Cell phone news the next big thing in Media

Spread of news and advertising content via mobile phones and social networking are the two areas that will shape the newspaper industry in the years to come, said speakers at a round table at the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum here on Monday.

Newspaper publishers and editors from organisations all over the world have assembled here for the meeting that will discuss the future of the newspaper industry and the issues facing it. The annual digital media round table was on ‘The Internet-A Maturing Medium’ and was addressed by Martha Stone, director, Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Project, USA; Stephen Quinn, professor from Australia; Are Stokstad, executive vice president, A-Pressen, Norway; Valerie Levechenko, director, Ria Novosti, Russia; and Dietmar Schantin, director of WAN-IFRA and moderated by Eamonn Byrne, director, WAN-IFRA.

Mobile advertising in the US is slated to touch a revenue of $ 3.33 billion in the US alone by 2013, said Martha Stone. According to her, there are 600 million mobile phone connections worldwide as of today and that Europe continues to be the digital hotspot both with regard to mobile phone and internet and that mobile texting is the most fetching revenue.

According to Stephen Quinn, the world will see coloured e-paper within the next four years. “And mobile phones, blogs, moblogs, wikis, podcasts and v-blogs have become the tools of today’s journalist,” he said. Pointing to the rapid growth of social networking, he said the time spent on social networking in the developed countries is growing at three times the amount of time spent on the internet. Stokstad spoke of the future of e-reading while Levechenko and Schantin dwelt on how newspapers are integrating their newsrooms to disseminate news for the print, electronic and web media under one roof.

A surprising hit of this integrated newsrooms is that infographics are become a big hit with the readers, viewers and netizens, said Levechenko. Social networking, with links to Facebook and Twitter, are the next big thing in terms of relating with the people, the speakers said, Because of their increasing popularity, newspapers are appointing social media editors, they said and termed social networking as a major shaper of the future of the industry.