App Aims To Corner Second City News

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In one of the few remaining U.S. cities with two daily newspapers, the Chicago Sun-Times can’t afford not to assert itself in the mobile space. It makes its app play with Inergize Digital’s News Synergy product, which has separate interfaces for smartphones and the iPad

The content-heavy app is updated throughout the day according to Fred Lebolt, senior VP of digital at the Sun-Times, who describes the app’s M.O. simply: “It’s designed to be engaging, informative, indigenous to the device and something that fills the niche of people who want to know the top stories in the Chicago region.”

Under the hood, the News Synergy app taps into functions that clients can turn on or off, including data feeds and live interactive radar from WeatherCentral and data from SportsNation.

Jason Gould, Inergize senior VP and GM, said the app was the first to offer live, geolocating radar and a sticky menu interface for its community section, along with a classifieds section that offers click-to-call and click-to-map functionality. The app also enables social sharing on each story under a single button that links to email, Facebook, Twitter and SMS.

For clients like the Sun-Times that may not necessarily want a “’til death do us part” relationship with the vendor, Gould said that Inergize sets up developer account relationships with individual media company clients, “therefore they wouldn’t be in a hostage situation moving forward and could control their users and would not have to rebuild their user downloads if they switched from one provider to another,” he said.

The Sun-Times currently monetizes the app through an exclusive sponsorship deal with Cadillac, which is used by many of the 27 News Synergy clients, according to Gould. “Sponsorship is a huge driver,” he said. “We have some markets that have sold sponsorship for $70,000 or more. Sponsorship gets them up, gets them out of the gate.”

Although the Sun-Times doesn’t yet use it, the app can also accommodate revenue through display ads and a deals function that utilizes geofencing.

While the Sun-Times is playing future developments within the app including tablet content differentiation (and possible app verticals) close to its vest, Lebolt hints that it’s looking closely at how it might integrate content from some of the paper’s other media properties.

“We have in our portfolio a total of 40 different mastheads, and they’re suburban dailies and weeklies,” Lebolt said. “So we’re looking at what type of content to put out, using which device and do we look at it as this sort of overarching news environment or do we also consider some of the vertical aspects of what we do and how we do it and start creating apps that were designed for communities of interest.”

On the back end, meanwhile, Gould said, “We’re constantly tweaking the development,” noting that a new iPad interface and more social and video components will be among the features rolling out in 2012.

Vendor: Inergize Digital

Launched: August 2011

Cost to consumer: Free

Compatible devices: iPhone, iPad, Android, HTML5

White label version: Yes

Number of downloads: N/A

Revenue streams: Exclusive sponsorship; white label version allows for display and deals functionality as well

Key characteristics: Separately optimized navigation for smartphones and iPads; dynamic publishing system for clients’ back end freedom in setting categories and subcategories, content wells, teasers; integration with WeatherCentral and SportsNetwork data sets