When it Comes to News, What's Really on Your Phone?

For decades, pollsters have known people lie when self-reporting about how they pay attention to news. That’s why it’s so hard to trust those kinds of surveys.

When asked what they watch on TV, for example, people might say documentaries about the state of the planet—because they know they should. 

In fact, what they mostly watch are comedies and other forms of escapism.

Nothing wrong with that. It's just that you don't get accurate information about what people are really reading, watching and listening to.

That’s why counting clicks online has become the media’s best friend.  

It's not the best form of measurement, of course. But through what people click on publishers can tell what people actually like—not what they say they like on self-reported surveys.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism took this to heart it wanted to know how much people under the age of 35 in Great Britain and the U.S. were actually reading news.

They started by asking them what news apps they had installed on their phones—something that shows interest and even intent.

Next, they came up with an ingenious way to get around the discrepancy between what people say they do, and what they actually do.

It was simple, really. They asked participants in the study to give them their phones so they could check battery usage for their apps.

As anyone who has checked knows, the apps you use most take the most power.

And the results?  

Although the participants had downloaded news apps, the battery usage reports showed they actually spent very little time on them.

According to the study, no news app was in the top 25 apps used by participants.

In other words, while they may have intended to follow the news, in real life that didn’t happen.

But if you only asked them what news apps they had on their phones, you might mistakenly believe they were avid news junkies.

Admittedly, the researchers had a small sample size; just 20 people between the ages of 18 and 35, half in the U.S. and half in the UK. So we need to be careful about drawing too many conclusions.

But the results once again reveal the truth as explained by Derek Thompson in an article in Atlantic Online in 2015: "Ask readers what they want to eat, and they'll tell you vegetables. Watch them quietly, and they'll mostly eat candy."

What’s on your phone?

Facebook is Eating the World

"Facebook is Eating the World."

That was the title of a an article in Columbia Journalism Review that went viral in March.

In, author Emily Bell noted that "something really dramatic is happening to our media landscape, the public sphere, and our journalism industry . . . our news ecosystem has changed more dramatically in the past five years than perhaps at any time in the past five hundred."

And what is that change? "Social media hasn’t just swallowed journalism, it has swallowed everything," she writes.

"It has swallowed political campaigns, banking systems, personal histories, the leisure industry, retail, even government and security. The phone in our pocket is our portal to the world."

And what are the implications? She notes two things.

First, news publishers have lost control over distribution. Second, "the inevitable outcome of this is the increase in power of social media companies."

And what is behind this change? The mobile revolution.

"Because of the revolution in mobile, the amount of time we spend online, the number of things we do online, and the attention we spend on platforms has exploded," she writes.

And since the majority of American adults are Facebook users, that is also where they now get their news.

Bell cites a report from the Pew Research Center which found that around 40 percent of American adults today  consider Facebook a source of news.

This is both good and bad for the media, she says. On the one hand, it provides new opportunities to distribute content.

On the other hand, it  narrows the choices the media has to share that content, and requires them to surrender control to businesses like Facebook--as are well all.

"With billions of users and hundreds of thousands of articles, pictures, and videos arriving online every day, social platforms have to employ algorithms to try and sort through the important and recent and popular and decide who ought to see what," she says.

"And we have no option but to trust them to do this."

As Bell points out, we have little or no insight into how each company (Facebook or Google) is sorting its news.

"If Facebook decides, for instance, that video stories will do better than text stories, we cannot know that unless they tell us or unless we observe it."

And yet, Bell sees no way around it.

"It seems most likely that the next wave of news media companies will be fashioned around a studio model of managing different stories, talents, and products across a vast range of devices and platforms," she writes.

"As this shift happens, posting journalism directly to Facebook or other platforms will become the rule rather than the exception. Even maintaining a website could be abandoned in favor of hyperdistribution."

What does this mean for non-profits?

Although we have spent a lot of time and energy working on our websites, the conversation is moving to social media.

Like for the media, we need to figure out ways to use social media to share our messages.

Unlike the media, however, we lack the resources to make much of an impact on things like Facebook. 

Which makes me wonder: Is this an opportunity for like-minded groups to pool their resources to try to make a bigger splash in social media?

What if we agreed to share one Facebook aggregator page on a subject like poverty or water or hunger? A page that was as up-to-date and as technologically sophisticated as possible?

