L.A. Times takes web page out of Craigslist.

With Craigslist.org and other Web sites increasingly siphoning classified ads from newspapers, the owners of the Los Angeles Times are coming up with a battery of new Web sites and a planned revamp of classified ads on latimes.com.

The strategy by Tribune Co., parent of the Times, to counter Craigslist and other threats to its classified dominance is two-pronged: enhance classified listings on its newspaper Web sites and expand Recycler.com, a Los Angeles-based subsidiary that boasts 100,000 ads each week nationally.

The redesign of latimes.com, which launched in early May, gave Recycler.com a more prominent position on the Times' online classifieds page. However, ads placed on Recycler--which are free--do not automatically appear in the print Times or on the main Times classified Web site. Likewise, ads from the print newspaper do not automatically appear on Recycler.com.

In announcing the latimes.com redesign, Tribune officials said they have further plans to upgrade and expand the online classified area, although they offered no details.

Classified advertising inches in newspapers owned by Tribune Co. were down 8.2 percent in the first 17 weeks of this year, compared with the like period in 2004, according to the most recent figures released by Tribune. The company does not break out classified advertising for the Times.

Some of the decline stems from competition from Craigslist.org, which was founded in San Francisco in 1995, launched in Los Angeles in 2000 and now has more than 112,000 local ads for apartments, merchandise, job seekers and services.

"Newspapers are responding aggressively, but I think Craigslist and others will continue to make inroads against newspapers," said Colby Atwood, a vice president at the media consultancy Borrell Associates Inc., who counts the Times as a client. "The Internet is such an obvious way to post and search for classified advertising."

Tribune officials declined comment, but in their public statements executives have emphasized strategies to merge print and online classifieds to capitalize on the newspapers' traditional dominance of classifieds. About 10 percent of Tribune's classified revenue comes through the Internet.

"In classifieds, our integrated print and online strategy is proving to be a solid competitive advantage," Tribune Publishing President Scott Smith said at the company's May 18 shareholders meeting.

Craig's competition

It's generally agreed that Craigslist could be the single biggest threat to newspaper classified advertising, which accounts for about 28 percent of Tribune's overall publishing revenues.

For its part, Craigslist denies that it is trying to pull advertising away from newspapers or their Web sites. The company, which has 18 employees, largely caters to advertisers who either can't afford to advertise in newspapers or whose ads would not fit the short, text-only format of newspaper listings, said Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster.

"Our belief is that these are very large markets," Buckmaster said of San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. "The bulk of the ads that show up on Craigslist wouldn't have been in newspapers because the cost would have been prohibitive or the format wouldn't have been appropriate."

Tribune's expansion of Recycler.com from its Los Angeles base to 12 new cities appears most directly positioned to blunt Craigslist's growth in those areas. In May, Tribune introduced new Recycler sites in Dallas, Houston, Seattle, St. Louis, Indianapolis, New Orleans, New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Orlando, Fla., Hartford, Conn. and Allentown, Pa. Tribune owns newspapers in or near six of the cities.

Like Craigslist, Recycler allows for free advertising and has a spare, mostly text-based look and feel. Both sides include personal and employment ads, as well as listings for merchandise. Recycler differs from Craigslist in that it allows shoppers to compare selected merchandise side-by-side.

Peter Zollman, president of the classified-advertising consultancy Classified Intelligence LLC, said Times executives must decide how closely to align Recycler with the print newspaper, since ads in one medium do not automatically appear in the other. The company would have a hard time charging for ads in the newspaper if free Recycler listings are automatically published in the paper.

Recycler started as a print paper in 1973 with free classified listings, supported by display advertising. The paper went online in Los Angeles in the 1990s using much the same model and was purchased in 1998 by Times-Mirror Corp., then owner of the Times. When Tribune bought Times-Mirror in 2000, it also acquired Recycler.

Tribune also is a part-owner of the automotive Web site Cars.com, the help-wanted site CareerBuilder.com and the rental site Apartments.com. Users of the Times' Web site are linked to those Web sites.

"There are a lot of (print classified readers) but they're dying off. Younger people prefer the Web," said Philip Meyer, a University of North Carolina journalism professor, who sees the Times moves as essential.