A Descriptive & Integrative Analysis
Author Mark Toner was educated at NYU and graduated with a degree in journalism. He is currently employed as a staff writer for Presstime Magazine, an E-Magazine focusing on advertising and media issues. He currently resides in New York City. The article “Online Classifieds” (Feb. 2000) was written by Toner with the purpose of showing the significant shift of classified advertising away from traditional prints sources like newspapers to Online classified advertisements. While the lion’s share of classified advertising and profits are still the domain of print media, Toner warns that ignoring this shift may see many publishers arrive to late at the Online classified advertising profit trough. As Toner (2000, 1) asks at the opening of his article “Many publishers have gotten the message, but are they moving quickly enough?”
The methodology Toner used is basically a literature review in which he accumulates statistics, report findings, and other data like classified advertising revenues from print and electronic sources. For instance, the author reports from the NAA Classified in Crisis report “a rapidly closing window on print classified advertising, with newspapers losing up to 50 percent of all revenue to online classified sites if they failed to act” (Toner, 2000, 1). In addition to reviewing the available literature and other sources of documented information, Toner conducted a variety of interviews with primary sources such as Charlene Li, former publisher of Online Presence and Chairman and CEO of BrassRing, Jonathan Grayer. Where appearance is concerned, though it adds little to the text, Toner has also supplied photographs and graphics in his article.
The main conclusion made by Toner (9) is that publishers should be able to counteract the Online classified boon by using the tools to create “a unified marketplace where buyers meet sellers” Online. Howeve...