Newspaper & Mailroom

Ottaway Newspapers Launches Mobile-Friendly Sites

Wednesday 25. February 2009 - Ottaway Newspapers, the Local Media Group of Dow Jones, has launched mobile-friendly editions of its daily news Web sites for its media groups across the country.

The launch marks another milestone in Ottaway’s ongoing mobile audience development effort, and is part of a larger content distribution approach geared toward pushing the company’s local content and information to a wide variety of platforms.

“Seekers of news and information in our markets should be able to access our content on the platform that either they are most comfortable using, or that is most useful to them at the moment they need to be informed,” said Sean Polay, Ottaway’s product manager for distributed media. “We aim to serve the reader, and these mobile-friendly sites are a big step forward on that front.”

The sites were launched by the company’s digital product development team, led by Richard Hoover, and were rooted in a pilot project undertaken by Greg Bryant, online editor for Ottaway’s Cape Cod Media Group based in Hyannis, MA. Their mobile site, m.capecodonline.com/, was the first to launch, and was followed by the remaining media groups in rapid succession:

— Seacoast Media Group, Portsmouth, NH: m.seacoastonline.com/
— Hudson Valley Media Group, Middletown, NY: m.recordonline.com/
— Pocono Mountains Media Group, Stroudsburg, PA: m.poconorecord.com/
— San Joaquin Media Group, Stockton, CA: m.recordnet.com/
— Southern Oregon Media Group, Medford, OR: m.mailtribune.com/ and
m.dailytidings.com/



Ottaway’s SouthCoast Media Group in New Bedford, MA, had a pre-existing mobile site powered by a third-party provider. Located at mobile.southcoasttoday.com/, it remains in place, though it will eventually be transitioned to the shared Ottaway solution, Polay said.