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I have a new journalistic mission -- storytelling in a mobile world. Sometimes, it takes me back to my first stint at FORBES. In 1999, right before leaving for AOL, I guided the redesign of our magazine. FORBES had been stuck in a text-heavy mindset for years. It was an easy way to fill hundreds of edit pages every issue (ah, for the good old days) and make reporters happy by publishing their words. My goal back then: visual entry points on as many pages as possible -- digestible stuff to scan and absorb (see below). Surprise, surprise. In a mobile universe, we're once again playing with entry points -- cards, blocks, call them what you want. Different era, same goal: deliver all kinds of information, the fewer the words the better. This time, instead of standalone items, we're treating entry points as integral to the flow and structure of a new kind of narrative format for mobile-only consumers.
Mobile-specific formats require mobile-specific content to be most effective. It's a far cry from squeezing 800-to-1,000-word stories, a newspaper-to-magazine-to-desktop paradigm, into smaller device screens. In newspaper lingo, stories are built as inverted pyramids -- lots of info in the first paragraph, with subsequent paragraphs offering detail after detail. Magazines typically work a different model. A paragraph opens with a flashy sentence, with subsequent sentences providing clarity. The last sentence in a paragraph delivers a kicker to propel readers to the next paragraph. News narratives like these won't vanish, but something is needed for a generation that prefers tapping over scrolling.
FORBES Magazine, December 1999: Redesigning to focus on stand-alone visual entry points.
That's one reason we recently held a 100% Mobile Day at FORBES. It was a chance for staffers, breaking into teams, to sketch out their ideas for new mobile formats. Here a a few of them:
Over the last few weeks, our new mobile accelerator unit got to work developing some prototypes based on the ideas that came out of Mobile Day: Here are two:
Prototype 1: Natalie reformatted her traditional narrative and gallery for mobile consumption.
Prototype 2: Samantha reworked another post by turning short paragraphs into a photo list format.
New thinking is in the air across our editorial and sales teams to serve our smartphone audience, now 50% of visitors compared with 5% only five years ago. We're looking at stories as a series of interchangeable chunks, or chapters, without the natural expiration dates of complete print stories or digital posts. Using hashtags, these chunks could form a new organizational hierarchy -- channels leading to subjects leading to cards, rather than the traditional homepage, channel, article structure. Of course, there's the monetization component to all this. And that means integrating marketing messages without relying on desktop display ads shrunk to fit a phone. At the core lies the concept of a mobile first content management system with far more flexibility than traditional storytelling demands.
The news industry faces an enormous challenge: how to effectively inform, then manage the attention of, a smartphone generation when space and linear constraints no longer apply. Last weekend, as the tragic events in Paris unfolded, I found myself glued to the phone. With its live mobile update feed, The New York Times began to deliver a bit of what I, a mobile news junkie, was looking for. It felt comprehensive, inclusive of social media, and of the moment. Still, I was unable to dart around, make connections and drill down in ways I wanted to. Inevitably, newsrooms will learn from each other -- and fulfill the needs of a new consumer.
