Recommendations: Next steps forward
with mobile for news providers

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Considering the intimate nature of a smartphone — the typical user doesn’t share his or her device, has it on hand most of the time, and has customized the device with a combination of apps that are useful and appealing to only themselves — plus its advanced capabilities, it would seem to be appropriate as a device to participate and interact with media. Plus, the smartphone offers multiple ways for the user to interact with the news provider: text, audio, video, filling out a form or survey, allowing location coordinates to be shared, etc. It’s a disconnect that most mobile news providers in 2010 do not support two-way interaction.

We offer these recommendations for smartphone news apps, mobile Web sites, and mobile in-depth news packages:

1. Allow comments on news content. And allow phone users to view and respond to comments by PC Web users.
2. Expand comments beyond just text. Smartphones have the ability to easily record audio and video, so consider permitting commenters to share in those formats as well as tapping out a text comment. Audio comments are especially recommended, since it’s so easy for a phone user to record a voice comment and send it to the news provider. With technology available now to convert voice to text, an audio comment from a phone user can be automatically turned into text and included with text comments on the news provider’s PC Web site.
3. Collect geo-location data on commenters, with permission. Where is a mobile user commenting or sharing content from? Due to privacy issues, this requires consideration, but a mobile news app or Web site can identify the location of smartphone commenter and include the information with the comment or content. Privacy can be accommodated by identifying the city or nearest town, rather than specific address. And commenters should have the option of blocking geographic identification attached to their names.
4. Allow photo and video attachments with comments. Also simple on a smartphone is taking a photo or video, or retrieving a previously taken shot or clip, and including it in outgoing communication. Mobile news apps or sites can include the option for a commenter to include a photo or video clip from the phone (including geo-location data); this can be handy for news stories where editors want follow-up eyewitness material.
5. Conduct surveys on smartphones as well as the PC Web. As USA Today has demonstrated with its smartphone app, surveys can be popular even on handheld devices. (Its “Snapshots” graphic user surveys, a staple on the PC Web site, can be taken using a phone — even displaying survey results down to the level of the city that a smartphone user is in.) Don’t restrict participation in surveys to PC Web users.

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This is an area where the smartphone can do more than any other digital device. Coverage of a large and violent campus protest, for example, could include an after-the-event call for protest participants and eyewitnesses to share photos, videos, and/or audio interviews or from-the-scene audio from the event recorded with their phones. For an enterprise news report about people leaving pets in their cars on hot summer days, for example, individuals who witness such cruelty could share photos or video clips of trapped animals and include geo-location data. This last example could include user content shared either after the news package has been published to add data to support the thesis, or solicited by a reporter during the investigation to help enhance the reporter’s work.

We offer these recommendations for news providers to collect smartphone user and eyewitness content in various media formats:

1. Accept photos and brief audio or video clips, as well as text. Here are some common scenarios where a news provider may wish to solicit and accept public or eyewitness content:
   • Breaking news | after publication: Breaking news stories (e.g., forest fire, multi-car fatal accident…) can benefit after the fact from additional eyewitness reports, visuals, and audio. News stories published to mobile Web sites or apps should accommodate witnesses sending in what they’re experienced, in various formats from text to video clips. An application used by an eyewitness should ask permission to include location data for images. Also, it’s appropriate to include permissions language, such that a witness by using the app is granting permission for the news provider to republish the individual’s content.
   • Enterprise or investigative news | after publication: Many in-depth news packages need not end at publication. For appropriate topics, we urge news providers to ask for reader submissions, and to make it easy for smartphone users to send in content via their mobile devices. For example, an enterprise news package on coastal damage from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could ask for additional photos and video from area residents who are able to document wildlife and coastal marsh damage in areas where professional journalists have been blocked from entering by authorities. These images, including exact location data, can be added to an interactive map viewed on a mobile device or the PC Web to expand the scope of the published in-depth news package.
   • Enterprise or investigative news | before publication: When appropriate, we urge reporters and editors to let the public or select groups of experts know about a news project being reported, so that they can offer content in advance to assist the reporter(s). An example: A journalist working on a package about the effects of combat stress on troops returning home from Afghanistan might put out a request to military families to record an audio or video interview with a returned soldier, using a smartphone’s video feature, and send it to the reporter for use in the package. The request could include a specific question or two for the soldier to be asked.
   • Augmented reality user content: “Augmented reality is at this writing (mid 2010) a fledgling mobile technology, and only selected smartphones support it. However, the technology is expected to become more widespread in the years ahead and commonplace on mobile phones. An augmented reality app for a smartphone allows a phone user to attach content (a comment, review, photo, audio or video clip) to a specific location, such as a building or park. Smartphone users can be asked to use an AR app to add content to location points; for example, a reporter working on a feature package about a new amusement park could ask visitors to use an AR app to point their phone cameras at various rides and record an audio review after experiencing the ride. The results could be viewed in two ways: 1. A smartphone user walking around the amusement park could point the phone at various rides and get user reviews, or 2. a PC or tablet Web user could view an interactive map of the park which includes the ride-specific user reviews, for a virtual “tour” of the park. (Further recommendations for using augmented reality appear further down on this page, in recommendation #5.)

