Publishers of static content going Mobile

Michael Zimbalist gives a video interview on the New York Times mobile strategy. A bold move - considering that the Newspaper world is a very slow moving one. The motto for newspapers as observed by outsiders is — “do what you have done the last 100 years. It has worked the last century, so keep with the winning formula”.

But the question remains is this a winning formula ? The newspaper has certainly its benefits. One of the major advantages of newspapers over other 20th century media was their portability. Whereas television and radio were stationary devices, newspapers could be picked up, folded and carried in readers’ pockets. Now, through 21st century mobile devices carried in the pockets of an enormous amount of people around the world, newspapers have the perfect means of transferring from the print to the digital world.(See WAN link)

WANs (World Association of Newspapers) initiative called the “Shaping the Future of Newspapers” has been going now for ten years. This initiative is looking at todays challenges and opportunities for newspapers. With all of the reports and case-studies done, there has been little success to convince newspapers to, to a limited extent marry digital and print.

Today, these two media channels have been put to work very much independent from each other at most publishers. There is now initiative from print to use mobile to access multimedia content on the web.

Certainly the emerging markets with the lack of infrastructure and the cost of bandwidth, people on the go and easily and very cheaply access bits and pieces of additional information using their mobile phone.

Michael Zimbalist, VP of R&D at New York Times, aptly states how mobile can be used to marry print - with multimedia. “Die Burger”, a local Western-Cape based Newspaper here in South Africa has been running a multimedia newsroom over the last three years now. But, once again - only access to people with Internet Connectivity.

The Times and the Mail & Guardian, other local South African based newspapers, how challenged the status quo. They have leaped ahead with their implementation - and they certainly are a example of a bright future - for news, be it the form of print, online and mobile.

Following the links for additional / very interesting reading

• 10 obvious things about the future of newspapers.
• Bill Gates once again comments on the slow death of print