Interesting white paper out from the American Press Institute: It calls for U.S. newspapers to set aside their differences (and evidently, their uniqueness) and create a unified, national platform for classifieds under a single brand.

Titled Creating an Industry-Wide Classified Platform and Brand, the report acknowledged there are quite a few issues to work through — notably, antitrust laws that attach criminal penalties to price-fixing (or even price discussions).

“Now more than ever before, newspapers throughout North America have the motivation and the circumstance to create a single classified platform to rival non-newspaper sites — through better leveraging of technology; superior user experience; and a powerful, unified national brand,” the report proclaimed.

“Motivation” and “circumstance”? A bit like the guy who gets religion on the way to the gallows, we suppose, but, OK, we buy that.

“The Craigslists of the world have a head start, they have the traffic — but they also have vulnerabilities.”

That’s true. Craigslist in particular is vulnerable. Offer even a marginally better consumer experience, Craigslist can be beat. But 95 percent of the ads would have to be free, and there’d have to be a bazillion of them.

“By working together, we can make it happen.”

Therein is the rub. It’s hard to circle wagons pulled by cats.

How would newspapers pull it off? Foremost, it requires an “ongoing investment in the technology” and suggest the establishment of an “independent, industry-supported ‘innovation skunkworks.’”

It also requires an “investment in category-specific expertise … so that potentially revenue-generating trends can be spotted and exploited …” Hey wait a minute. That’s what we do!

Here are the must-haves, according to the API:
– It must be broad in scope, with a common platform easily deployable at any individual newspaper and linked together across markets;
– It must permit both local branding and strong overall consistency of brand;
– It must be able to bring together all of the classified listings in a community, either through scraping (which would direct a user to the site where the content was originally published) or through syndication agreements (which would republish the content on this new site)
– It must exceed all current offerings in appearance, functionality and trust.

The report was the product of discussions started by senior newspaper execs in API-hosted “summits” held in November and January. A committee that Walter Hussman, president and CEO of Wehco Media, publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock; John Newby, publisher of The Times in Ottawa, Ill., and Brian Tierney, CEO and publisher of Philadelphia Media Holdings.

The next step, the report says, is to gain consensus from the committee about moving forward. It suggests the API staff facilitate contacts with other industry leaders and associations for input and involvement.

Eventually, the facilitators will have to identify “potential deal-breakers” for newspapers and “devise strategies to address these,” the report said.

It’s going to be an all-uphill battle in a war that some would say might have already been lost. But bless ‘em for trying to do something.

Clients can download the report here.