David Ho

David Ho is a senior digital news leader, content strategist and media technology pioneer. As a consultant and trainer, he helps journalists and news organizations around the world transform and embrace the digital and mobile now.

Ho previously served as executive editor and vice president for digital at Hearst Newspapers. He also was executive mobile editor at The Wall Street Journal, where he built the WSJ mobile editorial team, wrote its mobile content algorithms and founded its family of news apps. For more than a decade, Ho has focused on bringing news to mobile and creating storytelling technology and techniques for phones and tablets. He has taught mobile skills to more than 4,400 journalists.

As a national reporter for The Associated Press and Cox Newspapers, Ho’s coverage ranged from the White House, the United Nations and the pope to tech, telecom and terrorism. The U.S. Supreme Court cited Ho’s reporting in the historic Bush v. Gore ruling on the 2000 presidential election. Earlier, Ho was one of the three original web developers writing code for WSJ.com.

As speaker and teacher, Ho has taught journalism at the Poynter Institute, the City University of New York, the Norwegian Institute of Journalism and the Media Institute of the Caribbean.

Reach him at david@themobilenow.com, or follow him on Twitter at @DavidHo.

By David Ho

Improving digital in the shift away from print

Better Digital: Embracing data-based content and distribution strategies Unless a newspaper’s goal is to fade into oblivion, reducing print must be accompanied by investment in better digital experiences for readers. Just cutting print publishing days alone is not movement toward the future. Newspapers must embrace using data to understand their audiences and the effectiveness of […]
By David Ho

Expecting pushback before and after reducing print days

Expecting Pushback: How to tell readers change is coming Perhaps more than with any other issue, the publishers and newspaper leaders interviewed for this study agreed that communicating well with readers and advertisers is critical when eliminating print days. In fact, you cannot do too much to let people know the change is coming. A […]
By David Ho

Planning to eliminate print publishing days

Planning the Change: Picking which print days to cut A critical choice when reducing print publication frequency is selecting which days of the week to cut. The decision-making process may seem straightforward: eliminate the days with the least advertising. But the decision may be influenced by unique local factors such as sports coverage or local […]
By David Ho

Two paths to reducing print: a long-term transformation vs. a rapid cut for survival

The Best Path: Reducing print on a thoughtful journey to digital Cutting a newspaper’s publishing days can save money by eliminating the pieces of the business — trucks, paper and printers — for which there is declining consumer demand. But cutting alone is not enough to ensure a newspaper will continue to exist and serve […]
By David Ho

Cutting print: Making it work when publishing days must go

When a large U.S. newspaper cuts print publication days or curtails home delivery, headlines may scream media apocalypse. But for years, newspapers here and there across the country — little noticed beyond their home markets — have gradually scaled back print publishing. Papers of all sizes have considered it. Some are considering it right now. […]