New York Magazine revives classified ads with a modern twist

My favorite black hole on the internet is Facebook Marketplace. As a lover of Stuff, I browse almost daily to see the things people in the greater Boston area want to part with. I love to look at the photos, analyze how they’re taken, zoom in on interesting tidbits in the background, all to send the “hi, is this available?” message and then forget about the item and not respond to the seller.

There are many people like me out there who like to know what stuff other people have and plenty of others who are actually willing to buy. New York Magazine is tapping into that with the revival of its classifieds section, but with a few modern updates. Paid New York subscribers who live in New York City can submit items they want to sell to other New Yorkers. Each month, editors curate a list of submissions to be featured. When an item is listed, the editors create an alias email address that forwards inquiries to the seller. From there, potential buyers can contact the sellers to coordinate the sale, pickup, and more.

The feature lives on The Strategist, New York Magazine’s shopping vertical. The idea was inspired by New York Magazine’s archives and previous classifieds sections, deputy editor Alexis Swerdloff said, and pairs well with The Strategist’s shopping focus.

“We have been thinking a lot in the past year about ways in which we can make being a New York Magazine subscriber even better,” Swerdloff said. Editor-in-Chief David Haskell had the idea of bringing back the classifieds. “We thought, ‘What if there was a place where New York Magazine readers could sell stuff to one another? Wouldn’t that be fun?'”

The first classified ad in North America reportedly appeared in the Boston News-Letter in 1704. For the next three centuries, the news business came to rely on classified ads as part of its revenue stream. But the rise of the internet and e-commerce sites eliminated the need to pay for ad space in print when they could do it online for cheaper or free. Classified newspaper advertising dropped by 70% from $19.6 billion in 2000 to $6 billion in 2009 and is likely a fraction of that in 2026.

New York’s first installment of the new classifieds had the theme “I Love It, But It’s Just Not ‘Me'” and included things like a $150 Prada men’s dress shirt (sold), a $300 Gucci black bamboo handbag (sold), a $30 slime green glass vase (sold), and a $399 vintage original NYC Village Voice newsstand cast-iron paperweight (still available!). The next drop will be all about lamps.

New York’s classfieds are still in beta, Swerdloff said, but the major metrics for success are simple: Are people selling, and are people buying? The team has received more than 100 submissions since launch last month, with 60 items listed and 16 sold so far. Swerdloff said she’s noticed readers becoming subscribers to view the listings page. A spokesperson for the magazine declined to share subscriber numbers but said that New York City is its largest market.

“In the old classifieds of New York Magazine, there were just as many items for sale as there were services and apartments for rent,” Swerdloff said. “[We’re interested in] trying out what looking for a roommate might look like. I imagine there are so many of our readers who are bookshelf makers or ceramicists or would write a poem. There’s a lot of [themes] that we could experiment with because classifieds encompass so much. We’re excited to see what that might look like.”