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Augmented reality is an emerging technology that allows news, data, and information — public transportation routes and schedules, historic-building information, restaurant reviews, police blotter updates, etc. — to be presented as a visual layer overlain onto images from a smartphone’s camera. With augmented reality, which uses 2-D visual markers and/or GPS coordinates and a digital compass, users can scan their surroundings and view news stories or historical events that took place there or future events planned there.

The video below from TED2010 showcases an augmented-reality map and virtual street tour that demonstrates some of the technology’s potential. It’s not difficult to imagine news-related applications.

Here are some recommendations for utilizing augmented reality in the news realm:

1. Use AR for interactive narratives and virtual tours. Augmented reality used as a reporting tool can allow mobile users to see stories as they walk among them. A reporter covering planned renovations and new buildings on a university campus, for example, could walk the campus and use a smartphone AR app to record locations of the construction activities. At each point, a range of information can be attached: news stories about a building’s renovation plans; an artist’s sketch of the project; an audio clip of the architect explaining the thinking behind the design; etc. Once assembled, the augmented reality experience can be had by anyone with a capable smartphone walking the campus, pointing the phone’s camera at buildings or construction sites, and seeing layers of information about each site.
2. Offer the augmented reality experience from afar. Walking within the physical location of a story and experiencing its many components attached to the physical geography under your feet is a remarkable technique. But most people won’t have the opportunity to physically be where the story is to experience it that way. (And many smartphones in 2010 are not capable of running augmented-reality apps.) The second key component of AR as applied to news is offering the ability for a Web user anywhere to experience the virtual tour or narrative from any computer or tablet screen, without being at the physical scene. This involves incorporating the AR information layers into a Web-site interactive map, which allows the PC or tablet user to move around the map and find the layer information attached to physical objects (buildings, statues, parks, etc.). Using our campus example above, the PC user could “tour” a distant campus on a map interface and learn about the various renovation and construction projects. Using map APIs such as that from Google for its “Street View” application of Google Maps, the news map developer can create a virtual tour that also includes a self-guided virtual walk around the campus, allowing the user to review information points as they appear throughout the tour.
3. Only use augmented reality if it truly helps you tell your story. Before you start creating a stunning augmented reality interface, ask yourself what overlaying digital data onto a physical landscape will add: Context? Interactivity? A new level of spatial understanding? Ideally, it should contribute to all three and enrich the power of the storytelling.
4. Start with a third-party augmented reality service, such as Layar, Acrossair, or TagWhat. You can publish location-based data for free with some services, which can get news providers started with the technology.
5. Play to individuality by offering a customizable user experience. Let users choose what they want to see (via selectable layers of AR content): breaking news, locations from an in-depth feature, or a tour of a critical scene as told by a virtual tour guide from a story.
6. Use AR to reach a more contextualized form of journalism. The possibilities are unique to each story. For example, with a feature on medical marijuana, a news provider could let users walk past locations where police have issued citations, view industry businesses in the vicinity, or scan for local projects being funded with sales tax revenues.

Augmented reality is the digital embodiment of context. Because context is vital for journalism in the digital age, augmented reality and journalism are a natural fit. We urge news providers to experiment with this emerging technology.

