Columns 1-2: Local announcements--marriage and death notices, market prices, and lists of candidates in upcoming local elections--most frequently appeared here. Depending on available space and the advertising volume for a given issue, however, letters to the editor and bits of political news might be located here as well (similar in their content to those on page 2). The January 31 issue, for example, carried letters to the editor regarding the upcoming judicial election, as well as correspondence from Augusta's state senator, Alexander H. H. Stuart, in response to an article that appeared in a previous issue of the Staunton Vindicator. This was an instance in which the Spectator and the Vindicator "shared" local news. Because the Spectator published on Tuesdays while the Vindicator did so on Fridays, their cycles of reporting were somewhat out of sync, yet they could and sometimes did carry identical letters to the editor if they were of significant local interest. For more on the relationship between the Vindicator and the Spectator, see the analysis of the Vindicator.

Columns 3-7: Almost invariably, this space was filled with advertisements (occasionally, all of page 3 was occupied by ads). There was no single format or order in which these ads appeared, and along the bottom of every column random ads appeared (usually for local businesses), seemingly for no reason other than that they fit at the bottom of the page. There were, however, some regular patterns to the ads appearing in the top half to two-thirds of the columns.

Column 3 was usually a mixed collection of ads, appropriately placed under the heading "Miscellaneous." These could be ads for nearly anything. On January 31, while this section actually began in column 2 and was missing its miscellaneous heading, ads appeared for J. S. Byers and Co. livery and J. B. Evans's tobacco store. Richard H. Dudley and William A. Burnett legally declared that they had found stray cows on their respective land. William Berry announced that he had a young black slave to hire out as a farm hand, and Ladd, Webster and Co. of Baltimore sang the praises of its sewing machines with a 23-point list of their virtues.

Column 4 was nearly always headed "Auction Sales." Primarily, these were announcements for public land auctions in Augusta or surrounding counties. Frequently, such sales resulted from court orders regarding estate divisions or from lawsuits. Also, ads for upcoming nearby slave auctions might be found in column 4. Given the Spectator's general reluctance to discuss slavery in its editorial columns, their willingness to run regular advertisements for slave sales seems somewhat ironic. But slavery was an economic and social institution, and the Spectator's editorial stance reflected only the paper's position on slavery's political import, not on the institution itself.

Column 5 was usually headed "Private Sales," and advertised land sales (not for auction) by private individuals or by real estate agents.

Column 6, like column 3, usually collected "Miscellaneous" advertisements.

Column 7 often ran under the heading "Richmond Advertisements," carrying ads from Richmond merchants.

Ads on page 3 tended to be oriented toward commercial and legal interests more than those appearing on pages 1 and 2, which were more clearly geared to the middle class purchaser of consumer goods. In addition, the further toward the right one looked on page 3, the more likely one would be to find larger ads for businesses outside of Augusta County. This trend continued onto page 4. (View other page 3 advertisements from the January 31 Spectator).