Journalism on your wrist

Courtesy of Flickr User Mark Johnson

By Katy Mersmann

A few weeks ago, Apple announced its newest products: two new iPhones and the Apple Watch. The iPhones really caught the most attention and now that they've been released to the public, coverage of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus has been significant, especially with the advent of "Bendgate."

But recently, a classmate shared a blog post with me addressing the question of how the Apple Watch, and other wearable technology, will impact journalism. Mario García runs a tech blog called García Media, that looks at the intersection of journalism and technology, and he raises some interesting questions about whether wearable technology will push journalism even further into the world of "at a glance."


Amy Webb spoke at the ONA Conference about the rise of this "glance" journalism and how to think about reporting for wearable technology. Webb makes a good point that wearable technology goes beyond just smart watches, and includes other smart jewelry, Google Glass, fitness trackers and beyond and journalists need to think about how best to format journalism to all these different types of wearable technology. She recommends that journalists borrow wearable technology from their friends and visualize how to consume news.

Over the past few years, journalism has adapted to Twitter, focusing on short, concise bites of news. Headlines, in some cases, have become stories, and many news consumers seem to like getting just 140 characters worth of reporting. However, García argues that the Apple Watch and similar wearable technology will push journalism even further. With such a small screen to read updates, journalists will have to focus their reporting into even smaller, more easily digested bites of information.

Rather than a tweet with just a few lines of information that links to a story, the tiny screens of wearable technology may open the door to one single line of information and reporters could have to adjust getting the most pertinent details of a story across in the quickest way possible. I'm not immediately convinced that wearable technology will be how people read their news. In fact, I think wearbales are more likely to alert news consumers to a news updates that they can actually read on their phones.

I think wearable technology has the potential to disrupt how we do our reporting as journalists, just as smartphones and Twitter have, but I don't think it's going to fundamentally change how much news people digest. In fact, I think news updates on your wrist or glasses may only increase the volume of information readers consume every day.

So what do you think? How is wearable technology going to impact news reporting and consumption? Let us know in the comments!