How often do you look at the newspaper's classified ad section?

An area of the Classified Ad Department, probably in the 1970s.

Discussions about what is causing the changes to The Mobile Press Register and other newspapers often focus on news content and overlook the changes to advertising, particularly classified advertising.

Classified ads until 1995 were the cash cow of the newspaper business. Classifieds were enormously profitable for the Press Register and all other newspapers.

If you were looking for a job, you searched the classified ads. If you ran a business and wanted to hire someone, you placed a help-wanted ad. Real estate and car dealers were the biggest buyers of classified ads. Garage sales, auto parts, used cars, farm equipment, furniture, pets, cameras, property rentals—practically anyone who had anything to sell placed a classified ad.

Many people spent Sunday mornings leisurely looking through the small type of the newspaper’s classified ads just for the sheer entertainment value of seeing all the stuff for sale.

All that started to change in 1995 with Craigslist, the free online classified service, and eBay, an online, consumer-to-consumer auction and shopping website. Newspapers started losing readers searching for new jobs to HotJobs, started in 1996, and Monster, started in 1999. Now you can go online and find a job or camera lens anywhere in the world, not just in your newspaper’s circulation area.

Today, there are people in their 20s who have no idea what a newspaper classified ad is. And newspaper classified ad departments, which used to occupy large areas of a newspaper building, barely exist.

How often do you look at the newspaper's classified ad section?