Straight to mobile: The Cambodia Daily’s strategy in getting content out to a fast-growing audience
It’s one thing to think about a mobile-first audience; it’s quite another to embrace the fact that mobile-first is often mobile-only in many emerging markets. In Cambodia, people are coming to the internet for the first time on their mobile phones - skipping desktops altogether.
That’s why The Cambodia Daily has such an interesting story to tell. Three years ago, they brought in Joshua Wilwohl, a former reporter and editor at AOL’s Patch.com to get things moving online.
The Cambodia Daily's newsroom in Phnom Penh.
It’s been 3 years. How are things going?
The Daily was late to going online, launching its website in October 2012. But we’re now far ahead of most news organizations in the region and possibly elsewhere.
In the past year, we’ve transitioned our website to accommodate a predominantly mobile audience, constructed our own paywall and moved our workflow to the cloud, creating a “virtual newsroom.”
Our website is now one of the most robust in the region, adapting quickly to the demands of news consumers as well as Cambodia’s constantly changing and challenging market. For example, to subscribe online to The Daily, a reader can purchase a subscriber card at a local mini-mart to gain access to our website. We rolled out these cards because less than 30,000 people of Cambodia’s 15 million population have credit cards.
The “virtual newsroom,” which was built using Google Drive, has cut our workflow in half by keeping the files in one place and tracking changes. It also allows reporters and editors to write, file and edit from anywhere in the world on all devices.
Like most people now, their phone is their life. College students even write term papers on them. We had to adapt.
What’s it like serving a mobile-first, mobile-only audience?
Cambodians practically skipped the computer era and went straight to mobile. Like most people now, their phone is their life. College students even write term papers on them. We had to adapt.
When we launched our website in 2012, we started with a WordPress template, but quickly found out this was not ideal as our mobile audience continued to grow rapidly. As a result, I learned to code and spent a little more than a year building the current site.
Now, about half of our entire audience is on their mobile device. The challenge now is making sure we continue to adapt to the demands of young, educated Cambodians, who we hope will be our next generation of readers.
I constantly talk to my students at Pannasastra University about how they use their smartphones as well as other new technology such as smart watches. The hope is that we can learn what they want and make the necessary changes.
What lessons do you have for editorial startups looking to build a newsroom in Cambodia?
Look for innovative ways to deliver the news. It is apparent that people in Cambodia (as well as elsewhere) aren’t seeking out the news. It has to come to them. We’re working on unique ways to deliver the news.
But if I were to start a news agency in Cambodia, I would begin with a decentralized, virtual newsroom that brings quality news to consumers in Khmer as well as English via their mobile phones. I stress quality because this is important for monetizing the business.
Advertisements alone won’t be able to support the company because companies can reach a lot more people through social networks at a cheaper price. There are not a lot of news agencies in Cambodia writing about the country, and offering quality news at an inexpensive price could prove fruitful.
An Apple iMac shows the newsroom's Google Analytics dashboard.
You’re also a journalism lecturer in Cambodia. How did that happen, and what are your students like?
I teach media students at Pannasastra University of Cambodia mostly about digital media and technology. I started in August 2013. My students are very smart. They quickly are learning how expanding their knowledge of digital media and technology will better position them for jobs when they graduate.
Why this obsession about an A4-sized newspaper?
The Daily has been on A4 since we started in 1993. The publisher wanted the newspaper faxed to him in Japan every day and A4 was the size that fit the fax machine.
One of the last of The Cambodia Daily’s old Mac computers. These have now been replaced with ASUS Chromeboxes. Note the real-time analytics of The Daily’s site.