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The media becomes an activist for democracy
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Nov. 12, 2013, 5:36 p.m.

Erin Kissane, after giving birth to her daughter, spent a lot of time away from “the big-screen Internet,” limited only to the occasional smartphone tap or swipe:

Combine that with a slightly bumpy recovery from surgery and all the sleep deprivation you can expect from life with a newborn, and I’ve had plenty of very recent experience using the web while bleary, impatient, and on a device smaller than my hand.

All her lessons about mobile usability are great, but this one is the truest of the true:

Slow load times make me hate you. If I’ve been staring at my phone for 30 seconds while your site loads bushels of unnecessary files, not only am I going to back out of the site, I’m going to mentally put it on my Google results blacklist. Likewise, if you override my ability to pinch-zoom, use a mobilizer that makes me swipe instead of scrolling, or adds pagination, I will go out of my way to never use your site again.

As Erin puts it: “Mobile-only internet use is only expanding, and this group of users is much too large to ignore. And don’t forget — if you’re sufficiently unkind to a multi-device user stuck on a small screen, you may find they avoid you on the desktop as well.”

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The media becomes an activist for democracy
“We cannot be neutral about this, by definition. A free press that doesn’t agitate for democracy is an oxymoron.”
Embracing influencers as allies
“News organizations will increasingly rely on digital creators not just as amplifiers but as integral partners in storytelling.”
Action over analysis
“We’ve overindexed on problem articulation, to the point of problem admiring. The risk is that we are analyzing ourselves into inaction and irrelevance.”