Tag Archives: practices

Working on an iPad strategy? Hold on there, tiger

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I’m not going to point any fingers because I think everyone has the best of intentions, but I fear that calls for community newspapers to have a strategy for the iPad are misguided — with one caveat, which I’ll get to.

Apple’s new touchscreen device kind of looks like an e-reader and, chances are, it’ll excel at that function. But to expect that old print-centric information architecture and design will be rescued by an e-reader in everyone’s bag is like tilting at windmills. That train left the station a long time ago, folks.

The iPad, rather, is an extension of the mobile ethos of information delivery based on locality and specificity:

What information do I need to know about where I am, on topics of interest, from people I trust.

Now, if an iPad strategy is a wholesale reinvention of the newsroom and means development of a brand new content strategy, I’m all for it. Because in reality (maybe more than Steve Jobs wants to admit), the iPad is just a big mobile phone that doesn’t make phone calls.

My concern is that newsrooms — especially small community newsrooms — aren’t prepared to provide information in an always-on mobile world anyway. And to focus on one aspect of a product (the e-reader) but miss the real power in its connectivity is going to be devastating.

I remain cautiously optimistic.

Serving readers

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My good friend Jason over at wemediaguru has a good post that I wanted to touch on.
In response to a Rob Curley post on serving audiences and giving readers what they want:

A perfect example at where I work is the fact that accident stories and crime are well read on our web site but often those pieces get buried in the B section of the print product.

He continues:

Curley’s point is this and it has been said before: If we don’t listen to our audience we will quickly become irrelevant both as information providers and as solid businesses.

It occurs to me that there are a couple of things that exist of the old way of doing journalism that have always kind of seemed to live in a bit of “editorial limbo.” For example:

  • Ever have an editor who asks great questions of a story, the kind that really serve to make a topic relevant to readers, and then make completely unrelated choices for page 1?
  • Most journalists love covering breaking news and getting the story first, but balk at really publishing right now as in a blog or online posting.

Obviously, the Web presents new challenges and opportunities for the business (and service) of news. But maybe if we start thinking of these new tools as ways to cut through the b.s. and do the kind of work we’ve aspired to, the hill we’re climbing might get a bit less steep.