Opinion: Mobiles are a difficult business for local newspapers to navigate

Posted by Katherine Thompson on August 4, 2008 at 11:52 AM

According to Rick Edmonds, in an opinion piece on Poynter Online, for mobile website to become a success they need "to grow: the quality and affordability of the devices, the audience for an assortment of news and information products, appealing medium-specific formatting and, finally, monetization through ads or another revenue stream."

All this can be quite hard for a local newspaper to set up. The result can be quite good to disastrous (hard to navigate or to read). However, mobile is such an important business that local newspapers can't afford to stay out of it.

The reality is that people can easily access national and international headlines on big dailies such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today or The Wall Street Journal on their mobiles, so they may not read their local news sites.

It seems that mobile is another business that big dailies benefit from to the detriment of local newspapers.

Source: Poynter Online