Can U.S. newspapers team up to aggregate their “stuff” classifieds on one, nationally branded site that beats Craigslist? Perhaps. That’s the dream. But the road is littered with failures, and there’s no reason to think they’re suddenly going to overcome lots of valid reasons for going down separate paths, and join forces for immediate success. Obviously, the time for making it happen and really making it work, is 2004. And 2004, unfortunately, is long past.

A quick recap: About 20 newspaper execs representing many of the major groups (but also skipping over a lot of likely participants), met this week in Denver to figure out what to do about the classified conundrum. They were following up on a report published in May by the American Press Institute, “Creating an industry-wide classified platform and brand.” There’s another meeting in September. In the meantime, the group will support research into consumer needs in the field and developing a request-for-proposals for a technology provider to support the prospective effort. (See our coverage.)

The first and most obvious question: Is there even a need for such a site? And the second: Could it work?

On the first, it’s tough to say. Craigslist is already that site, and much more. While Craigslist is very technologically weak and is in many ways mired in the 1990s, it’s also created an ethos of community service and a non-profit heart and soul, while operating at a profit margin that would make most newspaper publishers blush. Speaking of blushing, one of the key aspects and traffic drivers of Craigslist is its personals section and its hooker ads – i.e., “adult services” – which help raise awareness and use. Would a newspaper merchandise portal accept such ads? Probably not.

Could it work?

Short answer: Yes. But the pain involved in making it work may be far more than any newspaper executives want to and can stand to endure. And the investment it might take may be impossible in this day of bankrupt newspaper companies and others that are on the edge of credit default. It would not be inexpensive. The technology probably exists now – three vendors attended the meeting, and others would probably come out of the woodwork. But the investment would take more than just the technology. It would require branding, with cash-paid advertising beyond the newspapers; it would require integration, which takes both time and money; it would require management and staff and operating funds. Newspapers would have to participate under a common set of rules, something that doesn’t work very well.

And there’s the issue, “Do newspapers even have enough ads for ‘stuff’ to matter?” Certainly, major metros don’t carry ads for bicycles or used furniture much anymore. And when they do, they’re shortened to “used sofa, brn, 62 inches, looks good,” or other classifiedeze, rather than including photos, full text and extensive info like so many ads on Craigslist or Freecycle or Backpage or tons of local Web sites that are unaffiliated with newspapers.

And what’s the business model?

Just run free ads for the sake of free ads, and figuring it out later? Perhaps. One camp at the Denver meeting, we’re told, led by Walter E. Hussman Jr., favored that approach. Hussman, after all, is the man who pioneered free classifieds successfully, using them as a key weapon in his war to beat the Gannett Co. in 1991 in Little Rock. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which Hussman publishes, still takes an unusual approach to classifieds and the Web in general, offering free ads for merchandise up to $20,000 and limiting much of the content on its ArkansasOnline.com site to print subscribers. But another camp was dubious about the “do it now and figure it out later” approach, some participants told the AIM Group.

And what about the companies that have built successful paid Web sites? Could you, for example, limit a site to just “stuff” and keep out postings for things like cars and apartments? Would it have any utility then? Perhaps, but it would certainly be less valuable than, say, a Craigslist. But if you permitted ads for cars, motorcycles, expensive stuff and apartments, you’d be undercutting the business model of one of the few newspaper consortia to get it right, Classified Ventures.

CV runs Cars.com, Apartments.com, HomeGain.com and HomeFinder.com. It is by all accounts highly successful and profitable even during the real estate and automotive advertising busts.

It was founded in 1997, at the time owned by seven (and later eight) newspaper companies. David Israel, then-CEO, told us in 1999 that building an aggregated national newspaper classified advertising brand, and working with all of those companies, “is like herding cats.”

Just imagine herding three times as many cats, some of them still highly profitable and some on the edge of ruin; some with strong local franchises and some loathed in the communities they serve; some really believing in the need for a national classified aggregation and some participating reluctantly or not at all. And some owning businesses like CV, Kaango.com or others that may effectively compete with the national product.

Still, Israel told me this week that anything is possible – and this might just work.

“When I was talking about ‘herding cats,’ … there were all of these competing interests going in different directions, at the different levels” of each company, he said. “There was competition for ‘Who’s booking the revenue?;’ ‘Who owns the customer?;’ ‘What’s best for my newspaper or the Web site?,’ and it was always very difficult trying to get that headed in the right direction or even a common direction.”

But Israel, who’s now CEO of Reed Business International in London (and soon moving back to the States), said building a national brand and portal may be going in exactly the opposite direction that the Web and users are going.

“It’s funny,” he said. “Online allows you to get substantially more vertical – go very, very ‘sub-niche’ or hypervertical. And the relevance of the content and the advertising is important to users, and therefore advertisers tend to pay more for that.”

So maybe hyperlocal is best? Or hypervertical?

Kaango, one of the vendors represented at the meeting, knows all about super-niches. Now owned by Hearst and MediaNews Group, Kaango began as RCUniverse.com, a site for fanatics about remote-controlled toys. RCUniverse is still operated by Kaango, and generates substantial profits.

The newspaper industry in the U.S. is littered with the memories of failed consortia.

There was the New Century Network, launched in 1995, which was going to aggregate content from eight major newspaper companies: Advance Publications, Cox Newspapers Inc., Gannett Co. Inc; Hearst Corp., Knight Ridder, the Times Mirror Co., Tribune Co. and the Washington Post Co. Two of those companies aren’t around any longer; three of those that still are (Advance, Cox and Tribune) didn’t even participate in the meeting this week.

Next up? AdOne and PowerAdz.

AdOne, owned by 11 newspaper companies, spent $1 million in 1999 and 2000 to brand and launch Abracat.com, a national classifieds play. It planned a $40 million branding campaign; that was quickly tossed in the 2001 dot-com meltdown. (Even before Abracat, AdOne operated ClassifiedWarehouse.com, an earlier version of “a national network of classified advertising on the Internet.” ClassifiedWarehouse was expected to carry 24 million ads a month from more than 700 newspapers.)

AdOne and PowerAdz, another newspaper classified company, merged to create PowerOne Media. Owned by 12 newspaper companies and two investment funds, it rocked along with some success and much failure until 2007, when it sold its last remaining assets and went out of business.

Still, there’s some reason for optimism.

Just look at CareerBuilder. Launched as an independent company, its newspaper heritage too evolved out of a consortium – CareerPath.com. Launched in 1995 by six newspapers and later owned by eight newspaper companies, the CareerPath experience led Tribune Co. and Knight Ridder to blow out their partners in an acrimonious breakup and to buy CareerBuilder.com in 2000. Still later, they bought HeadHunter.com. And now, after more than $1 billion in investment and 15 years of blood and sweat, it’s the most-trafficked recruitment site in the United States, majority-owned by Gannett with smaller stakes held by Tribune, McClatchy and Microsoft.

By fighting through the tough, tough ownership battles; focusing on the ultimate goal of profits (and hang the “we’d better not compete with our newspaper owners” mentality); relentlessly chasing profits, good consumer experience and value for both sides of its customer equation (users and advertisers), CareerBuilder has succeeded. And it’s profitable even in the hiring downturn.

So it can be done. The issue is: Is the time right for “an industry-wide classified platform and brand” to sell stuff?

Tough call. Lots of work ahead.