Without the paper media, what is the future?

No egg under the financial crisis

The global financial tsunami has mercilessly swept the advertising business of paper media: the real estate market, which is the most seriously affected by the crisis, has shrunk the real estate advertising, and the automobile industry, which has a complicated production chain, is even more affected, although the advertisements of health care products and education and training advertisements are not much impacted, but due to the lack of demand of advertisers and the inability of consumers to consume, the market of classified advertisements is rapidly going into a downturn. A number of factors have made the survival of the paper media rapidly enter the winter. In order to maintain the scale and profit level, some of the paper media were forced to lower the taste, publish more commercial articles and unpleasant vulgar advertisements, and even more, to carry out a variety of strange "advertisers' most favored media" selection and other activities, in an attempt to attract few people to the paper media with homemade "authority", and to attract few people to the paper media with their advertisements. "

On the other hand, there are a lot of advertisers in the world who are not interested in the advertisements.

Foreign countries are not as happy either: Gannett, the largest U.S. newspaper company, has seen its market value nearly halved, while the second-largest newspaper, the Chicago Tribune Group, has filed for bankruptcy, the New York Times has mortgaged its office building to pay off debt, and Newsweek has laid off staff; Japan's Kodansha Modern magazine ceased publication in December 2008, leaving the world's media industry in a state of mourning. The financial tsunami intensified, the decline of the paper media trend is not only becoming more and more obvious, and accelerated trend, which makes the industry exclaimed: the paper media seems to have reached the edge of the survival.

Why the paper media will decline

In the financial crisis under the cleansing, the paper media and other industries like the trend of decline is reasonable. Under these circumstances, it is meaningless to discuss whether the cause of the crisis is the decline of the media's growth cycle or the flow of readers and advertisers to the Internet. And some observers are more worried about the accelerated decline of the paper media, will go to the other extreme - disappearance?

The author believes that the decline of paper media under the current financial crisis has complex causes, part of which are temporary reasons brought about by the financial crisis, and part of which are the deep-rooted reasons inevitably faced by the media in the process of development. The former will gradually recover as the economy recovers, while the latter is the reality of the decline of the paper media need to face up to.

The temporary reasons can be summarized in two points:

1. The newspaper industry's indebtedness mode of operation. The U.S. newspaper industry's indebtedness is particularly serious, the essence of which is to spend tomorrow's money to do today's things, and the biggest risk of this kind of indebtedness comes from the sudden break in the capital chain. The financial crisis has made this worry a reality, and it has given the newspaper industry (including all walks of life around the world) a sobering signal: we need to learn to save, rather than taking the credit that has already been flooded with the future of the bet on the present.

2. The financial crisis has plunged every industry into a slump, leading to an overall downturn in the advertising market. Real estate, automobile and classified ads represent industries that have shrunk significantly, directly affecting the current advertising market share.

And the deep-seated reasons can be attributed to the following two points:

1. The degree of integration between paper media and new media is still low. In the technology to change the mode of communication today, the audience of the integrated communication requirements are rapidly increasing, the pace of change of the paper media must be accelerated. For paper media operators, a point of view must be clear: the paper media should not see the new media as an antagonist, discussing whether it is your death or mine, but should embrace the new media to form a stronger communication platform. Which paper media can be ahead of the rivals, quickly with the new media, which media to get the possibility of rebirth is greater.

Furthermore, the media management perspective should not be only in the media form (how to capture young readers, newspaper and network interaction, etc.) to play around, the new media not only bring changes in the form of communication, but also in the type of content innovation, the degree and speed of enhancement, the pace of evolution of the new media requires that the paper media must be fast to follow the paper media must be in the pace of innovation and quality of the content of the paper media must be further upgraded to adapt to the new media form to adapt to the shape of the new media. Media as a whole, due to the new media to join the catfish effect, accelerating the overall upgrading of the media. In the final analysis, in order to thoroughly explore the function of the media to serve the audience, it is necessary to focus on the characteristics of customer demand, the media products implanted in the value chain of the audience's needs, the formation of a series and the system, so as to make the audience sticky to the media, which will inevitably require the depth of the integration of the traditional media and the new media.

