The 4Cs of Mobile News: Channels, Conversation, Content and Commerce

Franois Nel, University of Central Lancashire, UK (FPNel@uclan.ac.uk) Oscar Westlund, University of Gothenburg, Sweden (oscar.westlund@jmg.gu.se)

Paper presented at the Future of Journalism Conference 8-9th September 2011, Cardiff, U.K.

Abstract
Newspapers are in flux. Having seen their traditional businesses battered by forces that include the structural changes fuelled by the rapid growth of networked digital technologies and the cyclical shifts in the economy, mainstream news publishers have intensified efforts to adapt their journalism processes and products in order to generate new income. However, growing digital revenue streams to match, if not surpass, the losses in print circulation and advertising incomes has proved more difficult than many had predicted. A bright or at least not quite so dim spot glows from mobile devices. Drawing on data from an annual audit conducted in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, this article examines how 66 metropolitan newspapers in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have performed with respect to channels, content, conversation and commerce (4Cs). While findings show the expansion of newspapers mobile endeavours, these are uneven and characterised by repurposing existing content and duplicating traditional commercial models. KEY WORDS: newspapers; future of journalism; media competition; mobile news; online business models

Displacing and complementing effects

...

this article reports on a study into how newspapers have shaped their mobile media developments in four interconnected areas...

1 Channels, 2. Conversation, 3. Content, 4. Commerce?

Bath Birmingham Bradford Brighton Bristol Cambridge Canterbury Carlisle Chester Chichester Coventry Derby Notes Ely Exeter Gloucester Hereford Hull Lancaster on method Durham Leeds Leicester Lichfield Lincoln Liverpool London Manchester Newcastle Norwich Nottingham Oxford Peterborough Plymouth Portsmouth Preston Ripon Salford Salisbury Sheffield Southampton St Albans Stoke Sunderland Truro Wakefield Wells Westminster Winchester Wolverhampton Worcester York Aberdeen Dundee Edinburgh Glasgow Inverness Stirling Bangor Cardiff Newport St Davids Swansea Armagh Belfast Lisburn Derry Newry
5

Notes on method
This article draws primarily on quantitative findings from a longitudinal data audit of metropolitan newspapers in the United Kingdom. The purposive sample was constructed from the 66 UK cities listed on the website UKCities.com. Details of newspapers in England (50 cities), Scotland (6 ) and Wales (5) were taken from the Newspaper Society database (nsdatabase.co.uk), while the Audit Bureau of Circulation data was used to identify the newspapers in the five cities of Northern Ireland. The 66 newspapers in the research sample were owned by 16 publishers with the top four publishers Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press, Newsquest* and Northcliffe owning 51 (77%) of the titles audited. Paid newspapers with the highest circulation for each city were prioritised in the audit, but when there was not a paid newspaper the highest circulating free paper or newspaper that covered the city was audited. Data on the newspapers websites and then, where apparent, the concomitant mobile sites, smartphone and tablet applications was collected in June and July each year of 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 by two coders, who followed accepted quality assurance procedures. The next section elaborates on the 4 Cs that have guided the analysis of the findings.
*Newsquest is owned by Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the US.

the channels
Proprietary text messaging services include SMS or MMS alerts, which allow for text, graphics, photos, audio clips, video clips, or any combination of the above. Proprietary mobile news platforms are sites or applications designed for access by mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets and ereaders. Third-party social media platforms like Twitter, which is a micro-blog and messaging system that lets a user send brief text messages up to 140 characters in length to a list of followers.

60 50 40 38 45

56

30
23 23

20 10
2

15

15 5

2 SMS

0 Mobile sites 2008 2009

Apps 2010 2011

Twitter

RQ1 What distribution channels are used?

the content

25

23 23

23 23
21

22

Apps & third party sites

20 15 11 11 10 15 15

15

5 0 General News 0

4 0 Sports News 2008 2009 0 Entertainment 2010 2011 News 0 0 0 0 0 0

Business News

Live Football

Blog & Forum

RQ2 What content are newspapers making available on their mobile news sites?

