Category: Newspapers

News Readership Increases on Mobile Phones

I thought this was pretty fascinating.  TechCrunch has a story on some new comScore numbers around Mobile Web usage.

The number of people who access news and information daily on their mobile phones doubled from 10.8 million in January, 2008 to 22.4 million in January, 2009.

With the news industry reaching for any ray of sunshine that it can, it’s interesting that one of the biggest growth areas is the mobile phones.  It shows that people like to be able to consume news when they’re on the go.  It also shows the importance of allowing users to consume content where they want it.


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NY Times iPhone App Offline Support is Awesome!! Works Perfectly.

I take the subway to work everyday. During that time period, I’m completely without mobile reception. I have an iPhone and AT&T and that doesn’t work in the subway tunnels.

So I was kind of excited when the NY Times announced that they were adding offline support for their iPhone app. I tried it on the subway today and it worked perfectly.

Now, I wish that Apple would add offline capability to the iPhone version of Safari so that I could do this with just a normal mobile Web site.


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Renewed My Subscription to the Washington Post Dead Tree Edition…

So… yesterday, I got a letter from the Washington Post saying that I needed to renew my subscription for daily deliver of the Washington Post.  I opted to go for it.  I re-upped for the next 6 months.

Is it weird that I enjoy reading the physical newspaper?  I feel like I don’t see many other 24 year olds walking down the street with the newspaper under there arm.

For my dad, the smell of newspaper ink on his hands is a religious experience. (He’s a former newspaper reporter.)

For me, I just like something about how news is presented to me in a newspaper.  It’s not flung at me all at once.  It’s progressively exposed to me a few stories at a time.

What do you guys think?  Any of you read the physical newspaper?  Any of you pay for it?

I realize that at some point that printing the physical newspaper will be a non-profitable business for them.  I guess, by that time, we’ll all be walking around with Amazon Kindles.


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What’s the future of the newspaper?

As I’ve mused in the past, I don’t think the paper newspaper translates very well into the online space.  With the news of the New York Times cutting 100 of its newsroom jobs,  I start thinking about who/what will be the future of the industry.  Obviously depending on a paper newspaper and paper ads isn’t enough.

More and more I think the future is a personlized start page, like iGoogle or Netvibes.

What does a newspaper?… It takes a bunch of different disparate sources of information from around the world and aggregates them into one convenient space.

What does a personalized start page do? … It takes a bunch of different disparate sources of information from around the world and aggregates them into one convenient space.