Total Community Coverage Series

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Mobile Media: The Best Place to Start

So far, when most news organizations branch out into "new media," they generally focus on computer-based access to the web. However, when you look at the numbers, mobile media may be a more logical place to start:

Cell phones are the new ubiquitous media tool. Use that to your advantage.

Mike Burns, via Flickr (CC license)

• Cell phones are almost everywhere. As of November 2007, 82% of the U.S. population owned a cell phone. That figure has more than quadrupled since 1997, and is still rising fast.
  
  
• More people have cell phones than internet access. Although net access has been rising fast, as of December 2007 only 71% of North Americans had it.
  
  
• Cell phones are especially popular with Hispanics and African Americans, according to research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. "On a typical day, more than half of U.S. English-speaking Hispanics (56%) do something on their cell phone that might involve sending or receiving data." (Blacks, 50%; whites 38%.)
  
  
• Youth are taking over. A basic principle of demographics is that future generations will almost always be more populous than past ones. Therefore, almost every community segment that includes youth is a growth market. According to Pew, 73% of people 18-29 and 57% of people ages 30-49 perform at least one non-voice activity on a handheld device (cell phone or PDA) on a typical day -- important insight for the news business.
  
  
• Hispanics may be your best first choice for mobile and online. In Roberto Suro's Dec. 6, 2007 presentation on demographics at the Knight Digital Media Center, one point he hammered home was that demographic trends of the U.S. Hispanic population indicate this will be key online market in the near future. "Right now, the temptation is to view the U.S. Hispanic population as unlikely to be active online -- but that's misleading."

Given the high level of opportunity that mobile media offers, especially for communities of difference and niche audiences, it's surprising that more mainstream news organizations aren't doing more with mobile media.

Recently, the Project for Excellence in Journalism published a major report, The State of the News Media 2008, which runs over 700 pages. While it's encouraging that this report features a 75-page section on online media, the report barely mentions mobile media. This underscores both the huge need and potential for news organizations to expand more into mobile media -- and reaching out to communities of difference could be a logical place to start.

Five mobile media tips:

• Get systematic about relevance. It's pretty easy to offer basic mobile syndication from any RSS feed. In your content management system, tag your stories according to geography (towns and neighborhoods) and key demographics as well as topics and issues. When you figure out which content might be attractive to communities you aren't yet reaching well, it's easy to start tagging that content to deliver it via mobile (text or audio).
  
  
• Mobile media and the net are blending. Mobile phones and PDAs have a wide range of uses beyond voice calls including web access, listening to music and podcasts, using maps and GPS, taking and sharing photos and videos, and text messaging. Increasingly it makes sense to offer mobile versions of (or features for) your online offerings wherever possible.
  
  
• Voicemail updates. Either delivered to users' voicemail, or they get an occasional text message reminder to call in and listen for the latest news or special announcements. This can help bridge literacy and even language barriers. For example, Fox News Radio offers updates-to-voicemail.
  
  
• Niche media syndication. Broker deals to redistribute news sources on relevant topics (like EIN News) or in relevant languages (like Somali Sports & Culture). This can serve both online and mobile delivery. Twin Cities Daily Planet does this with online Hmong headlines from Hmong Today -- content that could easily be syndicated to mobile. Also consider partnering with high school and college media and young bloggers for mobile syndication.
  
  
• Learn about short codes. One possible pitfall of implementing interactive text-based mobile services (where users can send requests or replies via text message) is the expense and complexity of obtaining a short code, which makes texting easier and less costly for mobile users. Blogger Om Malik wrote a helpful guide: 10 things to know about short codes.

Cell phone giveaways

One radical way that news organizations could build community goodwill and credibility and make a demonstrably positive contribution to people's well-being -- while also enhancing brand loyalty and awareness of their content -- might be to provide free pre-paid cell phones to the poorest households in your coverage region. The need there is strong, and the potential benefits are many. According to research from MIT, "providing cell phones to the 38 percent of America's 45 million poorest households now without them -- including millions of seniors, Hispanics, African-Americans and rural residents -- could help them get work or make money worth $2.9 billion-$11 billion."

Such a program could be tried on a limited basis, and phones could come pre-loaded with relevant text or voicemail-based services from the news organization. These might include top news, hyperlocal news headlines, community calendar listings, blog posts, updates and deadlines from social service agencies, and news for target demographics (seniors, agricultural workers, low-income parents, etc.)

News organizations could partner with cell phone providers, local governments and economic development agencies, phone recyclers, and nonprofits for such an effort. The phone interface could also deliver pay-per-call advertising, which is especially effective for local advertisers and cell phone users without data plans or net access.

Tools: Don't Reinvent the Wheel...

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