Room for improvement in newspaper/mobile relationships

Posted by Lindsay Berrigan on March 29, 2007 at 10:30 AM

World Editor’s Forum (WEF) President George Brock recently said that thus far, mobile companies have been “extraordinarily inept” at forming partnerships with established media brands, but hopes that the next few years will change this relationship.

Brock’s comments came in response to a question on WEF’s Newsroom Barometer Survey. The question asked what respondents thought, in their community, will be the most common way of reading news in 10 years. Of 435 editors and news executives that answered, only 11 percent believed mobile devices were the future.

Editors’ opinions, Brock said, probably reflect the history of mobile companies’ “failing to create effective partnerships with truly established media and journalism brands.” He looks to the future as an opportunity for change.

"My personal opinion is that there will be quite a lot more journalism on mobile and quite soon,” he said. Though obtaining news on mobile devices often costs money, Brock believes that people are getting used to reading journalistic content on PDAs and mobile phones.

"People are perfectly ready to consume,” he said, “but they are just [presently] rather disappointed by the content they see."

Source: Journalism.co.uk through Ifra Executive News Service

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