The goal of multiplatform news organizations in 2020 will be to have readers bookmark their site, sign up for their e-newsletter, download their app on their tablets and smartphones, like them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, and seek out their content in all the new ways that will be out there in 2020. You leave money on the table if you make the platform an either-or decision (either read the site or download the app, but there’s no need to do both because the content is the same).

The app genie is out of the bottle. Local news organizations have moved past the stage of merely having an app and are moving on to the tricky challenge of monetizing those apps, and to do that, they will have to build on the momentum of local mobile search, unlock the power of geolocation and push for better app metrics.

Journalists are increasingly looking for ways to be more efficient and more reliable in researching, reporting, and filing stories. TabTimes looked at the 12 most important tablet apps for the profession.

1. iJournalist Pro
2. iTeleport for iPad
3. Evernote
4. Dropbox
5. Wi-Fi Finder
6. Dragon Dictation
7. Tweetdeck
8. Webster’s New World Dictionary
9. WriteRoom
10. WordPress
11. CoverItLive

I don’t think anyone could have predicted that smartphones would end up playing a major role in journalistic coverage or revolutions worldwide—but as this infographic shows, they have. I feel like you can see how smartphones are beginning to represent in one device abilities we used to have to spend money on an array of different electronics to achieve. They can be a camera, a web browser, a social media hub, and, of course, a phone.

Many news publishers focus their mobile strategies on platform-specific apps—but the mobile web may actually be more important, since a mobile website is easier to discover, link to, and share from a mobile device.

Damon Kiesow, senior product manager for the Boston Globe, recently examined the mobile websites of over 100 U.S. newspapers. Here’s what he found…

The people familiar with the Google glasses said they would be Android-based, and will include a small screen that will sit a few inches from someone’s eye. They will also have a 3G or 4G data connection and a number of sensors including motion and GPS.

Just like the Storify website, the app lets users curate content from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites. There are two main differences: Users can tweet directly from the app and it is also touch-enabled, allowing content to be moved with just the touch of a finger.

Recently many social media editors have lamented that some are pigeonholed as “Twitter monkeys” who just handle the TweetDeck stuff so no one else has to. Web producers may get boxed in as “Website monkeys” who SEO the headlines and wrangle the insufferable CMS so no one else has to. And programmers get siloed as the “Code monkeys” who just turn product requirements into apps.

Bobby Schweizer, a doctoral student at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of Newsgames: Journalism at Play …laid out eight different uses of newsgames. They can be used to:

1. Editorialize
2. Raise awareness about specific events and what happened
3. Simulate dynamics
4. Model issues
5. Recreate events
6. Teach
7. Portray experiences
8. Turn stories into systems

When a big story strikes, …many journalists turn first to social media for eyewitness accounts. Finding them can be hit-or-miss…

Three researchers – Nick Diakopoulos and Mor Naaman at Rutgers University and Munmun De Choudhury at Microsoft – created SRSR to see if they could help journalists find those undiscovered sources…

To find eyewitnesses, the researchers came up with a list of 741 words that act as clues – words that someone would be likely to use if she had seen, heard or otherwise perceived something…

The researchers asked journalists from seven news organizations – Philly.com, New York Daily News, NPR, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, Reuters and the Guardian – to test the tool.