In this case, the traditional media operators themselves are facing two important changes: one is to quickly change the business concept, the new media is not the enemy, but their own lantern to find a friend can not be found; the other is to quickly learn to accept the new technology, only from the technical level to enter, to be able to have a deep understanding of the function and impact of the new media, in the next step of the media integration in order to The second is to learn to accept the new technology quickly.

2. In terms of communication function (creation and dissemination of information, including news, comments, topic planning, etc.), new media can not completely replace traditional media. Traditional media still have an inherent advantage in the expression of opinions and long reading. However, in addition to the dissemination function, new media also provide other functions that paper media do not have - new media can not only serve as the media itself, it can become a channel and a terminal itself, so it can become a financial service and data products in addition to media. This feature means that e-commerce sites, financial Internet will certainly have an advantage over new media that simply provide news and information. For example, the familiar Alibaba B2C, Taobao's C2C, Fence's C2B, and then the financial Internet (such as Hexun.com) financial services and database products, and these products have broad prospects for development in the future.

Currently, the global currency (especially the U.S. dollar) issued too much abuse, the financial crisis under the economic contraction, people do not expect their hard-earned assets value-added, as long as they can preserve the value of the success, and in the wake of the financial crisis, the global currency flooding brought about by inflation is bound to become a big problem, the assets in order to preserve and increase the value of the yield must be greater than the rate of inflation in order to be able to do so. Therefore, no matter now or in the future, people will have a rigid demand for professional financial services and products, which will be reflected through financial information on the one hand (which can be carried by both paper media and new media), and through professional financial products and data on the other hand (which can be handled by new media, but not by paper media). In addition to its own functions, the new media is also a channel and terminal, which is a natural carrier of classified ads, or a natural carrier of integrated services, in which the paper media can not be expected.

Why the paper media will not die

The decline of the paper media has become a foregone conclusion, but I believe that it will not disappear for a long time. To discuss whether a media will die out, we should at least look at two conditions:

1. Whether the audience of this type of media holds the wealth and power to influence the world. Obviously, today's wealth and power holders still have the habit of reading newspapers, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and other global financial paper media is still the preferred choice of corporate executives, financial giants, political elites. As long as the paper media audience can still have the power to deploy the world's resources, the paper media has an irreplaceable market. Of course, there are many different forms within the paper media, comprehensive viewpoints, magazines, urban newspapers, industry newspapers, local newspapers, business DM, etc., the form of the different decisions of its unique business, and its internal is also a big wave of sand, which to hold the power of wealth as the main target audience of the top of the high-end professional magazines and newspapers will naturally be there for a long time.

2. People's needs are still unfolding at different levels, the dissemination of information is still one of the functions of the paper media, it is impossible to be completely replaced by the new media, the rigid demand for newspapers still exists. It must be pointed out that the view that the paper media will surely die out, in fact, more and more detailed needs of the people masked under the simple need to receive information. For example, people wear clothes to satisfy the need to cover their bodies and keep warm, but there are many other needs underneath this simple need: those who like to wear cowboys, those who like to wear military uniforms, those who like to wear casual clothes, and those who like to wear western-style clothes, and these different needs are not convincing if they are all put into clothes in a simple and uniform manner, ignoring their internal diversity. Similarly, paper media, as a form of media, still has its own place in meeting people's different preferences for communication functions. So the decline of the paper media is a decline, but it will not disappear completely from people's lives.

The terrible thing is not the fear of the new media, but the operators lose the opportunity to re-recognize the paper media, and then lose confidence. If the print media can not recognize their own situation, but to follow the trend, they may lose the newspaper industry predecessors have the self-confidence and ability. China's paper media market has entered a stage of accelerated centralization, similar to the United States of America's one-city-one-newspaper market pattern is no longer far away. For paper media operators, there is no need to worry about whether they will be replaced by the new media, the real need to face the issues and challenges is: how to further integrate the new media, accelerate content innovation, improve the quality of their products, in order to quickly stand out from the fiercely competitive market, to occupy a leading position, and in the fierce elimination of the race to quickly hold on to the mountain. This is the mentality and path needed to run traditional media.