Telegraph Labs: Hot off the digital press
The history of the Daily Telegraph and the Telegraph Media Group dates back to more than 150 years. As one of the oldest newspapers in Britain, if not the entire world, it has charted a steady course through the chaotic tumult of news, culture and politics in the global arena. “And, until very recently, that’s all we were”, says William Lewis, Editor-in-Chief. “We were just a newspaper”.
Paul Cheesbrough and Maani Safa in the Telegraph's newsroom
But in the last two and a half years, the Telegraph Media Group has undergone a series of radical changes to lay the foundations for the next 150 years and beyond. They’ve embraced the world wide web as a means of driving their news services forward into the 21st century. It’s a bright digital future, and Apple technology is very much at its core.
This exciting new strategy is easy to explain; information technology has irrevocably changed the way that news content is produced and consumed. “More and more of our customer base has moved on from print, not just to the internet but to mobile devices as well”, states Paul Cheesbrough, Chief Information Officer. “Clearly, our advertisers have moved on too. So it’s increasingly important that, alongside our newspapers, we support and deliver our content onto new platforms, be it mobile, internet, or downloadable applications”.
To meet their needs, the first Telegraph Lab was established. As critical as the newsroom, the purpose of the Lab is to experiment with new technologies and media platforms. Lab staff interface with all aspects of the newspaper, entrusted with taking Telegraph content – text, images, video or audio – and finding ways to deliver it most effectively to a global audience.
“It’s really been a crucial part of our advancements in the transformation of the Telegraph”, enthuses William Lewis. “To be frank, without the Lab we couldn’t have done it”. The Lab is stocked with Apple hardware and software, complete with several MacBook Pro and iMac computers. Apple was chosen because the Media Lab needed a sturdy development platform, based on open standards and tools, for building and testing a range of applications.
“We were striving for two things when we created the Lab”, adds Paul Cheesbrough. “The first was to up the level of innovation within the company. The second was to really try to harness the ideas and the passion of different parts of the company, and to bring people – regardless of where they sit within the organisation – into one area to work in a short, sharp way on a new product or new service”.
Aashish Chandarana, Product Development Manager, expands further: “The core platform tool is obviously the website. If we take that as our core platform of where the content comes from, or where you get the richest and best potential experiences, it's about how we leverage what we create on those platforms and push that out to the wider world”.
In tandem with the website, the Lab also has a mobile division that’s headed up by Maani Safa, managing the Telegraph’s mobile website and other applications for mobile devices. “In the Lab, the key challenge we have is taking our content and showcasing it in different ways”, he says. Naturally, one of his biggest priorities is developing products for the most exciting mobile device on the market – the revolutionary iPhone.
By pushing content out to readers on the move via mobile devices, they are able to take ownership of it. “And in terms of the social networking and bookmarking context”, Aashish Chandarana continues, “we’ve also given people the know-how to share and move our content onto other platforms”.
