Newspaper Matters: The New York Review of Books Classifieds

Craigslist.org has replaced the newspaper classifieds as the go to place to seek and find private transactions but The New York Review of Books (NYRB) still provides their readers a forum to connect with their fellow readers. Here's a sample of what you'll find if you stumble upon the NYRB personals: 

VERY PRETTY, smart and accomplished and much more too: gracious, warm and slender with lots of heart, quick laugh and easygoing adventurous streak. E-Commerce CEO reinvented as public speaker, mentor to young entrepreneurs. Passion for travel (Paris/Provence, Italy, NY theatre, hiking Yosemite), music, learning, art, Giants especially when they’re winning, Pilates. Healthy dash of irreverence, considered very easy on the eyes. Featured in HBS case studies but never takes herself too seriously. As likely to be flying to London for meetings as stumbling through tango class here in San Francisco or walking along the Bay. Seeks accomplished, nice-looking, kind and thoughtful man 56-70—curious mind, enthusiastic about life. (415) 819-4324.Camille7711@yahoo.com. (Note: This particular ad is no longer on the live classifieds page)

Right off the bat you'll notice a few things that you'll rarely find on Craigslist, i.e,, loads and loads of personally identifiable information. Not only is there a phone number and personal email address, there are details that any decent googler could use to find out exactly who this person is, what she looks like and where she lives. How many e-commerce CEOs turned public-speakers are there that are featured in the Harvard Business Review, spell theater with an "re," are VERY PRETTY and live in San Francisco? Maybe three (extra points to the reader who finds out)? The point here is that this woman has an extremely high-level of confidence (robust personal security detail?) that she will not be trolled by low-lifes.

Secondly, this women paid between $4.60 to $5.85 per word (an email address is two words) or between $510.30 and $649.35 to run this ad. To put that in perspective, Match.com is $203.88 a year and eHarmony Premium is about $500 a year. So there must be a perception that one ad in NYRB is far more effective than being matched in 23 personality dimensions.

Finally, she's rather cliched about the sort of man she's looking for, except for the age range. There is no doubt that this sort of message, delivered in a print publication as erudite as NYRB, should mostly reach men who are squarely in this demographic. The question is, do these men still flip to the back pages of newspapers to find love or are they swiping right on Tinder?