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Mobile news and mobile journalism will become 'a natural extension' of the Telegraph's website and its reporting, the site's chief information officer told delegates at the World Editors Forum today.

Journalism.co.uk caught up with Telegraph Chief Information Officer Paul Cheesbrough to find out more about the paper's plans to expand on mobile.

What does Telegraph.co.uk currently offer mobile users?

Beyond general access to our website as it is today, there’s very little we put out there yet. That’s mainly because we see the mobile market as being quite nascent. We’re not keen on investing a huge amount into it until it’s a proven source of revenue.

You said in your presentation there will be huge potential for mobile in 12-18 months: how are you preparing for that now?

We’ve got some interesting things we’re working on at the moment, which will see the light of day in the next few months: everything from an offline reader of our content to tailored experiences for different mobile devices, be it text-only or richer than that.

The key thing is that our customers are expecting us to be on these platforms, so getting that sister content is important.

How will the Telegraph’s video content translate to mobile?

All of our Telegraph TV content is accessible to download for any portable device. Our content and our AV content is already portable.

The next line of that would be to make it available for streaming. I think we see wifi distribution as the best mechanism for doing that because of the cost.

How are Telegraph journalists using mobile devices?

We’ve already got about 15 [Nokia] N95’s handed out to journalists and we’ve been given great feedback, but it doesn't work with everyone.

You need to support and train the journalists properly. We’ve got a small team of people who manage and create the content for Telegraph TV, who naturally offer support.

Will mobile reporting primarily be used for breaking news?

With breaking news we see most of the contributions coming from the customer, because if there’s a breaking news story we’re unlikely to have a journalist on the spot.

We've also given the devices to reporters going out on interviews just to get that video perspective on the news story.

Will Telegraph be producing content created specifically for a mobile platform?

I think so, but again we’re a commercially driven company. There has to be a bottom line to it, but we believe strongly that over time there will be an appetite for unique mobile content.

Mobile gives you potential for content that might not work as well on the web or on paper, but could thrive on mobile. We just need to think about how we create it, deliver it and monetise it as well.

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Written by

Laura Oliver
Laura Oliver
Laura Oliver is a freelance journalist, a contributor to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, co-founder of The Society of Freelance Journalists and the former editor of Journalism.co.uk (prior to it becoming JournalismUK)

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