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Sept. 16, 2013, 1:24 p.m.
LINK: digiday.com  ➚   |   Posted by: Joshua Benton   |   September 16, 2013

At Digiday, Josh Sternberg asked a number of digital publishing types what “mobile first” meant to them. Good answers from a number of them, but the answer from BuzzFeed’s Jon Steinberg (the headline of this post) stood out. (Plus a Vivian Schiller near-haiku!). Gawker CTO Media Thomas Plunkett:

At the high level, mobile-first means build where users are and where technology is going. In practice, we build features mobile-first. We simplify the product. It forces us to think about what is essential; extend features to desktop. We have a ton of work to do on the mobile-optimized payload front, but it comes down to tailoring dependencies (images, javascript, css, etc.) for mobile. It means adaptive design. We’re staying away from mobile specific templates.

Even within this small group of forward-thinking individuals, you can start to see the difference between the ones that are thinking mobile first and the ones who are acting mobile first.

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Lessons learned in The Building of Lost Causes
“The skills we developed while facing down the fossil fuel industry — persistence through trolling campaigns, converting readers one by one, turning an upstart publication into essential reading — these aren’t just about journalism. They’re about how to keep building when everything around you feels like it’s crumbling.”
Publishers find the AI era not all that lucrative
“Welcome, surely. Lucrative, in a sense. Game changer? Hardly.”
Embrace the barbell
“It’s time to abandon middling stories and go very short or very long.”