Advice for editors from Dan Rowinski: Rethink your mobile approach

This continues a series on advice for new top editors in Digital First Media newsrooms. 

Dan Rowinski

Dan Rowinski, Mobile Editor at ReadWrite, first offered the advice below in a comment on yesterday’s blog post on mobile opportunities, suggesting that I should have provided more detailed suggestions. He was right. Whatever detail I provided was in previous posts that I acknowledged were outdated. I asked Dan if I could break out his advice as a guest post. I added a few links. How applicable his suggestions are to the editor’s job will vary by newsroom, but the suggestions are valid and helpful.

I think you will find it a little easier to think about if you break it down into tangible categories.

Deployment

• How does your site look on mobile? There is a good chance it looks like crap. That is probably going to be your first and biggest problem.

Advertisement

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How the digital-first approach can succeed at making money

I have blogged this week about various aspects of digital-first journalism. For any of that to succeed, digital-first must succeed as a business approach.

It will. It is. I’m not going to explain that in detail in this post, though. I’m going to shift to curation (an important process and skill in digital-first journalism), because lots of people have already explained the business aspects of the digital-first approach well.

John Paton, CEO of Digital First Media (and Journal Register Co. and MediaNews Group) explained the company’s business approach better than I would (which is good, since he’s the CEO) in his June address to the International Newsroom Summit in Zurich: How the Crowd Saved Our Company. His recent post on news media as medium and messenger elaborates, including the slide below. His September post announcing the formation of Digital First discussed some of the results of the approach so far (and we’re just getting started).

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Digital storytelling and mobile strategy

Update: I’ve added some digital storytelling links to the end of this post (more to come).

Update: Thanks to Steve Klein for curating today’s digital storytelling examples provided by my tweeps. And thanks to Mindy McAdams (I lost count of how many examples she provided) and others who responded with examples. I will be blogging more on this topic, with links to examples in the blog and sorted by topic. But right now I am unwinding in the canyons of southern Utah.

Update: The workshop is over. Thanks to all who shared examples. I will update later with links to the examples, but you should be able to see most of them on the Twitter hashtag or the liveblog replay.

I’m leading a workshop today on digital storytelling and mobile strategy for a meeting of editors of Pioneer Newspapers.

I will be asking on Twitter for examples of different types of digital stories, using the hashtag #digitalstory. I will be collecting those examples in this liveblog:

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Newspapers don’t need new ideas; here are lots of ideas for new revenue streams

Alan Mutter documents the no-longer-surprising fact that newspaper advertising revenues continued to fall for the 20^th straight quarter in the first three months of 2011.

This decline comes at a time when the economy has been growing for nearly two years, turning around declines in broadcast, magazine and online advertising. Mutter closes: “Clearly, newspapers need new ideas. They need to develop a broad array of targeted content and advertising solutions to serve diverse audiences across the web, mobile and social media.”

Actually, newspapers don’t need new ideas. They need to unshackle themselves from their old advertising-and-circulation model and start serious pursuit of the dozens of ideas already presented for developing new revenue sources. Here are some ideas (not all mine and not new here, but not yet in wide use, at least by newspaper companies):

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Links on mobile ads, apps, check-ins, mistakes

Update: I originally forgot to include Amy Gahran’s post about Will Sullivan’s advice, but I’ve added it as the first bullet.

Some interesting links relating to mobile-first strategy, about which I have written here repeatedly:

• Amy Gahran shares advice from Will Sullivan: “Make sure the people who are directing the organization really understand and use mobile devices—including tablets.”

• Alan Mutter writes strongly for Editor & Publisher that “more advertising is bound to migrate to mobile, because the intimate, personalized, and immediate quality of the platform makes it, by far, the most targetable and effective of all media.” This is the best piece I can recall seeing from Mutter on the important mobile opportunities.

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Be your community’s mobile leader

I discussed mobile-first strategy today at the Ohio Newspaper Association. My slides are below. Here are some previous mobile-first posts that may help participants in the workshop:

• News organizations need mobile-first strategy
• News companies need to help local businesses pursue mobile opportunities
• How news organizations need to change to pursue a mobile-first strategy
• A mobile-first project for your community on the go

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Engaging your community

I led a discussion of community engagement today for the Conference on the Newspaper Business at Yale, a gathering of college newspaper publishers, ad managers and financial managers.

I discussed the Complete Community Connection and mobile-first strategy.

I told them that young people are still getting jobs in this business (I hired a bunch last year). Even though lots of newspapers and other news organizations have cut jobs, others like TBD, Bloomberg Government and Patch have been hiring journalists. I recommended my advice for pursuing jobs in digital journalism.

Below are my slides from the presentation:

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Mobile strategy is the path to a successful future

I will be discussing mobile-first strategy today at the Reese Felts Digital Newsroom at the University of North Carolina. My slides are below. Here are some previous mobile-first posts that may help participants in the workshop:

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My blogging themes for 2010: job change, Twitter, business models …

Reviewing 2010 on this blog:

My job change to TBD was a major theme of the year here. My most-popular post of 2010 shared tips on job-hunting, from my own experience finding a new job and hiring the community engagement staff at TBD. That’s my second most-read post in two-plus years writing this blog. Other posts among the year’s leaders dealt with my job change as well: Pursuing a new opportunity in Washington, Wanted: vision for community engagement and Our community engagement team is taking shape. Another post relating to the job change took a longer view, discussing how I have twice redirected and rejuvenated my career. I also told how TBD’s launch prompted my first foray into public relations and brought back memories of an earlier launch. I explained why we need a director of community engagement, even though engagement should be everyone’s job. I have blogged as well for TBD, writing about our commitment to accuracy and transparency, and about why and how we chose TBD as our name.

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Resources for fighting the local battle

Today I’m a discussion leader for the American Press Institute’s Digital Delivery seminar. The morning program I’m involved in is The Battle for Local: Crowded, Competitive, Hyperlocal. I’ll be mentioning several resources for the seminar participants, and I’ll share them here.

Of course, I’ll be discussing TBD at some length.

Of course, I will be talking about the Complete Community Connection.

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Entrepreneurial journalists should pursue several revenue streams

Entrepreneurial journalists make a mistake if they think advertising is their only potential revenue stream.

Our entrepreneurial journalism class at Georgetown University will focus tonight on exploring possible ways to make money beyond display advertising. I doubt that many organizations would want to pursue all these possibilities. Particularly if you’re a small organization or an individual, you will need to pick your shots carefully and decide which have the most potential and which are worth the time and money it would cost to try them. Some of these opportunities are tailored for the sole proprietor. Others work better for a larger organization or at least for an entrepreneur or team with specialized technical skills.

Here are some revenue streams we will discuss in class:

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Even with older Americans, mobile is gaining on print

A number jumped out at me in the Pew report Americans and their Gadgets: 58 percent of Americans 65 and older own cell phones.

That made sense to me. My mother is 83 years old and has Alzheimer’s disease and a cell phone is her only phone. It’s not a smart phone and I know better than to text her or leave her a voice mail, but we talk on it frequently (well, not as frequently as we should, but that’s my fault).

I wondered whether newspaper readership among older Americans was higher than 58 percent.

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