April 19, 2010
Five takeaways from “Going Mobile: How Newspapers Can Meet the Cell Phone Challenge”
Monday’s conference at Reynolds Journalism Institute is an immersion course in explosion in mobile news. Here are my takeaways:
1. Content is still king, say mobile news editors. But don’t forget convenience.
Eddie Alvarez, who helped develop The Miami Herald’s popular Dolphins application for iPhone: “The content is the most important piece. What content do you offer that is different from a wire service, a commodity.”
Alvarez also said people pay for the Dolphin app even though the information is available on the Herald’s website because “the experience on the application is much better. People will pay a certain amount of money for that convenience.”
2. Put someone in charge of mobile. Several speakers stressed that point. “Make sure someone on staff is charged with making mobile news work,” said Art Howe, CEO of Verve Wireless. With mobile, “you have to be using tools regularly because they’re changing all the time,” said Will Sullivan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
3. Mobile requires more than a tweak of the website. Much more. Mobile is not Internet Lite, Howe said. “You need a whole strategy. You need to be able to manage your content, manage your distribution of news across all devices.”
4. Mobile news is local, location based, and social. Bringing those pieces together is key. “How do you bring content into that local, social connection?” asked National Geographic mobile manager Katie Juhl.
Clyde Bentley, the Missouri journalism professor and RJI fellow who hosted the conference, gave one example of such a connection in a project three Missouri students just launched. Along a scenic walking trail in Columbia, Mo, there are many benches with dedications to deceased family members. The students contacted families and asked them to record comments memorializing their relative. People who pass by simply call a number on their cell phones to access the recordings. The project uses a service called Guide by Cell.
5. Don’t forget the dumb phones. Peter Barclay of Vaya Mobile LLC sketches a three-tier Pyramid of Mobile:
Across the bottom, text messaging, widely used, low tech and useful for calls to action.
The middle tier is mobile Web, which also has wide distribution and relies on a browser.
The top are applications, which provide a rich experience but limited distribution, typically only on smart phones.
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