No quick fixes were offered or decided on at the “Beat Craigslist” summit meeting of newspaper executives from about a dozen U.S. media companies yesterday in Denver.

The meeting was apparently one in a series of meetings about classifieds planned by the American Press Institute, working with the Newspaper Association of America. We’re told another, perhaps broader, meeting is planned for September.

The closed-door meeting incorporated updates on various companies’ strategies, successes and failures, and presentations from three leading vendors in the newspaper classified category. Curiously, representatives of today’s most prominent classified-advertising consortia — Classified Ventures, CareerBuilder and the Newspaper Consortium — apparently were not invited. (Our advance meeting coverage is here.)

“I didn’t walk away with any earth-shattering ideas — no rising bolts of illumination — but it was a nice chance to catch up on what everyone is doing,” said Bill Blevins, VP of Gatehouse Media, who was the only participant willing to talk to us on the record after the meeting.

“I’m sure some folks are going to follow up with this [classified network] strategy.”

Blevins said Gatehouse already uses many of the strategies recommended by the API in its May report, “Creating an industry-wide classified platform and brand.” While he didn’t say so, it seems that Gatehouse might have reservations about a classified network collaboration of newspaper groups. “We’re working with Zope [an open-source technology provider] and I see no reason to change. They’re fantastic — amazing. And while this [classified aggregation network] is a great idea, it’s also awfully complicated.”

Blevins spoke highly of the three vendors that opened the meeting: “It wasn’t a sales pitch, just a ‘here’s what we’re doing.’ There are possibly other vendors just as good, but AdPerfect is relatively new and pretty savvy; AdPay we’ve known of and worked with for several years, and Kaango is doing some cool stuff.”

It’s unclear whether the new classified aggregation platform and brand as proposed by API and its committee would focus strictly on the “stuff” category (merchandise and auctions) that, from a revenue perspective, is the least important to newspapers, or whether the group would try to include autos, real estate and possibly even recruitment. The latter three would be fraught with difficulties, as some newspapers are participants in and their parent companies part-owners of Classified Ventures and / or CareerBuilder, while others have been excluded (occasionally causing hard feelings) because of territorial issues. For instance, Freedom’s Orange County Register wanted to participate in Classified Ventures, but was blocked a few years back because it competes with the Los Angeles Times, owned by CV part-owner Tribune Co.

In its report, the API laid out four goals and objectives: “Develop a unified, interlinked industry-wide online classified product; develop a better user interface and experience than that provided by Craigslist and other non-newspaper classified products; recapture at least a portion of lost classified volume, revenue and audience, [and] unite the industry for a common purpose; create an industry success story.”

David Israel, one-time CEO of Classified Ventures, told us in 1999, when CV had eight newspaper companies as part-owners, that building an aggregated national newspaper classified advertisement brand “is like herding cats.”

Speaking today in London, Israel said the “herding cats” concern is still a major challenge, and the “territory issues” between various newspapers, newspaper companies, their interactive-media products and their competitors is a significant issue — but some sort of newspaper aggregation play might just work.

“It probably is still very challenging, but once you get through the headaches, CV’s probably proven: It can work,” he told the AIM Group. “There was a lot of gnashing of teeth and tension here and there, but ultimately, now, it certainly seems to me here from a distance, it is working, and I’m sure those investors are happy to have it. Arguably, it could be even stronger with more investors [or participants], but they’d have to get through the ‘territory’ issues again.”

 UPDATE – 1:00PM EST

We just talked with Michael Kranitz, president and founder of Kaango, whose community-focused classified platform is about to roll out a series of upgrades. (More on this soon.) Kranitz’s task at the Denver meeting was to talk about why consolidation to a single brand is important as a newspaper response to Craigslist and other free-classified competitors.

“If newspapers maintain the status quo they will slowly lose their classified franchise,” Kranitz said. “It’s starting to erode already. To compete with a large scale classified platform, you have to bring a similar scale to the table — through syndication and aggregation.” Crucial elements he spoke of included uniform brand and experience. “The experience must be superior and it must be identical across the board,” he said. The advantage for the newspaper participants beyond competing with the Craigslists of the world is that the classified visitor need never leave the newspaper’s site.

“Kaango is a newspaper industry servant,” said Kranitz. “We’re able to do what is necessary to reclaim what has been lost in the classified space. We have no other masters to serve. MediaNews Group and Hearst [Kaango owners] have already bought into this classified consortium. Such a consortium has been Kaango’s sole purpose from the get-go.”

UPDATE – 3:37PM EST

We talked with Deb Dreyfuss Tuchman, sales EVP for AdPay. With clients in 50 of the top 100 DMAs, AdPay met with several of its own clients at yesterday’s roundtable.  Regarding the proposed classified network Dreyfuss-Tuchman said,  ”We already put the foundations in place. We invented the classified network idea seven years ago.”  She said as well that such a network, while it would require one portal, wouldn’t necessarily have to be driven by only one classified platform. “After all, AdPay’s a layered data repository with more than 60 vendors, such as Cars.com, Gabriels and Adicio.”