1. South African Paper's Mobile Site Focuses on 'Nowness'

Knight News Challenge, May 24

It pains us to see news organizations devote so much of their limited resources to platform-specific apps — frequently at the expense of their mobile sites. Apps are costly to develop, tedious to update, and, for all their trouble, serve only a fraction of the market.

On top of that, too often, they're more flash than substance, merely repackaging regular Web content rather than catering to mobile users' unique needs. 

For all these reasons, it was a breath of fresh air to read about Grahamstown NOW,  a nuts-and-bolts newspaper mobile site focused on "nowness."

It's not fancy or shiny - on the surface it appears to be just another mobile site. But there's a lot of depth below that surface. What it lacks in glitz and glam, it makes up for in its ability to serve up a snapshot at any given point in time of what's just happened, currently happening, or about to happen in Grahamstown.

2. Tag-team journalism: A case study of the California Watch distribution model

California Watch, July 27

News organizations are getting that serving more than one platform at a time and collaborating with the folks formerly known as the audience are no longer choices.

What they're not getting quite as well is that they don't have to use all platforms at all times and that the same technologies they're using to work with the folks formerly known as the audience should be used to work with the folks formerly known as the competition.

Investigative reporting nonprofit California Watch is an exception, as the education package — involving almost 20 media partners — detailed in this case study makes plain.

If we had one word to describe our distribution model it would be this: flexible. We craft a new distribution strategy for each story we produce, depending on the topic and the intensity of local interest.

3. The kids are alright, part 2: What news organizations can do to attract, and keep, young consumers

Nieman Journalism Lab, Aug. 19

Observers and especially practitioners can get so absorbed in anticipating the future they overlook that the future is right down the street at the neighborhood school. I wrote as much in my very first blog post for grad school last fall.

Today's young people are your (or someone else's) future users. They're already exhibiting some of the habits and tastes you will have to satisfy. To the extent they're not, you can shape their habits and tastes.

This applies to the news industry as much as any. Christopher Sopher, a University of North Carolina senior and author of the Younger Thinking blog, offers some insight.

News organizations need to learn from soda and snack producers and systematically infiltrate schools across the country with their products. There’s strong evidence that news-based, experiential, and interactive course design [pdf] — as well as the use of news in classrooms and the presence of strong student-produced publications — can both increase the likelihood that students will continue to seek news regularly in the future.

4. How the shift to mobile is revolutionising online news design

TheMediaBriefing, Oct. 10

Most of today's news sites aren't going to win any beauty contests, we blogged in August. Of course, this goes more than skin deep. Inefficient and cluttered design interferes with the communication itself.

Fortunately, the constraints of small screens are forcing cleaner, smarter designs, Guardian information architect Martin Belam writes.

Designing for mobile first means getting down to the real atoms of delivering news. And services like Instapaper, or Readability are reminding us that news stories are there to be read without clutter. By concentrating on the pure reading experience, and ditching the bells and whistles that make up so much online furniture, they encourage deeper and more engaged reading.

Image by ilco.