Hope for mobile news

I’ve gotta admit, when it comes to the question of newspapers adopting new delivery systems, I’m usually the one wagging my finger and saying “You better…”

But John Duncan over at The Inksniffer has a far more hopeful approach when it comes to the prospects for cutting deals with cell phone carriers and getting headlines from newspapers to mobile phones:

“There will, I’m sure, be Powerpoints. I think big cellphone operators, who like to do business with big brands and who can tailor their products by geography, will seek out local newspapers as partners very quickly. Readers may tell researchers about how little they trust newspapers but big telecoms trust us a lot. They advertise with us already. Newspapers know them. Newspapers play golf with them. Newspapers used to carry their books to school for them when they were young.”

He’s probably thinking of larger papers and larger newspaper companies, but the message is clear — this is one area where newspapers can play a few pieces of capital they’ve built up over the years.

As an added bonus, it’s not rocket science. Get your text headlines out on a mobile screen. It’s not difficult. After that, move on to pushing your video content out to iPods. Plenty of instruction booklets sitting around about how to do that. (Note to self: Do that.)