by Lindsey Wray
Imagine walking down the street and getting a coupon on your mobile device for a latte at the coffee shop you’re about to pass. From your newspaper of choice, no less.
These geo-targeting abilities are here, and they may be a way to help newspapers survive amidst falling revenues.
That’s according to Jennifer Moyer, the former chief operating officer for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive who is now the chief financial officer for Alarm.com.
Moyer said the bottom line for the future of newspapers is to maximize content by making it available in different mediums.
“It’s critical to the future to leverage all these distribution channels,” she said, even beyond mobile phones.
For instance, Moyer said, social networking Web sites are key because they’re a way for news media organizations to go where their readers or viewers are and reach them there.
“It starts a conversation,” she said of using vehicles such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube to communicate with an increasingly tech-savvy audience. The important thing is to engage people in all realms, realizing that a traditional article is not necessarily the beginning of a journalistic experience.
“Leveraging these social networks is probably going to become even more critical,” Moyer said, because of their viral nature and the speed with which news can spread.
Moyer encourages news media outlets to explore new technology, or to explore partnerships with other organizations if they don’t have the capacity to employ new mediums internally.
Finally, news media outlets should remember to take full advantage of their Web sites, which may get 10 or more times the amount of hits as a newspaper’s circulation. Think of tools such as databases and maps, or other visual ways to represent data, Moyer said.
“There is an endless news hole on the web,” she said.
For instance, The Washington Post had a feature that used a map to mark information on subjects such as home sales, schools and crime in different regions, giving users multiple pieces of accessible, practical information about their own neighborhoods.
Going forward, Moyer hopes newspaper readers will get their latte and remain engaged with news, and that the changed but still functioning news media industry will be around to see it.
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Video:
Jennifer Moyer discusses some of the challenges and questions that lie in journalism’s future. She urges journalists to maximize what the Web has to offer.
“There’s a couple of basic questions about the future of journalism in print and online. And those are – how will we fund a significant news operation if we’re not significantly increasing our online revenue, and quickly? Two, how are we going to expect a declining set of resources in the newsroom to produce content for the Web on a 24-7 basis in this multimedia world? And finally, will the time-consuming and costly investigative journalism that has been our bread and butter and has won many Pulitzer prizes…satiate the demand for constant news on the Web?
“So those are big challenges. At the same time, I think what’s going on today with the web provides us a fantastic opportunity to harness the capabilities the Web has to offer through multimedia and interactivity.”
Jennifer Moyer spoke at the 2008 Leadership Institute for Women Journalists in Chicago. The next leadership institute will be held July 20-22 in Chicago. For more tips from previous institutes, click on the links below:
Lindsey Wray is the IWMF's communications coordinator.