OJR: The Online Journalism Review

Kathlyn Clore

Maastricht, Netherlands

Homepage: http://www.kathlynclore.com

Kathlyn Clore is associate editor at the European Journalism Centre.

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These articles are the work of their author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of nor an assignment by OJR.

What news websites are missing: useful, real-time municipal traffic and transit reports

September 16, 2009
The chipper consultants whom legacy media organizations overpay to update their brands don’t typically deign to tinker with traffic reporting.

But from where I sit – clutching the handlebars of my Dutch bicycle – this rather routine news service represents a basket of low-hanging fruit for news brands trying to create atomized content for multiple platforms, especially the mobile Web.

For the teen or job seeker who is riding his or her local bus for the first time, a mobile application branded by the local paper represents a chance for tangible interaction with that paper. It’s a great service for local visitors and that nervous commuter who, although she always keeps his watch set five minutes ahead, is always unsure if she’s just missed a bus.

“When I visited San Francisco, I never knew how long I'd have to stand at a bus stop waiting,” writes Ginny Skalski, a community content manager at the NBC affiliate in Raleigh-Durham. “If I had an app that was tied to the GPS of the buses on the route I was riding, it would have been amazing.”

Smart phone applications for public transport users are being developed and marketed by startups like HopSpot, AcrossAir and ExitStrategyNYC. Public transpiration services like the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York and, of course, Google, are also in the game.

News companies, still entrenched in a drive-time mentality and unsure how to make money online, are on the sidelines. More...

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