Know your customer, wherever they are, and use that knowledge, advised Stephen Pinches, Group Product Manager for Mobile & Emerging Platforms at the Financial Times, at the 5th Tablet & App Summit last week in Frankfurt. This philosophy is why the paper decided to build its own web-based app for the iPad rather than be part of Apple’s Newsstand: because as well as taking a 30% cut of subscription revenue, Apple does not provide publishers with subscriber data.

Within six weeks of Apple’s demand that publishers offer the same subscription deals through iTunes as they do on their own site, the FT rebuilt its native app as a web app. “It has all the things you would expect from a native app,” Pinches said, but “it allows us to enact whatever business model we choose.”

“We believe that data is fundamental to build our model,” he said, and gave personalized content as an example of how to strengthen relations with readers and offer a better service. “If you are a CEO of a media company we can tell you what other CEOs at media companies are reading.”

For Android devices, the FT took the HTML5 web app and “wrapped it in a little code” to put in the Google store. The paper has already launched a Windows 8 app too.

With those advances, however, come challenges and new ways of thinking. It is essential that editors rethink how the audience consumes content: they might start reading a story in print, continue it on their mobile as they travel, and finish it at work on a computer screen.

The new definition of news is anything you didn’t know 15 minutes ago – or even 15 seconds – says García. Many journalists lament that Twitter is where news breaks, he continued, but Twitter is just 140 characters: it is up to journalists to go deeper. 

There is still a place for print, says García, “I believe print is eternal, as long as it adapts.” Paper has the power of disconnect, he says, something that people crave on occasion in this hyper-connected age. But print publications must focus on what they do best. “Nobody expects breaking news in a paper – paper is old,” García believes: “the headlines have to be written to imply looking to the future, not ‘this has already happened.’”

The Washington Post is one paper that is sufficiently evolving in print, García says. It has reinvented its Sunday edition with surprise stories on the front, great photography, and a compact magazine. Colombia’s El Tiempo has also made significant changes, he pointed out, moving from six sections to three: what you need to know (news), what you should read (in-depth features) and what you should do (lifestyle and entertainment).

Online newspapers tired of catering to Apple’s in-app purchasing restrictions are starting to bypass the tech giant completely by creating web-based apps using HTML5 technology, Journalism.co.uk reports. The latest title to jump on the trend? Washington’s local paper The Chronicle, which offers the HTML5 app as part of a subscription bundle that includes complete online and print access, the article said.

The Chronicle’s web app is similar to a “native” iPad app in terms of user experience; rather than downloading the app from Apple’s Newsstand, though, one can access the web app through the iPad’s Internet browser and save it as an icon on the homescreen, the article said. App users can share articles through Facebook and Twitter, as well as download stories to read them offline later, the article said.

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2012 is presidential election year in the US and election fever has already started.
Starting with the caucases, continuing with the primaries and with their eyes already on the presidential race ending in November 2012, newspapers are getting ready.

"Election coverage is bigger than any one newsroom" so the right approach should be teaming up to be able to assure the coverage is as wide and accurate as possible, some believe. Or at least this is what NBC News and Newsweek/Daily Beast have decided to do in view of the upcoming presidential battle. Shared content will appear on the Newsweek pages and online on The Daily Beast.

The decision isn't surprising in itself, Justin Ellis wrote on NiemanLab. Double the resources, double the coverage, double the audience. Also, he explains, looking back to past electoral experience, this is not even new, quoting as examples the Times and CBS News or ABC News and The Washington Post partnering on polls.