De-classified
In Search of a Valentine? As Print Options Dwindle, the Web Might Be Your Knight in Shining Armor

Love may be blind but apparently it’s not deaf as well.

By Angie Hargot

In one week’s local print classifieds you can find an ad for a “lost African Grey Parrot,” (there’s a reward), an ad run under the “announcements” section that simply reads “THANK YOU ST.JUDE,” and includes his glowing mug; For SALE: a computer mouse for $5, “STUFF/ANIMALS” for $20 (although that ad doesn’t say what kind of stuff OR what kind of animals); a Springsteen signed guitar for $250; Seven beer steins; a free 40-foot ham antenna; a tickle me Elmo doll; and tickets to Woodstock, circa 1969.

But where are the personal ads?

There is a category called “Personal Services.” Well, it could be considered a service to run a personal ad. On this particular day included is one listing for “Japanese Massage,” one for a head-to-toe body bath (is there some other kind of head-to-toe bath?), a body shampoo (ah, it makes a little more sense now), “Relaxing Body baths by Latin Ladies” (crystal clear now, really) and an ad that simply reads: “Regina. Stress Relief.” This definitely isn’t the right section. And it also doesn’t solve the mystery of the personal ads, now absent from many print editions of newspapers.

In the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, for example, personal ads in print are scarce. Its Web site has a link to the dating page for its affiliate www.SouthFlorida.com.  On the other hand, The New York Times runs a listing of Personals, although just once a week. Each ad, which appears in both the print and online editions weekly, has a box number at the end. You call a phone service, and for $2.99 per minute (with a $2 connection fee), you can respond to an ad. Although the process doesn’t seem to provide a whole lot more security than simply listing your own phone number, perhaps getting to hear someone’s voice helps with the screening process. (Love may be blind but apparently it’s not deaf as well).

There are hordes of Web sites devoted to compiling wacky (yet real) personal ads that have run in newspapers all over the world. But with lots of print versions giving way to their online counterparts, it may soon become a (twisted) joy of the past.

Last week in The New York Times, for example, there were over 100 online listings in each of the categories of women seeking men, men seeking women, women seeking women, men seeking men, etc.

“ADVENTUROUS
Fairfield County, financially secure Entrepreneur, likes sports, music,” (apparently either too adventurous or too successful to write more in his ad)

Mutual interests are highly sought:

“BBC ANYONE?
Jean seeking Lionel or facsimile, as time goes by. We are: intelligent, caring, with a sense of humor, tall, slim, upper-class. No apologies. Life can be good.”

“COUPLES HAVE MORE FUN
You’ll order pasta, I’ll order fish. Bright, attractive DJF ISO kind, Jewish man with brains to share life’s main dish and dessert.”

“ENDANGERED SPECIES
Pretty, tigress, with great lines, swift motion, easy to look at and listen to, wishes to climb treetops with energetic, fleet-footed tiger, 52 plus, to maneuver through the modern day jungle.”

The classified editors couldn’t have planned this:

“MEN SEEKING WOMEN

ASIAN LADY
Connecticut gentleman, attractive, tall, financially secure, educated, DWM, 54, seeks slim, pretty, Asian lady, to pamper and spoil.”

Followed directly by:

“WOMEN SEEKING MEN

ATTRACTIVE EAST ASIAN
Accomplished, slender, 51, 5’ 7” woman. Enjoys swimming, yoga, dancing. Seeking friendship/long term relationship.”

Much like must-sell objects, personal ads have to whittle down one’s relationship ambitions to truncated descriptions: WF, WM, SWF, SBM. After all, you don’t have a lot of space in print.

And if pop culture is any indication, the print personals really are well, old news.

Most recently in the movie Because I Said So, Diane Keaton’s character tries to find her daughter the perfect husband by posting an ad on an online personals site. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had mail.

That’s a far cry from the heels-with-socks print personals thrill ride that was Desperately Seeking Susan, or 1950’s Lonely Heart Bandits in which a couple of con artists meet rich widows through their newspaper personal ads, dupe them out of their riches and then kill them for good measure.

According to Pat Royal, director of classified advertising at the Miami Herald, the newspaper runs its personal ads in print, once a week on Sunday, in both the English and El Nuevo Herald editions.

“They used to run it quite a few times a week, but then it was cut back to two [days] and now once [per week],” the Herald’s Royal said. “I don’t know that there’s a strong market for it anymore.”

As fickle as dating itself is the online dating community — and who can blame the Herald for admitting it’s trying to trade up. The paper now works with an outside company to handle its online personals. “Powered by PerfectMatch,” according to the Herald site, but the Herald is “looking for a new one,” says Royal.

And PerfectMatch.com itself takes cues from the dating crowd, trying hard to attract members of the opposite site right on its homepage. In its own personal ad of sorts, some of its proclaimed selling points over eHarmony are that PerfectMatch “accepts and guarantees matches for all personality types,” that “divorced members” and “all lifestyle choices” are always accepted, and that they offer a free “image enhancement service,” among other things.

Meanwhile Match.com’s got Dr. Phil onboard, and has apparently trademarked the slogan “It’s okay to look.”

Despite the lack of action in the ink-on-paper ads, Miami ranked 10th in Forbes magazine’s 2006 “Best Cities for Singles” special report. For the first time, “online dating” was including in the ratings analysis.

“Due to the increasing popularity of online dating, we added this new measure to our methodology this year,” the report says. “The ranking is determined by the number of active profiles in each metro, per capita, on dating site Match.Com.”

Miami snagged a formidable 16th-best ranking in that category.

Meanwhile, Royal said, the print personals “have never been as big here as in other markets, for example, New York.”

She remembers when the Herald even held promotional events for their personals sections. “But we haven’t done them in a while,” she said.

“It’s no longer the place where people go. It was 20 years ago when [print personals were popular] and we had people coming in to place ads and there was a lot of give and take between them and the paper,” she said. “It’s not the place where people meet.”

Comments? E-mail angie@miamisunpost.com.