Mobile Journalism is the Future of Publishing
Are you MoJo-ready?
Prior to the launch of the world wide web we lived in a broadcast world of one-to-one or one-to-many communications. And while the internet made great strides in transforming monologue journalism into a dialogue, it took mobile to fuel a complete inversion of the “funnel of power” ─ a new reality where people control what, where, when and how they not only consume content, they create it. Most of it on mobile devices.
Almost overnight long-form and investigative journalism has been overshadowed by the rampant rise of snackable listicles, videos, infographics and gifs that spread like wildfire through social channels.
Audiences are now authoritative news gatherers, editors, publishers and distributors. They are in the right place at the right time and have, in the palm of their hands, the technology needed to capture, edit and publish news that appeals to today’s video-hungry viewers.
Video is expected to account for 70% of mobile traffic within the next five years, driven by faster 4G roll outs and upgrades to LTE-advanced that deliver 5G-like services and 1.3G/second Wi-Fi connectivity. Mobile video (both editorial and advertorial) is expected to reach US$25B globally in 2021.
The escalation of video consumption combined with the dramatic changes in user behavior is a wakeup call to newspaper and magazine publishers. By trying to capitalize on all that mobile devices, apps and broadband infrastructure have to offer, few (but not enough) are spawning a new breed of mobile journalists (mojo) — content creators with the multi-hat role of researcher, cameraperson, director, editor, publisher, distributor and marketer of multimedia content in real-time. Their goal is to resurrect the desire for quality long-form journalism through the medium favored by the next generation of viewers, readers and listeners.
But to accomplish their mission, they’ll need to exploit all that technology has to offer in a mobile-first, video-dominant media ecosystem.
By 2020, the global consumer mobile population is forecasted to be 5.5 billion, with the majority of them active in social media. IP video will account for 82% of all traffic worldwide. And although today’s consumers watch more video than they create, technology is making the cost of entry into citizen mobile journalism more affordable, opening the door for democratizing the media and creating what will truly be a free press.
Just as Uber and Airbnb have revolutionized the taxi and hotel industries without owning a single car or property, Michael Rosenblum, author of iPhone Millionaire predicts that the most successful news organizations in the future will be those that have no journalists working for them at all. YouTube is well positioned to be one of those — already aggregating the voices of billions of people who feed the world with what they believe is newsworthy.
With nearly a million minutes of video content crossing the network every second by 2020, there is an urgent need to accelerate the creation of 5G networks and rethink business models that better serve the billions of users, and trillions of connected devices, that will communicate over them.
Today 5G-enabled innovations seem more like science fiction to many of us, but 5G’s impact on our daily lives will be far more profound than anything we’ve experienced before. Beyond the shiny new toys we’ll enjoy like driverless cars, Virtual Reality gaming and smart contact lenses, the next major phase of mobile telecommunications standards will shake the very foundations of the institutions that have shaped our lives, society, economies and governments.
Traditional publishing has been an integral part of our lives since the dawn of the printing press, but 5G threatens to destroy it. Most publishers still haven’t been able to capitalize on today’s internet or mobile technologies because they refuse to let go of traditions and the paradigms of the past.
If the industry is to survive on a 5G planet, it must prepare itself now for the extinction of its archaic content creation, culture, distribution and business models and prepare for a new world where only innovators with an entrepreneurial spirit will survive.