the conversation
Personalisation has been defined by Steuer (1995) as the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of a mediated environment in real time (p. 46) and indicates the users expression of preference for specific content from the site. On the other hand, customisation is the sites technological response to the user based on his or her explicit or implicit actions. For example, users could personalise the offer from a news site by indicating specific preferences for content they would like to receive in an email newsletter, while a mobile site could respond by customising the users experiences by recommending specific content based on the users locations. In addition, this study considers dialogical interactivity, which expands Stromer-Galleys (2004) and Bucys (2004) concept of interpersonal interactivity between people (such as chat room discussions, message boards, and blogs) to include various forms of created expression texts, still images and video - between people (not machines) that can be considered as part of previous communication events and are therefore not simply one-way. Also considered was what Deuze calls navigational interactivity, where the user is allowed to navigate in a more or less structured way through the sites content (Deuze, 2003:214). While this is, as Thurman (2010) points out, ubiquitous on news websites, its expression on mobile news websites has not been explored.

The most popular use of mobile dialogical interactivity was the solicitation of user-generated content (UGC). In 2008, 16 (25%) of the websites audited invited their users to submit content with their mobile devices through SMS/MMS. The following year, that option rose to 27 (43%), but dropped down to 17 (27%) in 2010 and was down to 15 (23%) in 2011. The Contact Us sections on the mobile sites (where they existed) did also not offer any feedback channel other than email. And while the ability to comment on articles posted on the main website was widespread and increasingly popular amongst the newspapers in this audit (47 or 75% in 2008; 56 or 89% in 2009; 58 or 92% in 2010; and 57 or 90% in 2011 ), this conversational feature was not available on any of the mobile websites. Closer scrutiny of the use of Twitter provides further evidence that, at this stage, the potential of mobile to facilitate interaction between news organisations and their users has not been fully exploited. As noted above, by 2011 the vast majority of the newspapers in this audit (57 or 90% ) had signed up to Twitter, which potentially enable users to personalise their news experiences by becoming a follower and for sites to customise the users experiences by providing specific information. However, 6 of the 57 sites did not use their Twitter channels and, where it was actively used, the extent to which it enabled dialogical interactivity varied. Figures changed using the formula n / 63 * 100 n being the figure found in the instrument The most noteworthy amongst the findings navigation interactive features was the limited use of hyperlinks between sites. In 2011, 21 (91%) of the websites that had companion mobile sites had links to those sites, while none of the mobile sites had links back to the primary website. These findings raise questions about whether publishers intend for the sites to be complementary.

RQ1 How are newspapers using mobile to foster conversation with and amongst users?

The commerce

With early experiments with premium rate content services via SMS having been largely been abandoned, the exploration of mobile revenue streams focused on the mobile sites. In 2009, none of the mobile sites audited featured display advertising and in 2010 they were noted on only 4 (17%) of the 23 mobile sites, dipping to 3 (13% of 23) in 2011. Classified advertising was absent in 2009 but shot up to 11 sites (48%) in 2010, primarily job ads; however, these were completely absent in 2011. Commercial sponsorship trends were similar: In 2009, 2 (9%) of the mobile sites carried sponsorships, but in 2010 and 2011 none were noted. Apps for smartphone and tablet were not obvious sources of income either. Of the smartphone apps, only one (the Belfast Telegraph) had a link to the main website, which offered opportunities to subscribe to the print newspaper, but did not offer potential print subscribers the direct opportunity to complete the transaction. Other innovations were noted:
The first was the development of branded tablet apps with niche content Third-party aggregator apps

RQ4 what mobile revenue streams are newspapers taking advantage of?

the conclusion
The audit showed that the vast majority of the publishers in this study did not engage with their users through mobile channels (RQ1). In terms of content (RQ2) all mobile news content, whether on mobile sites or on apps, was repurposed through autodirection from the website (and the paper), in line with the widely articulated strategy of gather once, publish many. While more and more UK publishers are concentrating on mobile, their initial efforts are primarily geared towards content distribution and they do little to facilitate conversation (RQ3). Publishers were also struggling to monetise their mobile activities (RQ4)

delivering the latest News and Sport stories direct to mobiles and other handheld devices. Visitors to the main site using a mobile device are seamlessly redirected and served mobile content that is resized on the fly to fit all different types of mobile screen resolutions. The site is tailored for small screen needs by featuring a simplified navigation to make it easier to access lead stories (expressandstar.com/mobile).

the website of the UKs largest circulation regional newspaper, the (Wolverhampton) Express and Star.

Thank you & questions

Franois Nel FPNel@uclan.ac.uk Oscar Westlund oscar.westlund@jmg.gu.se