How we worked with Pittsburgh City Paper to create a modern-day personals section

Modern-day personal ads are making a comeback at Pittsburgh City Paper. The team at City Paper wanted the new personals section to be a fun, inclusive space for people of all genders and sexualities. We planned a short-term experiment to start to get people involved in personal ad submissions we called “pitch-a-pal.” 

In our request to “pitch-a-pal,” we asked City Paper’s audience to pitch a single friend to the local dating community in a multimedia format that would be featured on City Paper’s social media, ranging from a slide deck to a mood board or poem. People interested in dating the person featured could reach out in the comments, and the featured person had the choice of responding.

We were inspired by the international Pitch-A-Friend events and social media trends, where locals meet up at bars and other venues to pitch their dateable friends. Here’s how we did it. 

Design a submission form for personal ads 

Step 1: Set up form 

We used Google Forms to design our “Pitch-A-Pal” submission form. We encouraged participants to be creative and included a few submission examples to get people started. 

• Example of a presentation
• Example of a mood board

Step 2: Outline community guidelines

We asked that participants avoid sharing personal contact information, social media accounts and other sensitive data in the submissions. We also asked everyone to select two boxes confirming that they read and agreed to the guidelines and that they received their friend’s consent to be pitched.

Step 3: Ask a few short questions

After receiving their friend’s consent, each participant filled out the form with information about themself and their friend. 

• We asked for the friend’s age and email, but only so we could verify that they were over 18 and contact them about being featured. 
• We asked which genders the friend was interested in dating as a “select-all-that-apply” question with a write-in option.
• We asked each submitter to explain why their friend should be featured by Pittsburgh City Paper

Step 4: Include an upload option

We asked participants to submit their pitches as a PDF file. Each submission populated in one of our Google Drive folders. 

Create a survey to gauge content interest

At the end of the submission form, we integrated survey questions from a separate form to help City Paper understand what its audience might be willing to pay for personal ads in the future. We also wanted to understand the audience’s content interests. 

Creating two forms allowed us to send the survey separately to audiences not interested in pitching a friend. 

Here’s a look at some of the questions we included:

1. Demographics (age, gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity): each of these questions were in short-answer format to allow participants to self-describe their identities. We also made each question optional.

2. Perceptions of personals and classified ads: We wanted to know if the audience had positive or negative attitudes toward this type of media or were unsure what to expect.

3. Most wanted from a modern personals section:
   1. Finding dates 
   2. Making friends
   3. Joining interest-based groups
   4. Being entertained by love stories and gossip

4. Types of content most interested in reading or submitting:
   1. Pitch yourself
   2. Pitch a friend
   3. Marriage proposals
   4. Platonic friend connections
   5. Find interest-based groups
   6. Birthday messages
   7. Missed connections
   8. Secret admirers
   9. Confessions
   10. Are we dating the same guy?
   11. Love poems

5. Describe online dating app and website experiences:
   1. I met a significant other or partner online! (Current or former)
   2. I’ve met a lot of great people, but have had mixed success
   3. I’ve made a few friends
   4. Total disaster! Never again!

6. Where else have you attempted to make connections (romantic or otherwise)?
   1. Single events
   2. Matchmaker
   3. Blind date
   4. Parties
   5. Online forums/chat rooms
   6. Social media
   7. Volunteering/meetups

7. Interest in themed events: 
   1. Mixers
   2. Over-35
   3. Queer-specific
   4. Speed dating
   5. Group dates
   6. Recurring activities (game nights, crafting, etc.)

8. How much would you be willing to pay (if anything) to submit a personal ad?

9. How much would you be willing to pay (if anything) to have your personal ad featured/promoted?

For these last two questions, we included ranges from “not willing to pay” to $21-50.

Promote the survey and submission form

After creating our forms, we were ready to promote on social media. Pittsburgh City Paper created a post for Instagram and Facebook calling for submissions. In the post’s description, we also asked the audience to take the survey. Promotion began about one week before the submission deadline.

Evaluate submission success and survey responses

While we are still collecting submissions and survey responses, we already have helpful results from our survey, and 66 people responded as of June 5.

Overall, City Paper noticed strong enthusiasm for both online and in-person content! We learned that people may be willing to pay between $11–$20 to read personal ads or submit their own, while others would prefer a free option. We also learned that people seem interested in alternatives to dating apps. Our survey responses indicate that people who have used dating apps in the past have had mixed luck, with some having negative experiences.

City Paper also connected with a few local businesses and organizations interested in partnering for in-person events, such as Nerd Nite and local venue Bottlerocket. This would be a great opportunity to expand the personal ads project and continue to build the section.

For the “pitch-a-pal” submissions, we received a couple of mood board-style creations.

Final thoughts

The biggest challenge of this project was thinking about how to keep people’s personal information safe. We decided to let people connect with each other in the comments of the featured submissions to avoid liability on Pittsburgh City Paper’s end and to simplify the process. In the future, City Paper might consider more ways to connect people, but keeping interactions in the comments was the best way to ensure people could choose to share their information without it going through a third party.

We are excited to see more survey responses and learn what content people are interested in. City Paper’s next steps are to brand its personal section and build out content based on the audience feedback.

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Cite this article

Novinger, Audrey (2025, June 9). Personal ads drive community engagement for alt-weekly. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/personal-ads-drive-community-engagement-for-alt-weekly/