Journalist Fiona Harari is a self-described classifieds voyeur. She’s been scouring the back pages of newspapers and weird corners of the internet for more than 15 years. In her ‘Addendum’ series for Radiotonic, she found that the stories behind the ads are tragic, funny and overwhelmingly human.
There are so many stories out there: the minister trying to reunite some luggage, abandoned on a country highway, with its owner; the woman searching for her birth mother; the elderly man looking for his first love, not because he wants to rekindle an old romance, but because he would just like to know whatever happened to her.
These are everyday stories of ordinary people. They feature themes most of us can relate to - love and longing, family and mystery - with a simple charm not always found in mainstream news reporting.
These stories all have something in common. Each one of them was found in the classifieds.
Every day, thousands of classified advertisements are published around Australia. The ads were once rivers of gold for newspapers, providing valuable streams of income as people all over the country sought to sell their message in as few words as possible. Even though those rivers have all but dried up, the classifieds continue - now more than ever online, wordier than before but no less interesting.
I have a particular interest in the classifieds - not, though, as a buyer or seller. I am, I suppose, more a classified voyeur. I scan ads for stories. It’s a habit that started 15 years ago, when, as a senior newspaper journalist I was asked to write a new weekly column. The editor had heard about an American writer who sifted through phone books from all over the country, called people at random, and then wrote their stories. Why not do the same with classified ads?
My initial reaction was scepticism. Who would willingly share their personal details with a stranger over the phone? And what were the odds their stories, or their ads, would be interesting anyway?