'It’s our challenge to work out what content people want on each platform', says Johnston Press chief digital officer
People check newspapers first thing in the morning, check their smartphones for news throughout the day and use their tablets in the evening, Jeff Moriarty, chief digital and product officer for Johnston Press believes.
Speaking at the D14 conference in Glasgow today, Moriarty said: “We’re information providers, we have to figure out how to provide information to desktops, to phones, to watches – and we know people will want what we have across all of these devices because we’re already seeing people use different types of platforms.”
The Johnston Press business has 209 websites and 39 apps – and what is important, Moriarty believes, is to see when each of these are used.“It’s our challenge to work out what content people want on each of the platforms at that moment, and how do we tailor the experience to each platform.”
But it is not all about digital, added Moriarty, who said that print is just as important tablet. "...They complement each other. In doing that we’re really digging into the segment of users across our website.”
These segments are also targeted through the launch of new products.
“You’re seeing more and more experimentation outside of the core brand, trying to reach a new audience with a product designed just for them.
“At the Boston Globe we had a suite of brands that were all designed and very much edited for a specific age group. The idea of content is evolving alongside of this. We’ve gone from people standing in the streets of Boston reading out results through a megaphone – that was live streaming. We do the same things today, we’ve just changed how we do it.”
Having joined Johnston Press from the Boston Globe in January, Moriarty has previously stated that paid content will be “very much in his mind” as he moves forward.
However, it was the other side of digital that Moriarty focussed on today, stating: “We don’t just sell ads in the newspapers, we sell services, we sell websites, we teach small businesses how to tweet.”