How does traditional media transform digitally?

■ Andrew Rushbath, CEO of Wen/Economist Group

Digital and paper reading environment are two different things.

Readers can relax reading in magazines and integrate themselves into the information carried by paper, but they need more interaction and communication on the website. This is an interactive activity, not a one-way communication. In the process of digitalization of traditional media, we must keep this in mind.

The innovation of mobile phone hardware is also affecting readers' reading habits. In 2008, tablet computers such as iPad appeared, and we realized that this was the arrival of a new era, that is, Lean Back. Audiences enter a website and browse the same content through new devices such as iPad, and stay longer than reading traditional paper magazines. People may finish reading a paper magazine in a few minutes, and they may spend hours browsing it on the iPad.

Paper reading and digital reading will coexist.

We found that young people have begun to share a lot of articles from Twitter and Facebook, and one-way communication can no longer attract them. Huffington is a very famous content provider, which mainly publishes online magazines for iPad. Because it knows that if it can continue to launch corresponding content for the reading experience of tablet computers like iPad, it will undoubtedly enter a new golden development period.

Every media person will have such a question: how big is our audience and what kind of people they are. We were thinking about these problems several years ago. At that time, a new trend appeared in the world. It is generally believed that if you want to succeed in the media world, you must be simple and direct, and you must face successful people or some celebrities. At that time, many people felt that people didn't want to accept challenges in the media. Our views are different. People want to accept more challenges from the media they read. People want more innovation and rational judgment, not just the recipients of media communication.

What does this mean for the media? For the publishing industry, publishing is generally a very straightforward business. There are two ways to make money. One is the consumer group with products, such as advertising in magazines and newspapers, so that people can get the information of advertising content. If you are lucky enough, there is a very good product that can be sold directly to the audience, and at the same time you can earn advertising fees. This model was completely subverted after the appearance of electronic publications. Advertisements can appear in various forms on the internet, not just in the form of paper advertisements, which requires traditional media people to make advertising revenue in a new way of thinking to meet the needs of different customers.