Maybe by pooling our resources and expertise we can create enough energy to stay up on the changes and provide content in a way that works well with Facebook, and with the people who want to learn more about the work we do.

It's a big challenge. But unless we figure out a way to play this game, like the media we will find ourselves sidelined and voiceless--just like the poor and hungry and vulnerable people we are trying to speak for.

Thumb-Stopping Online Content and Other Thoughts About the Digital Revolution from the Head of CBC Digital News

One of the guest presenters at the April 27-29 Canadian Church Press convention was Brodie Fenlon, Senior Director for Digital News at the CBC. 

In a wide-ranging presentation, he covered a number of topics about the digital revolution overtaking legacy media—print and broadcast.

A summary of his remarks is below.

Is the content on your Facebook page “thumb-stopping”?

That’s the question Brodie Fenlon, Senior Director of CBC Digital News, asked at the April 27-29 Canadian Church Press convention in Toronto.

“You have to stop the thumb,” he said of the way most people get information today—on their phones.

“It has to be thumb-stopping.”

Good content, he went on to say, “is no good if doesn’t work on a phone.”

The New Legacy Media—Digital

Fenlon also noted that while we tend to view newspapers as a “legacy” media that the Internet disrupted, the Internet, or digital, itself has a legacy that has been disrupted.

In the case of the Internet, it has moved from the Web and desktop to mobile—that’s how most people access information today.

He noted that no communications technology has been adopted as quickly as the phone, with over 90% of people 18-34 now owning one.

“The war is on to win the audience on this thing,” he stated. “Over the next few years, the battle is to be one or lost on the smartphone.”

He said that already 63% of CBC’s audience comes to its website via a mobile device.

The CBC “still has a huge desktop audience, but future growth is phone,” he said, adding that websites and home pages are becoming legacy media themselves.

At the CBC, he said, “we treat our Facebook page like our website.”

And what’s on that CBC Facebook page?  Stories. “The thing the audience lands on is the story page,” he said.

Facebook: Eating the World

As for where users go on their phones, the answer, he said, is Facebook.

And it’s not only older people on Facebook, he said, dismissing a commonly-held notion.

90% of millennials use Facebook, he said, with YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram following in second, third and fourth place.

And, as he noted, that’s also where many people get their news—not from traditional news sources.

It’s the same for the next demographic, 35-54 year-olds—Facebook is first for them, too, followed by YouTube.

Snapchat is way back for that demographic, not surprisingly.

“Facebook is eating the world,” he said, quoting the title of the much-talked-about article by Emily Bell. 

“If you are going to win mobile, then you have to think social, and you have to start with Facebook,” he stated.

“If you would be stuck on an island can could only choose one social media platform, Facebook would be it,” he said—quickly adding that’s for right now.

“Who knows what I might say in a month,” he said.

Share and Share Alike

And when it comes to Facebook, the goal is to get people not just to like, but to share.

With that in mind, groups need to make it easy for people to share.

“Share buttons matter,” he said, and so do headlines and images.

The problem is that designers design Facebook posts on desktop computers, he said. They need to check the posts later to make sure they display the way they intended.

When it comes to headlines, they need to grab and hold attention.

On websites, it’s important to include key words like names of people, places, organizations or groups. But on Facebook, emotion is vital if you are going to get thumbs to stop.

“Headlines on websites are for robots,” he said. “You need different headlines for social media. You need to speak to the heart on social media, not to the robots.”

This means the sometimes there needs to be two different headlines and images—one for the website, and the other for Facebook.

Need for Speed

Speed is also important on mobile, he said.

According to Fenlon, studies show that 47% of people expect a site to load in two seconds or less. If it takes longer, 40% say they will leave.

What this means is that the websites—especially for mobile—need to be streamlined.

This is the reasoning behind Facebook’s Instant Articles, and Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages).

With Instant Articles, material loads faster, but organizations have to give it to Facebook—something very controversial for news organizations..

“This means we are building an audience for Facebook,” Fenlon said, “but the user experience is better.”

Facebook Leaning to Video

As for Facebook itself, he noted that it has once again changed it algorithms and now it is favouring video.

But, he noted, the kind of video that works on TV “won’t work on Facebook.”

On TV, video segments “are too long, they build-up to the moment.”

Facebook video, he said, has to be short and get right to the point.

Something new for them now is putting text over the video, so people can read what is being said.

“People usually use their mobile devices with the sound off,” so adding text helps to catch attention.

