The future of content provision

In the movie "Minority Report," Tom Cruise is seen reading an electronic newspaper on a flexible display in the year 2054.

But the future of the newspaper in a flexible digital display is just a few years away.

Samsung has already introduced the world’s first wireless plastic liquid crystal display and it will be available commercially from 2010, said Dr Hwang, whose company is one of the two dozen top world brands as well as a leading semi-conductor chip maker.

The flexible display will be able to show TV, the internet or newspapers.

“In this digital era we can envision the future of the newspaper: its evolution from a two dimensional paper-based medium into something genuinely ubiquitous,” Dr Hwang said. “But papers’ role in the media will remain the same and even be strengthened despite the emergence of the ubiquitous media evolving around the mobile technology."

Newspapers in a new media era - A Korean case

Newspapers in Korea have found it hard to compete in the mobile market.

While the emergence of new technologies has made mobile content all the more attractive, that hasn’t always been positive for newspapers, Mr Park said.

Before the internet was available on cell phones, newspapers were the leading content providers.

“However, the advent of the internet and the latest digital technology has degraded their position. Now newspapers are regarded as one of many content providers,” said Mr Park, whose newspaper launched the first internet edition in Asia and was the first Korean daily to provide a mobile phone news service. Movies are "killer content" for new telephones.

However, the demand for news and information that newspapers specialise in producing will continue to exist, he said.

How to profit from mobile

MOBILE phones can play a role in accelerating the renaissance of newspapers. The role of the editor is moving from the writer to the reader, Mr Chisholm explained.

“We are living in a world where the usual process that goes on between buyers and sellers, communicators and consumers is completely changing. And if we don’t watch out, very quickly our role in all of this will disappear,” he said.

But the mobile phone is a device that newspapers can use to re-establish their relationship as intermediaries, Mr Chisholm argued.

He suggested a number of tasks that mobile phones could perform. Here are a few of them:
  build single-copy sales;

  add value to subscriptions;

  interact with readers;

  sell advertising.

Mr Chisholm cited the case of an editor who received 10 letters a day when post was the only option, 100 letters a day when email arrived, and 1,000 a day when readers could send text messages via their mobile phones. “That tells us about the power of the mobile phone to interact with its consumers,” Mr Chisholm said.

More from the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project at www.futureofthenewspaper.com.

The transformation of readers into contributors

When extraordinary events happen, it’s the ordinary people witnessing them who can provide the pictures.

When a big story breaks - like the Asian tsunami - the strongest newspaper will be the one whose readers have a mobile phone with a camera in their pocket, said Mr Pedersen, whose newspaper, VG, is Norway’s leading daily.

“We got hundreds of calls from Norwegians in Thailand and Sri Lanka,” he said of the tsunami. The news wires were beaten by an SMS message that VG ran on its website.

Mr Pedersen explained that VG had set up a portal to take news leads from the public. In one-and-a-half years VG had received 70,000 leads, 40,000 of which were rubbish, he said. But, he added: “Every day we publish exclusive pictures sent in by MMS.”

Digital/Mobile Opportunities

Newspapers can use mobile phones to win over younger readers who no longer read their products.

This lost generation may not have the habit of reading newspapers but they are used to paying for content, said Ms Braa, whose company is the leading mobile operator in the Nordic region.

She suggested newspapers had a number of options if they wished to succeed in the mobile sector. They could:
  Team up with operators that mostly do not own content;

  Use competitions in other news channels to promote the mobile medium

  Create debate forums to engage readers’ opinions; and

  Investigate options to become the default home page on the mobile home page.

But, Ms Braa warned, it is important to adapt content. “Mobile is not the same as the internet,” she said.

Mr Ugland said the strategic goal of operators was to use content to establish mobile phones as the most frequently used media channel. And a key driver to increase volume of usage is through editorial content - especially with news, sport and entertainment. It is important that operators offer simple and flexible business models that enable content providers to offer their product at the right price.