The second panel at the International Online Journalism Symposium focused on mobile platforms and how journalism is adapting to new devices such as the Apple iPad.
The first speaker was Dan Treinish, director of content acquisition & business development, Skiff, a platform to distribute content to mobile devices.
Skiff was incubated as a start-up by Hearst about three years ago. The business model is based on the migration of ad dollars to the mobile space.
As a platform, Skiff aims to replicate a newspaper in a way that retains the editorial authenticity of the print product, but in a way that works on a mobile device.
From the screenshot in the presentation, the end result still looks like a print product but on a digital screen. But I remain to be convinced that reversioning, rather than reimagining, print for a mobile device is the best strategy.
NPR’s iPad app
By comparison, the NPR iPad app offers a very different experience to the traditional radio experience. Kinsey Wilson, senior vice president and general Manager, gave an insight into the development of its editorial for mobile devices.
What NPR didn’t know is that someone else had developed an NPR app for the iPhone, based on NPR’s API. This, and other factors, prompted NPR to speed up development of its own branded app for the iPhone.
After launch last July, NPR mobile traffic experienced a 10x growth.
“We’re betting on Apple, we’re betting on Android,” said Wilson. He expects these two to become the dominant mobile platforms.
With the iPad, NPR decided that it was critical to be on the platform from day one, re-engineering the website for the device.
“This is a breakthrough in digital computing,” said Wilson, pointing out that it lent itself to writing and listening at the same time.
But he added that he was sceptical that the iPad alone was a salvation for traditional media.
New York Times’ strategy
Tom Bodkin assistant managing editor, design director, The New York Times took on the spirit of the session by presenting from an iPad.
After going over e-readers and smartphones, Bodkin said turned to tablet computers, saying they were “a whole different game” and “allow us to return to what we do best, narrative story-telling”.
He talked about replicating some of the attributes of print – convenience, serendipity and more – on a tablet.
The current iPad app from the Times is limited and free, but the intention is to expand the content, add to the features and charge for it.
Bodkin concluded by saying that with the right design and experience, products such as the iPad app would “demand the emotion commitment that we find in a paper product”, and importantly, bring in subscription and advertising revenue.
Designing The Guardian iPad app
After a few technical difficulties, John-Henry Barac, digital designer on The Guardian’s iPhone app, concluded the session.
He recalled in developing the app, he found that 76% of mobile use of Guardian website at the time was on iPhone and iPod Touch.
Barac said he looked as sections as a series of planets and this was how he set about organising content on the iPhone app.
Most people use the Guardian app while commuting at 8am, but there is also a spike in use at 10pm, suggesting people are using the app at home on the sofa.
What is exciting about touch, he said, is because you interact directly with it. “You can grab news,” said Barac.
We are trying to get the familiarity of existing media on new devices, he said, but there are issues with it.
He found that the NPR app the most comfortable on an iPad, perhaps because it did not come from an incumbent print organisation.
Barac said the iPad was exciting from a design viewpoint, as it offers ways of rethinking how we interact with content, from every bit of data on a screen.
He concluded by talking about the need for experimentation, with tools that allow this to happen easily. And there were also issues with the way newsrooms are organised, with developers and designers part of the editorial process.
His final thought was about sound design: should there be a sound when you turn a page? Or a way of providing an audio alert to updates from a different section?
Clearly mobile devices are not simply print on a digital screen, but platforms for inventing and creating new ways of experiencing journalism.
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