Friday Odds & Ends

Craigslist Ads Still Free In Cleveland, For Now. Could this be the next big indicator of whether your city is hot and hip: does Craigslist charge to post job ads there? The popular online directory/connector has just added a handful of coastal cities to the short list of cities in which it charges $25 for job listings. We'll see if that list continues to grow.

Taking on Monster.com in a Vertical Niche. I've previously noted in this space (or maybe it was somewhere else) that Cleveland, at least until recently, was something of a world headquarters for magazine trade publishing. That's a remnant from the days when it was a dominant manufacturing center. But trade publishing has fallen on hard times lately, owing to the Internet and some other factors, and the region's two industry giants, Penton and Advanstar, have also suffered. Both now have fewer magazines than they once did, and some of them have moved their offices elsewhere. So it's especially nice to see that some of these pubs continue to innovate, looking for other ways to make their daily bread by connecting their audiences. This online job board for the veterinary industry seems like a good idea. While Monster.com continues to command much of that market, it's also true that in most industries, one dominant online job board has emerged (like Journalismjobs.com, for instance). We'll see if the vet job site becomes that dominant player. Besides allowing vets to post their resumes and troll for employees for their offices, the site contains career advice drawn from Advanstar's two magazines devoted to that industry.

Temper, Temper... Perhaps the sector's hard times have made manufacturers a little testy. At least that's the impression I got from this snarling entry about Al Gore on the blog of the National Association of Manufacturers. At least the blog's name is interesting: Shop Floor. My recommendation is this: that the trade group consider getting some coaching in diplomacy if it hopes to win minds to its cause. Perhaps they might even recruit the writer behind this official State Department blog, which is saddled with the unfortunate name of DipNote. So perhaps a barter is in order. NAM could help the State Department with names, and State could help the trade group to be more diplomatic.

Lifelong Learning. The tagline on the blog associated with News University (A Poynter Institute initiative, funded by the Knight Center) says it all: "The Best Journalists Never Stop Learning" Of course, that's true of every profession and craft.