Com 203 Essay2

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COM 203 Charles Jurries Instructor: Dr. Bob Essay #2

Augment My Reality: Utilizing the News for Mobile Phones BlackBerrys, iPhones and Droids. Today’s smartphones utilize internet and streaming data for a variety of functions, including maps, traffic information and music, among others, all available on a pocket-sized device. An emerging technology for these advanced data phones is known as “Augmented Reality,” a service that can scan whatever the phone is looking for, and if it recognizes the person, place or object in its database, will then give you any available information to be found, right then and there. Scan an apartment building, and find out if there are any units for sale. At an art museum, scan a work of art and find out more information than the plaque can give. This technology has the ability to be more than just “cool,” it could be beneficial and useful to the struggling news industry. The news business is struggling, losing newspaper profits, failing to make substantial amounts of money on the internet, all but giving up on radio, and having TV news be the butt of many jokes. However, the news industry needs to work on archiving and cataloging their news data now, in order to take advantage of these mobile technologies. Failure to plan ahead will result in news organizations potentially losing valuable public information, looking “out of touch” with technologies and failing to give the news where their audience has migrated. Newspapers used to be “the news,” the only other medium to disseminate information other than word-of-mouth. As such, newspapers were treated with a certain degree of care and respect, and archived accordingly. A visit to any number of public libraries will show newspapers carefully archived on microfiche, preserved so future generations would be able to look back and see the news of the day. However, most news web sites, offer only up to two years

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of online content, some charging for access to the archives. If you are not willing to pay, then, the data disappears completely from your internet. (LexisNexis, a popular internet archive and research site, charges users for full access to their content as well.) Many local news web sites do not offer a archive system for users, nor provide adequate searching for outdated stories. In order to proceed in a mobile, minute-by-minute future, this needs to change. A backlog of stories would allow for “perspective” when it comes to Augmented Reality mobile applications. While researching that apartment complex on your phone, the most recent story may be about a murder that took place recently, whereas a story from eight years ago would show the complex won an award for being environmentally friendly. When at the art museum, you would be able to know the last time that specific artists was featured in that building, where all the art has been over the past decade or two. If the information was considered important enough to be mentioned years ago, it is certainly worth mentioning once again years later, in the spirit of context and understanding (Outing, 2003). Another reasons news organizations need a better catalog of information is to regain some likability in the eyes of the public. Only 20-30 percent of Americans believe what traditional media outlets have to say, according to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism (Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2009). If news organizations want to regain the popularity that most of us desire from our peers, they need to give others a reason to like them. The first step in this would be by meeting people with new and emerging technologies, not playing catch-up like many have and are doing with the internet and mobile. As of April, 2009, Apple has sold well over 35 million units able to take advantage of their applications (Marsal, 2009). The audience for mobile applications and technologies is already there, and growing. With more “standard” cell phones becoming equipped with more advanced technologies, it is not inconceivable that by the year 2020, the standard cell phone will

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be predominately used for data, and will be able to use applications. However, news organizations shouldn’t wait for a New York Times cover story or a memo from the Poynter Institute to tell them they need to get ready and figure out a strategy on how to meet and develop this technology now. By the time the mobile audience is as standard as the web audience is now, it will be too labor-intensive to try to take the digital back-catalog and figure how to adapt it a mobile technology. Experiment with the technology now; develop how to display news alongside the real estate and entertainment listings, and the audience will be thankful. Why would they be thankful? You wouldn’t just get information on what something is about, you would be able to know if it was controversial, if it inspired a community, if it was at the center of a crime that inspired an episode of LAW AND ORDER. People may not trust the news, but they still consume it in some small ways. By giving them relevant data in a relevant manner, a way that is not preaching to them but rather, simply informing them, the news could once again become a useful part of the everyday life. It would serve a different function, that of a collaborator with other functions, rather than a stand-alone unit. Yet, in a day and age where there’s all but no credibility left to lose, and everything to gain, with mediums that are dying or broken, experimentation with technology like Augmented Reality, could be beneficial to not just the news industry, but the industry’s relations with the public.

Bibliography Marsal, K. (2009, April 23). Apple's iPod touch sales double, nearly on par with iPhone. Retrieved November 24, 2009, from AppleInsider: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/04/23/apples_ipod_touch_sales_double_nea rly_on_par_with_iphone.html

Jurries 4 Outing, S. (2003, January 8). Poynter Online. Retrieved November 24, 2009, from The Archiving Mess: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=16322 Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. (2009). Public Attitudes . Retrieved from Journalism.org: http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/narrative_overview_publicattitudes.php? cat=3&media=1