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Mobile companies 'extraordinarily inept' at forming quality journalism partnerships - claims WEF president

Posted: 27/03/07 By: Oliver Luft
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The president of the World Editor's Forum (WEF) has claimed that mobile phone companies have been 'extraordinarily inept' at forming partnerships with established media brands.

Speaking at the release of the WEF's newsroom barometer survey George Brock, who is also Times Saturday editor, said he was surprised by the response to the survey question that asked: Looking 10 years into the future, what do you think will be the most common way of reading the news in your community?

Of the 435 editors-in-chief, deputy editors and other senior news executives from around the world who took part in the survey only 11 per cent believed that mobile was the answer to this question (whereas online was 40 per cent and print 35 per cent).

"There has been an extremely long history of mobile phone operators failing to create effective partnerships with truly established media and journalism brands," Mr Brock told Journalism.co.uk.

"They have been extraordinarily inept about doing it and editors opinions are probably reflecting that rather sad history."

He also said that because of this history he thought editors were 'slightly behind the curve' about mobile.

"My personal opinion is that there will be quite a lot more journalism on mobile and quite soon.

"I think it will be interesting to see that figure over the next year or two, it may well rise quite sharply.

He said that the additional cost often incurred by users wishing to access news through their mobile phones had some effect on its low standing but added that he believed it was not a prohibitive factor.

"Mobile phone users are getting very rapidly used to PDA-size screens and are perfectly content to look at journalism on it, particularly as the optics of those small screens improve.

"People are perfectly ready to consume but they are just [presently] rather disappointed by the content they see."