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# Jacob Gjørtz: rethinking stories for mobile storytelling
- URL: https://onemanandhisblog.com/2019/03/mobile-news-formats/
- Published: 2019-03-07T10:23:28.000Z
- Updated: 2019-03-07T10:23:28.000Z
- Description: Can we really expect a story format designed for print newspaper to survive into the digital age? Jacob Gjørtz thinks not - and he has an alternative.
- Author: Adam Tinworth
- Tags: mobile, mobile formats, quartz curve, news atoms

*Jacob Gjørtz, VP marketing at CCI Europe, gave a talk at news:rewired in March 2019, discussing the shift to a mobile-dominant world, and addressing the challenges it brings for our story format. These are my liveblogged notes.* 

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52% of internet traffic is now on mobile. The average adult spends over two hours on their devices. News consumers “snack” - they spend about 12 minutes per session. How do we get them to spend longer on our stories?

One problem is that we’re still using a story format designed for an older device — paper. Pictures are there only as illustrations. It’s a format still focused on the words to tell the story.

**Quartz* looked at that format, and came up with the [Quartz Curve](https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/-smartden-why-quartz-does-not-publish-500-to-800-word-articles/s2/a554444/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com) \- the split between stackable, shareable content, and the longer reads. The middle ground (500 to 800 words for **Quartz* \- not the same everywhere) doesn’t engage the readers.

> Stories up to 500 words are ‘snackable’ and very shareable whole those over 800 words are for ‘lean-back’ moments but less shareable [#newsrw](https://twitter.com/hashtag/newsrw?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=onemanandhisblog.com)
> 
> — Helen Johnston (@journohelen) [March 6, 2019](https://twitter.com/journohelen/status/1103268341911826436?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=onemanandhisblog.com)

## Linear Visual Story Formats

So how about linear visual storytelling? It’s a swipe and scroll native format. It allows them to engage with the story in a much more natural way. Images are no longer illustrations, they’re narrative elements. They’re an engine of the story. There are various formats in this space:

- **[AMP Stories](https://www.ampproject.org/stories/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com)**: a format invented by Google, designed for a good mobile experience. Lots of images, less text, scroll through it at will.
- **Timelines**: a visual format with more of a balance between images and text, over a time-based scrollable format.
- **[Expanders](https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2018-07-prototyping-news-story-article-format-journalism?ref=onemanandhisblog.com)**: developed by the BBC - they are less image heavy, but allow users to "snack" on a short story or expand into further content.

Traditionally, we create stories in fields, especially when working in a CMS. Could we break that down to small atomic elements: paragraphs, photos, embeds, etc? 

Then you can take those elements and rebuild new stories in new formats out of them.

> .[@JGjortz](https://twitter.com/JGjortz?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=onemanandhisblog.com) One better model is to use linear visual storytelling. Images are there as narrative statements, an engine for the story [#newsrw](https://twitter.com/hashtag/newsrw?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=onemanandhisblog.com)
> 
> — John Thompson (@johncthompson) [March 6, 2019](https://twitter.com/johncthompson/status/1103267290383110149?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=onemanandhisblog.com)

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*Jacobworks for CCI which offers a product — [Cue](https://www.cuepublishing.com/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com) — which tries to address the problem set out above. Here's a video which explains it:*