News organizations aren’t the only ones trying to adapt to mobile technology. There are many other industries bidding for the limited pool of people with experience and expertise in mobile jobs.
As a result, mid-size or small newsrooms likely won’t win a bidding war for the obvious mobile talent out on the job market. They have to look elsewhere to develop and identify mobile talent.
How do they know what to look for?
In editorial roles, an excitement for technology is key, as is a knack for experimentation. Anyone who is going to excel at mobile journalism, however, has to be able to excel at journalism in general. Anyone working on mobile should have a thorough understanding of the work other editors at the company do (including newsgathering, story production and staffing). An understanding how to use metrics also is important.
Even at The New York Times, hiring for mobile jobs is not about hiring for mobile-specific experience, Jonathan Ellis (who just left the Times to become managing editor of Mashable) told us. There just aren’t enough of those people out there. Instead, they are hiring good thinkers — people who understand digital, news and products, and can see around corners to what’s coming next.
For business jobs, similar to editorial the business-side mobile staff should be nimble and adaptable, given the fluid nature of the mobile advertising business. They will need to be spotting trends and entering poorly charted territory on a regular basis.
In technology roles, a person with diverse experience and skills is helpful, as they may be asked to do quite different projects at different times. In many cases you may look look outside the news industry to other sectors that build products for users and consumers.
Cory Bergman of Breaking News told us he likes to hire technology people from gaming backgrounds because they are great at understanding user interaction and incentives.
After hiring occurs, managers should also have a plan for measurement and improvement. Breaking News sets performance goals for employees after hiring, for example, everyone on the editorial team is required to conduct three “experiments” per quarter, and one has to be good enough to convert into a new product or feature.
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Mobile news consumption continues to grow and change rapidly. These nine ideas captured at our Thought Leader Summit provide a foothold, a sense of what a mobile-optimized news organization should be doing and thinking at this point.
The best practices will continue to evolve. The search for large streams of revenue is still in progress, but seems certain to come as audiences grow. The American Press Institute will continue to follow mobile trends and new ideas closely. Here are some resources for more information:
- Browse all our mobile-related coverage and aggregation (feed)
- Browse all our in-depth reports (feed), including an earlier one on how to build niche mobile apps
- Read more about our Thought Leader Summits like this one
- Read more about what API does
- Sign up for the Need to Know newsletter with insights and new ideas every day
Share with your network
- Unlocking mobile revenue and audience: New ideas and best practices
- A mobile-first organization has editorial, technology and business teams working together in new ways
- Mobile news presentation should be different from web or print
- Mobile and social media are intricately linked
- Mobile apps and mobile websites are for quite different audiences
- What it really means to ‘engage’ a mobile user
- What you don’t know about the ‘second screen’ and ‘utility’ behaviors of mobile users
- Advertisers buy audiences, not publications or platforms, and data is the key
- Mobile advertising needs more creative thinking
- How to hire or promote for mobile jobs when you can’t find or afford someone with direct experience
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As digital platforms and their users continue to grow and change, the ways news outlets build strategies around them will, too. These are themes we believe are key for digital transformation and sustaining and growing local news.
The next API Local News Summit will be on how local and community-based media might engender a local identity and embrace their geography and history. We’ll help news leaders consider how they contribute to a community’s well-being by fostering a sense of place — and how, when done with care, this might offer new ways to sustain local news.
As research continues to inform this slice of the news industry, we’ll continue learning, too. Who gets to be called a journalist in 2025? What is the future of trustworthy information, especially considering the access to and trust for online content creators? How might journalism adapt to the rise, or co-opt the styles, of news influencers?
