TAKEAWAY: What happens when the team of a newspaper’s curated tablet edition comes together to put together a package that is unique to that platform? Usually, the story gets a special treatment. Such was the case Monday for the Gulf News Tablet’s packaging of the political situation in Egypt. The tablet editor tells us the story.
Images of the complete Gulf News Tablet package on Egypt uprisings
TAKEAWAY: What happens when the team of a newspaper’s curated tablet edition comes together to put together a package that is unique to that platform? Usually, the story gets a special treatment. Such was the case Monday for the Gulf News Tablet’s packaging of the political situation in Egypt. The tablet editor tells us the story.
I remember that when we at Garcia Media first got engaged with the Gulf News team for the development of its iPad app, we never had any doubt: it would be a curated edition.
Working closely with Editor in Chief, Abdul Hamid Ahmad, and design director, Miguel Gomez, we knew that we wanted for the tablet edition of this major newspaper of the United Arab Emirates to create a tablet edition that would stand on its own two feet, have its own editor and team, and NOT simply duplicate the contents of the printed newspaper or its online edition.
Eight months after its premiere, the Gulf News Tablet has evolved in many ways, and it continues to do so, but this week it has fulfilled one of the early goals of our workshops: to create specific content for the Tablet editon.
Tablet editor Anupa Kurien proudly sends us a note about how this happened and why.
“The situation in Egypt is becoming bad – the people had expected a peaceful transition into democracy by the interim military rule via free and fair elections. But, that is not happening so the protesters are gathering again, added to political parties playing their own games. Essentially, the situation is deteriorating rapidly, people are being attacked, free speech is being blocked, a kind of second revolution is starting up but there are several aspects to the whole situation. We had been carrying reports recently. As the situation got worse, Arab editors, especially the social media editor Sara Shurafa along with Community Journalist Habiba Abdul Aziz, on the iPad team talked to me about the various issues that were not being reported on. They had been monitoring some of Facebook and Twitter accounts. Sara had story ideas. I then took a decision to do this package – to explain the various aspects and get new pictures.”
How did the planning go?
Anupa tells me that once she made the decision to let her tablet team create a special package , it was a matter of planning content just the way you would do for any platform, but with emphasis on the visuals.
” We planned the stories, the angles and decided to go ahead with many screenshots of social media sites that told a lot of the story. It was the best opportunity to present content that had not been explored before by print, web or television. It was not an easy exercise as all content had to be sourced and verified – took the team (Sara, Noor Al Khatib, Rabab Khan and Habiba, with me in the mix) about six hours to deliver the package.”
And, following the idea that the tablet allows to give stories longer legs, Anupa tells us that the team also translated videos – content that the English-speaking world might never hear or see.
In addition, the process became a true multi platform affair.
We started planning early in the day, which helped. We then migrated content, after publishing on the iPad, to our website with a slightly different look, which worked as a promo for our Tablet app.
What was the role of print edition editors?
I asked Anupa about the role that print edition editors played.
“There wasn’t involvement by print editors on this project. We worked with the Hub Editors to migrate the content to the website. We haven’t got any reaction from print editors, yet. But, the iPad team was inspired and had fun – they hope to work on more such packages. To me, this is also the path you need to take if you plan to monetise an app well – the reader has to get unique value for his or her money. The process and journalistic principles applied in creating the package is the same as we have traditionally done for print – in this case it was sound virtual leather-shoe reporting with detailed planning and great teamwork.”
As you can see in the screenshots iincluded here, the package succeeding in highlighting aspects of this story that perhaps print and online could not have done as fully.
Another example of curated editions of news apps doing what they can do best: customize, take the story to the next level, go for total multi media, and let the tablet edition stand on its own two feet and amplify on content, as opposed to duplicating it.
Bravo to the Gulf News Tablet team.