My husband greeted me one night last week with, “Hey, I found a new way to read the paper.”
He reached into his belt holster and pulled out his new cell phone.
I should have known. Since he bought his first truly smart phone a month ago, he’s shared all kinds of exciting discoveries. This time, it was the new News Tribune display designed especially for Android phones.
He’d found it by going to thenewstribune.com on his phone’s Internet browser. Instead of a conventional Web page, it automatically serves up a list of clickable headlines with pictures next to them. Below the Top Stories headlines are expandable bars that open to show sports stories, weather and other headlines. The display is just the right size for a phone screen, and the type is large and easy to read.
My husband is not quite cutting-edge as a news consumer, but he’s in increasingly good company. We are making improvements to TNT mobile displays to meet that growing demand.
The number of News Tribune readers getting news on their cell phones accounts for 5 percent of our Web traffic – about 60,000 unique visitors a month. The number has grown 165 percent in the past year.
A report this year by the Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism found a similar trend nationwide. In the center’s survey, 26 percent of American adults said they get some form of news via their cell phone, and the center expects that percentage to grow. Of those so-called “on-the-go” news consumers:
• 72 percent check weather reports.
• 68 percent get news and current events information.
• 44 percent check sports scores.
• 35 percent check traffic information.
• 32 percent get financial information.
The Pew Center said the typical on-the-go news consumer is a white male, 34, who has graduated from college and is employed full time. They are more likely than other cell phone users to send a text message, take pictures with their phones and instant-message. They use Facebook and Twitter at significantly higher rates than other Internet users.
On-the-go news consumers are more likely than other adults to read the print version of a newspaper and slightly less likely to watch local television news. Almost half also are “news participators,” the survey found. That means they contribute stories, comments or pictures, and share stories with their social networks.
We’ve found another interesting difference in cell phone newsies. Traffic to thenewstribune.com from computers is cyclical during the day, building during the morning and peaking about 1 p.m. Weekend use is about 40 percent less than on weekdays.
Readership from cell phones is consistent throughout the day and throughout the week. Mobile users visit more regularly during the day, the night and on weekends.
Mobile Web pages are different from mobile “apps.” An app integrates with a smart phone’s navigation menu, whereas mobile Web pages are accessed through the smart phone’s Web browser.
We recently released a redesigned version of the iPhone-compatible mobile Web page. We also have mobile Web pages for BlackBerry smart phones and for phones such as my husband’s, using the Android operating system.
A TNT mobile app for iPhone is coming in the next six to eight weeks, and an iPad app should be released this year. The app button will look like the TNT logo shown on this page.
While apps are popular these days, the mobile Web pages allow us more flexibility. As we see which content is popular, we can make it more prominent on the phone display. We’ve done that already with obituaries, horoscopes and garage sales.
We’ve also added a cool live traffic map that shows major highways in the South Sound. The highways are green when traffic is flowing well, yellow when they are a bit congested and red when traffic is jammed.
Another mobile news favorite surprised us. After noticing lots of people entering the term “fishing report” in the TNT mobile search, we added a link to our latest fishing report from our mobile home page.
So fishermen sitting in the fog off Point Defiance, wondering why the fish aren’t biting, are pulling out their cell phones and checking our Web page only to find out the real action is off Point Dalco?
My, how fishing – and news consumption – is changing.
Karen Peterson: 253-597-8434
karen.peterson@thenewstribune.com
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