classified section… and their classified business is still doing OK!