Today’s session on tablet applications at the World Editors Forum featured a fantastic presentation by Mario Garcia, CEO and founder of Garcia Media, who ran through 10 incredibly useful lessons to learn when creating news apps.

They are repeated below as he listed them (and are also posted on his blog):

1. Tell stories across platforms. “We must think in terms of a media quartet”.
2. What the tablet is. “A tablet goes beyond, to create an immersive experience, not a newspaper, not an online edition, not television, yet has the abilty to fulfil the role of all these platforms together”.
3. The lean-back platform. “You have got an audience that’s relaxed, but not that relaxed. At any point they want to know what’s happening now”.
4. What the tablet is not. “It is not a replication of the print/online experience”
5. Covering three tracks. “Users want their newspaper tablet apps to have the three main tracks of curated edition, news updates and e-readers”.
6. The tablet and design. “You have to make it sophisticatedly simple”.
7. Create those pop-up moments. “This is not a newspaper. When you design for tablet you design for the eye, finger and the brain and all have to be entertained simultaneously.”
8. Pay attention to the essentials. “Start with a good sense of navigation, make sure the user knows how to go from point A to point C or Z and make sure you give people ability to share.”
9. Make it functional. “Remember what people are using it for. They come to read, they come to read long, they come to read short. Need to train people in art to write mini story.”
10. You must consider a curated edition. Have an editor to curate the edition.Similar Posts:

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“Never on Monday – or Tuesday, or Wednesday: how newspapers redefine ‘daily’”: With a look back to an interview with Sam Zell in November, Dr Mario R Garcia does a round-up of the shifting definition of ‘daily’ for newspapers in the US.

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Journalism.co.uk is back in Brighton but still keenly following progress at WAN Amsterdam. The Digital Publishing Conference finished Thursday morning, and the event moved onto the WAN/ World Editors Forum 11th Readership Conference under the name ‘Building New Audiences in Print and on Digital Channels’.

The first two days gave ideas on how to build a Digital Revenue Goldmine: it was then time to ask how exactly can delegates build new audiences in print and on digital channels to support the revenue making methods?

William Powers, media columnnist for the Nation, said in his keynote speech on Thursday afternoon that print can be an ‘island in the chaos’:

“When you’re reading an article on a screen, your mind is conscious of all the other information that’s just a click away – from your inbox to the latest headlines to your bank account to a billion You Tube videos. Thus, instead of escaping other demands on your attention as you read, you are mentally fending off those demands every moment you’re at the screen.”

In a session today, as reported over at Forum4editors, Mario Garcia, president of Garcia Media in the US, said that newspaper has to be understood as something you do in a separate domain from web. Garcia said in his speech:

“Newspapers are something you read. The web is something you do. Once you learn this distinction, your job and the management of the newsroom will be different. The newspaper, you read. The web, you must have some kind of activity. Online allows you to get involved.”

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