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The smartphone-usage survey of college students that is part of this report indicates that phone owners frequently use their devices in situations where audio could be a good choice: driving to work or school; riding the bus or train, or in a car as a passenger, to work or school; laying in bed after waking or before going to sleep; etc. In the case of driving a car, listening to audio is the only rational option for consuming news. In the other scenarios, listening to a news report is a choice to be made over reading the text version.

NPR News’ smartphone app lets users choose text or audio of the same content.

We do not support using audio as the sole format for most or all of a news package for smartphones. But we do believe that it is an excellent option to make available to the smartphone user who may be in a situation of have a life condition where audio is preferred, or required. A real-world example of this approach can be seen in the outstanding smartphone news app from NPR News (National Public Radio), which for many stories includes both a text version and a matching audio version.

Here are some recommendations for use of audio in mobile news:

1. Consider bandwidth; offer off-line listening. Passenger-car, bus, and train commuters can expect to switch between 3G and older, slower network connections for their smartphones during travel (in 2010). In the years ahead, faster 4G connections are likely to be common in urban areas; more buses and trains will offer wi-fi for passengers; and new cars will become rolling Internet hotspots. While we wait for future network improvements, news providers wanting to allow phone users to listen to news may want to offer off-line listening, which would require the commuter to pre-load an audio news story or package from a home or office broadband connection before setting out. In the case of an in-depth news package that has been created as a phone app, the audio can be embedded in the app.
2. Offer one-tap audio. Since we know that long-form text on a tiny smartphone screen does not promote at-length reading for many people, a one-tap option to switch to audio of the text could increase commitment to an article. We recommend not only a “play audio version” button at the top of an article, but also giving the phone user the ability to switch to audio at any time.
3. Use either human or automated voices, depending on the news content. For offering breaking or standard-fare news in optional audio format, automated text-to-voice conversion using a synthetic digital voice is a reasonable and economic choice. Text-to-voice technology has improved considerably over the last few years, and multiple synthetic voices are available (male or female; American, British, German, U.S. Southern accents, etc.), so the listening experience is less robotic than in the past. For in-depth and enterprise news packages, audio options for text would best be recorded by a human — either the writer him/herself or a professional or competent amateur announcer. Audio versions of lengthy news content can become tiresome and annoying with a robotic voice, despite the improvements in synthetic-voice technology.

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Since smartphone news consumption is, in some important ways, not ideal for in-depth news, we believe that it’s wise to configure deep news packages that take into account these limitations. (We don’t ascribe to the notion that all long-form news is inappropriate for the smartphone platform.) The obvious limitation is the amount of time that a typical phone user can put into reading or viewing any single news item or package. One way to address this issue is to allow the phone user to consume a large news package in chunks, and to make it easy for the user to know what’s already been read, listened to, or viewed.

Following are recommendations for accomplishing this mission:

1. Create return to last-read feature. A multi-part news package created as a mobile app ideally will keep track of what the smartphone user has viewed. Upon relaunching the app at a later time or date, the user can be asked: “Would you like to return to where you left off?” (This improves on automatically returning the user to that point in the content, since that may not be what is desired.)
2. Pick up at audio or video break point. If an in-depth news package includes audio components — or there is an audio option for long text articles — the ideal news app will mark the audio or video progress of the user upon leaving the app, then pick up at that point should the user return to the package and wish to finish off the section.
3. Smart table of contents. For a large news package with multiple content elements, it’s likely that there’s a “home” or “table of contents” page. The mobile news app should track and make visible to the user what’s been viewed already.
4. Offer reminder alerts. Thanks to “push” technology available on many smartphones, an in-depth news package mobile app can remind the user to return for more later. Upon leaving the news app, the user can be asked if he/she would like a reminder to return to the package at the user’s chosen time or date. If the user requests to be notified, the news app can send an alert to the smartphone via SMS (text message), e-mail, or even voicemail.
5. Add reminders to executive summaries. Depending on the situation they’re in, some smartphone users may limit themselves to reading an executive summary or summary blurb for an article, not having the time then to consume the full content. A technique to get these readers to return later is for the summary to include a “Remind me to read this later” feature. The user can receive an e-mail or text alert at a self-selected time reminding him or her about the unfinished article or other content element.

