"Sorry, Mr. Newspaper!"

Four presentations about newspapers using mobile technology to distribute their content were given today at the Digital Media Round Table, one of the first meetings of the 58th annual World Newspaper Congress and the 12th annual World Editors Forum in Seoul, Korea. Park Chang-hee, General Manager of JoongAng Ilbo Strategic Planning, painted a picture of the Korean mobile newspaper market explaining that Korean papers have been evolving with cellular technology. Showing a television advertisement entitled “Sorry Mr. Newspaper” that portrayed a young man happily surfing the internet and checking headlines on his mobile phone while newspapers flew in his front door unnoticed, Mr. Park said that the demand for newspaper journalism will always exist but that newspapers themselves need to be open to new technologies. Mobile technology is simply a means of distributing newspaper content which also provides new options for newspapers such as customizing content to reader preference, he continued. Mr. Park also added that the Korean market is moving towards an Open Mobile Network Policy, a government initiative that would open up the mobile market to organizations other than mobile providers, essentially meaning that newspaper organizations may soon be able to distribute their own mobile news themselves without having to use the mobile service middleman. Read the next posting for more ways to capitalize on mobile technology.