By Mark Luckie

Wireless device users want news, and they want it now.

But news on mobile devices like cell phones is still in its infancy, much like the Web was in the mid-90s.

“It’s like the Wild Wild West," said Matt Jones, director of Mobile Products for USATODAY.com. "But we’re excited about what the future holds."

Panelists Friday at the Online News Association 2006 conference also warned against thinking content on handheld devices is the same as content on the Web.

“You can’t just take what you’re doing online or on a big screen TV and bring it to a phone,” said Linda Barrabee, program manager for Yankee Group. "Consumers won’t buy it, not on a postage stamp-sized screen.”

Users can now access information in several ways from their cell phones and other wireless devices, including text messaging, mobile Web browsers and application downloads. And unlike the Web, technology is advancing at a more rapid pace, panelists said.

The challenge for many media companies is to scale down their content for consumers who on average spend only a few minutes on their wireless devices.

“The news industry must learn how to reach the user how they want to be reached,” said Sarah Lumbard, director of business development for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.

The biggest obstacle is encouraging the millions of Americans who own Web-enabled cell phones to actually use the service. Only about 25 percent of mobile phone users text messaging and about 5 percent access the web from their device, according to a Yankee Group study.

Consumers pay for the time they spend browsing the Web and any text messages they send or receive, so they don’t have time for inaccurate searches or large images, however compelling they may be, Lombard said.

The Bakersfield Californian, a mid-sized newspaper in central California, is using text messaging to send sports scores and local perspective on big events such as the Super Bowl or the Oscars, said Logan Molen, vice president of interactive media for The Bakersfield Californian/Bakersfield.com. The paper also sends out coupons at the end of some of its messages that subscribers can use at local businesses.

“Our audience is relatively small, we’re not making money off of it, but we think it's important that we be there for our early adopters,” Molen said.

Mobile news has a long way to go before it catches on with the majority of consumers, but with teenagers encouraging their parents to become connected and the new crop of phones with enhanced multimedia capabilities, that saturation may not be that far off, Barrabee said.

The panel was titled, “What about WAP? Mobile news is the future.” WAP – or wireless access protocol -- is a popular standard that allows users to instantly access information with a handheld wireless device, anything from a cell-phone to a Blackberry or Treo or numerous others. Other panelists were Joe Cohen, global director for mobile products at Reuters.com and Mike Zarrilli, director of mobile business development for The Weather Channel Interactive.