The techniques suggested above also are possible for mobile news Web sites, using the HTML5 toolset. HTML5 is an evolving Web standard that allows mobile Web sites to have many of the advanced capabilities previously limited to stand-alone mobile apps; however, it is not a finished standard so cautions apply regarding future compatibility to mobile Web browser software as HTML5 evolves.

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Actions such as tapping, pinching, and spreading the fingers should function similarly across different mobile devices and their respective applications. Building apps for news presentation should focus around the standards of the device and aim to create new features primarily using pre-existing navigation tools. Any new features must be explained and the significance of the change defended. Updates of applications and Web pages should be approached in the same manner; users easily can get lost through radical redesigns of systems. This is especially true when the drastic changes were not being sought by the users. Just ask Facebook.

Users should be expected to have little patience for pages designed for a different device than the one they own and access content through. News content should be formatted to be displayed on iPhone, Blackberry, and Droid smartphones in equally as accessible a manner as on a PC Web browser.

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In the chapter “Next Steps: Smartphone technologies at the leading edge ready to apply to news” of this report, there is a discussion of how 2-D barcodes can be used to enhance the value of print. You’ll find many ideas there for leveraging this several-year-old technology that permits mobile-phone users to take photos of printed barcodes, which results in the phone bringing up content related to the print content accompanying the barcode.

In the U.S., 2-D barcodes remain a technology yet to take hold in a big way; adoption of the barcodes in Western Europe and East Asia far surpasses America’s uptake of the barcodes’ print-to-digital linkage. Unless print media truly is poised to crash to the ground soon, we believe that 2-D barcodes’ potential for enhancing print-media products is worth pursuing.

Here are some recommendations for leveraging 2-D barcordes in melding print and mobile publishing:

1. Use tags in print news packages to lead readers to interactive, multimedia content. A 2-D barcode could accompany the print version of a large enterprise news package, which when scanned by a reader’s smartphone could bring up a video feature that accompanies the text articles in the series. A barcode can point to all manner of content that’s not possible to have in print: interactive databases to support an article; multimedia graphics; discussion forums tied to the news package; etc.
2. Use 2-D barcodes to market mobile news. In this report we have identified bus and train commuting as common times for many people to use their smartphones (other than for voice calls). Barcodes included on posters or digital billboards in transit stations or on buses and trains can point commuters to special news packages; smartphone users scan the barcode on the poster or digital billboard, then immediately read or view the package on their devices during the commute.
3. Use 2-D codes as print-extension advertising. We also urge print publishers to utilize 2-D barcodes in their print editions to bring additional digital information from advertisers via the print reader’s handy smartphone. This is an opportunity for struggling print publishers to leverage the fast-growing mobile market by selling into print and mobile simultaneously.

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Here are some recommendations:

1. Let users express an opinion to power. Especially for in-depth news packages covering topics that elicit strong opinions, a mobile news app or mobile Web site news package can facilitate the user expressing an opinion or trying to influence a public issue. For example, the mobile version of an investigative report on safety lapses by the oil industry could include the means for the user to send a letter or voice message to his or her Congressional representatives; the application could identify the user’s location and automatically address the letter or voicemail. This isn’t advocacy on the part of the news organization, but rather the news provider making it easy for mobile-enabled citizens to express whatever opinions they may have on the topic of the news report and have it delivered to the relevant public officials.
2. Help motivated users volunteer. Similarly, sometimes in-depth and investigative reporting makes people want to act directly to address the problem identified by a journalist. When appropriate, a smartphone news app or mobile Web site package could include a sign-up mechanism to volunteer. For example, a report on overcrowding and staff shortages at a local animal shelter could include a form for mobile readers to sign up for volunteer time to care for the animals and specify what type of work they desire to contribute.
3. Facilitate financial donations. Another capability of mobile phones is facilitating financial transactions: donating money to support the news provider or “tipping” the writer; paying for premium content; or even donating money directly from the smartphone to an organization or cause mentioned in a news report. The last option can be a slippery slope; most news providers would not want to encourage donations to one side of a controversial issue, such as an advocacy group fighting to criminalize abortion, of course. Yet in the previous example of a financially strapped animal shelter, the ability of smartphone users to instantly donate to help alleviate the problem after learning about it in a mobile news report could be seen as appropriate.