NWA Media Launches Mobile App

By Lana Flowers

Posted: May 7, 2010 at 6 a.m.

NWA Media announced Thursday the release of several mobile applications that feature content from the Northwest Edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Northwest Arkansas Times, the Springdale Morning News, the Rogers Morning News, the Benton County Daily Record, TunedIn and the Slophouse.

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NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — Your local daily newspapers now have their own mobile phone application.

NWAonline.com — the website for the Benton County Daily Record, Rogers Morning News, Springdale Morning News, Northwest Arkansas Times and the Northwest Edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette — announced the mobile application launch Thursday.

The app is free and available at nwaonline.com/mobile. Links from there lead to sites to download apps appropriate to the particular smart phone or device, including the iPhone, Droid and Blackberry, said Matthew Costa, NWA Media information technology and online director.

“The app is free, but you have to be a subscriber to read the content,” Costa said. “Use your authentication to log in and read the news. We do have a lot of free content, like our blogs and any news content we offer for free.”

Paid print or online subscribers must log in to read most content at nwaonline.com, but free items include content related to the May 18 primary election, Costa said.

NWA Media developed its own mobile application because of the volume of people getting news where they want it and when they want it, he said.

“Everyone seems to have a smart phone now. It seemed logical to expand our media presence into the mobile environment,” Costa said.

There are about 280 million wireless subscribers in the United States, according to a report Monday from Roger Entner, The Nielsen Co. senior vice president of research and insights in telecom practice.

The U.S. Census Bureau indicated there were 309.2 million U.S. residents as of Thursday, according to a population ticker at the Census website.

Other news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal and New York Times, have apps for smart phones and the iPad.

It’s hard to track how many news apps are available, because of various platforms and no way to track or aggregate download information across those platforms, said Regina McCombs, who is on the faculty for multimedia and mobile at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.

The Poynter Institute conducts research and educates journalists and others about developments and trends in the news business.

It’s important for newspapers to reach users of wireless devices because they tend to be higher educated and heavier news consumers, McCombs said.

“We also know that mobile is driving more and more traffic to websites. Depending on the website, I am hearing that anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of their traffic is coming from mobile,” McCombs said.

For example, traffic increased tenfold to National Public Radio’s website within months of launching the iPhone and Droid apps, she said.

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