SORRY, MARSHALL McLUHAN, BUT MOBILE IS NOW THE MESSAGE

One of my earliest posts on this blog was headlined: "MOBILE: THE NEW PROPHECY NEWSPAPERS CAN'T AFFORD TO IGNORE."

And -- the possibility of brainwashing by my friend Steve Buttry, Digital Transformation Editor for Digital First Media and Journal Register Co., notwithstanding -- I am beginning to see what I consider to be proof positive (albeit on a microcosmic scale) of that on my blog dashboard.

Since starting The Ancient Newspaper Editor in April, I have been seeing steady growth in the percentage of page views I get from the various mobile platforms such as iPhone, iPad, Android, Linux and even Blackberry.

At the outset, about 12 percent of my page views were from mobile. When I checked today, I noticed that of the thousand of page views I've had since the blog began, a cumulative 28 percent have come via mobile. That is second only to the page views I have gotten over all from the Windows platform and it appears that the percentage of mobile views is growing almost daily.

Over the past month, the percent of mobile page view reached just over 30 percent. Last week it climbed to just over 32 percent. And in the last 24 hours it climbed to nearly 44 percent, eclipsing even Windows, which accounted for 38 percent of The Ancient Newspaper Editor's page views during the period.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that this is growing affirmation of the validity and urgency of message that newspaper industry's mobile gurus like Buttry are trying to get across.

I continue to worry, however, that newspapers are still moving far too slowly to devise and implement their mobile strategies while they become more deeply mired in the continuing pay wall/no pay wall debate.

Wake up newspaper owners, publishers and editors this is a boat you can ill afford to miss and it's just about to leave port.

Of course, since I am now retired, I have no further personal stake in this, other than the fact that I spent nearly 44 years in the newspaper industry and still love it and see it as vitally important the public good.

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