The site is run on software provided by Kaango Online Classifieds, a 2-year-old Denver firm with more than 200 newspaper clients. Kaango is jointly owned by Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group, parent company of The Tribune.

"It allows us to be competitive in a free classified marketplace, to reach additional users - customers who only use free classified marketplaces," said Catherine Byington, MediaOne director of interactive sales.

Users can buy and sell goods and services, look for jobs and learn about area events, although the site has some peculiarities that other sites do not. Customers shopping for cars, for example, will be redirected automatically to a partner, Cars.com, which has cars in Utah for sale. Utahns selling vehicles can place ads through MediaOne's site but they will appear on Cars.com, which charges fees that start at $20.

Likewise, jobs seekers will be routed to Yahoo! HotJobs, where they can browse for free. Employers seeking workers, however, can post help-wanted ads through MediaOne's site, but they will be displayed by Yahoo, whose rates start at $269.

Byington said charging fees improves the credibility of job postings and vehicle ads, protecting buyers and sellers alike.

"Free classified sites are filled with litter and scams," she said in a statement. "Consumers are more likely to look for items on a paid-to-post site because there's an implied trust and that value is magnified by the name recognition and marketing efforts of our national affiliates."

Classifieds traditionally have been a key part of newspaper revenues, but their contribution has fallen off sharply as reader habits change and more people go to free online sites to post ads, shop for bargains and hunt for jobs.

Consumer spending on newspaper classified ads peaked in 2000, when classifieds provided 40 percent of the industry's revenues. In 2007, the figure dropped to 34 percent. Actual spending fell from $19.6 billion to $14.2 billion during the period, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

The decline has sapped profits and led to layoffs and employee buyouts at many U.S. papers. In July, the LDS Church-owned News eliminated 34 staff positions and enacted other cost-cutting measures to cope with tumbling revenue from fewer classified ads.

The MediaOne site will compete with the likes of Craigslist, the worldwide online classified location that opened a Salt Lake page in 2004, and KSL.com, Web site for LDS Church-owned KSL television and KSL radio.

On Friday, KSL.com listed more than 138,000 classified ads. KSL doesn't fear the new competition, said Russell Banz, vice president of new media.

"It's a space that everybody is trying to get into. Our position is we will just continue to serve our viewers as best we can and look for other opportunities to meet the needs the community has," Banz said.

E-mails and a phone call to Craigslist for comment weren't returned.

Craigslist provides local classifieds and forums in more than 500 cities in more than 50 countries. Users can find ad categories ranging from romance and resumes to housing, jobs and internships.

KSL launched its online classified service in 2000. Its offerings are more traditional; pets, computers, recreational vehicles and real estate are among 22 classified categories. The site posts several hundred new ads every hour.

"It's definitely added a new revenue steam to the Web site than we had prior," Banz said.

pbeebe@sltrib.com