By John Bednarowski
Marietta Daily Journal
BIRMINGHAM – Sports editors take a lot of time and effort in bringing news to the readers.
But how sports editors provide that information to the readers is continuing to evolve and it won’t be long until the majority of that information isn’t received from print or Web, but mobile, on phones and tablets.
That was the message conveyed by Tim Stephens, sports editor of the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel, and Wade Kwon, a former journalist with the Birmingham Post Herald and expert on online and mobile communication at the APSE Southeast Region Meeting in Birmingham last month.
“Print is still king,” Stephens said. “Seventy-two percent of people read a newspaper and 90 percent of the revenue is print revenue.”
But while print is still on top, the continuous question is for how long?
For the last 20 years, papers of all sizes have tried to figure out how to reach their readers on Websites as print circulations decreased. And now that some papers have finally figured out what to do online, mobile is turning the industry upside down again.
“Mobile is rapidly ready to pass the Web,” Stephens said. “It’s taken 3 to 4 years for mobile to pass what took 20 years online.
“Mobile traffic doubled in 2011 and will double again this year. By 2016, there will be 10 billion smartphone users and 500 million tablets. They will be the most prolific users of our sites. They want everything right now and in their hand and they will be using it for sports.”
Kwon said mobile users are not bound by the traditional media formats. They want things molded to their wants and needs. The key for the sports department will be to see the need and be the need.
Some of the possibilities include running game stories for mobile, video highlights, live blogging and offers – whether it’s a new app or a coupon of some kind.
“Readers and users will find someone to connect with,” Kwon said.
Stephens took it a step farther.
“Digital users want and are comfortable with wanting people to give or sell them things,” he said.
Maybe the best thing about finding ways to generate users through mobile is it gives media outlets an opportunity to correct the mistakes they made when moving content to the Web.
“We can’t afford to make the same mistakes,” Stephens said. “We have to be thinking about products, not just conveying news.”
And more importantly, outlets will have to make the investment in going mobile.
“We can’t afford not to do it,” Stephens said. “Mobile will be a safe bet because 50 percent are already using a tablet or a smartphone, and more than half use more than one platform.”