As for length, shorter is always better, he said.

The ideal length of a Facebook video is no longer than 90 seconds. YouTube hosts longer videos, “but the longer you go the better it has to be. If you are going to ask for two, three or four minutes of my time, it has better be worth it.”

What about Twitter?

Twitter is also important, he said, but it doesn’t reach the mass audience of Facebook.

Twitter users, he said, tend to be highly engaged audience, with a lot of journalists and a lot of influencers on that platform.

Facebook Worries and Paywalls

Fenlon admitted there are worrying things about the dominance of Facebook.

Its algorithm isn’t Canadian, he said, and it doesn’t prioritize Canadian news.

Instead, it “favours what your friends like, what you like.”

But that is also its genius, and why people spend so much time on it, he added.

“Facebook is a great experience—that’s why people spend time there,” he said. “You can rage against that, or try to build your own brand and presence in that space.”

As for the future, “we are In this weird grey zone, not sure where it is going,” he said of the Web and social media.

One place he is sure it is not going is towards paywalls and people paying for content online.

“I’m not an expert on monetizing content, but a paywall is a tough sell,” he said. “It only works for biggest players.”

As for the younger generation, they “will not pay,” he stated, referencing a study that showed that 70% said they will never pay for news.

Subscribing to things, he noted, is something people over 50 are used to doing—not the younger generation.

The Future of TV News

As for traditional CBC TV news, “we will see real withdrawl from local news,” he said.

The idea of the supper hour or evening news—what is called appointment viewing—is something only older people do. Younger people don’t consume news that way.

They have no interest in a traditional hour-long format, where they wait until something they are interested in comes up, he shared.

The supper and evening news is “a relic,” he stated. “We have to re-think the newscast. Instead of telling people what happened today, we need to tell them why it matters, and what will happen tomorrow as a result.”

This will involve a psychological change for broadcasters, he added.

Today it is video first—the needs of TV. In the near future, it will be digital first, and TV second.

“We are still trying to republish TV stuff to digital,” he said. “We need to do digital first, then go to TV.”

Mobile is Everything for ESPN, and Soon Will be for Everyone Else

ESPN revolutionized TV. Almost single-handedly, it made cable TV a must-have service for tens of millions of people.

But now ESPN's future is in doubt as more people cut the cable cord. And where are those people going? 

To their phones.

To help it succeed on that platform, ESPN is developing "a smartphone-first content effort that combines personalization, journalism, video and personality,” as the internal memo announcing the change described it.

According to Chad Millman, ESPN's new vice president and editorial director for domestic digital content, the broadcaster is going in this direction because "mobile is everything. We always have to be thinking about mobile first. If we’re thinking about anything else, we’re failing the audience."

And what does it mean to do mobile first?

"You need to keep re-imagining how things look," Millman said in an article in Nieman Lab.

Among other things, this means how it looks on a phone and how long the headline is. 

"What is it (the headline) going to look like and where is it going to cut off on a mobile device," he said. 

What makes all of this challenging, he added, is that pages destined for mobile are designed on a desktop.

"There’s no magic formula to simulate what it looks like on a phone," he said. "So you’re decreasing your browser before you publish it, you’re checking it on your phone as soon as you publish it to fix something right away."

Creating for mobile also means not trying to make it look like ESPN on TV.

"We’re creating for the platform or device that we most expect people to see it on, and not thinking that we have to create something that looks like it belongs on television. 

"Can you understand the story with the sound off? How long should it be? When are people dropping out of videos? 

"All of that stuff makes us rethink how we might have produced something even two or three years ago."

One example of ESPN's mobile-first strategy is its 60-second preview of the week in the NFL. The minute-long segment is designed, produced, and edited with mobile in mind. 

"It is quick cuts, it is tightly written, and it gives you information, but it does it quickly and in a sort of whimsical way. That is something that we wouldn’t have done a year ago," he said.

How quickly things change—in  the mid-2000s, when the web began to take off as a main vehicle of communication, media and others started to move from thinking print-first to web-first. 

There was a lot of agonizing back then over the need for shorter articles, and the end of an edition or issue-based mindset (see Life and Communications Unbundled, on this blog.)  

Now here we are, about a decade later, and we're beginning to hear talk about doing everything mobile-first. Which isn’t surprising, considering the growth of mobile around the world.

Today, mobile is first for ESPN. Soon it will be that way for everyone else.