Newspaper and Internet media competition and development trend Newspaper radio and television Internet development trend

From the time that news websites have made their voices heard as a media, the media industry has begun to discuss when and how newspapers will be replaced by Internet media. In the United States, where the media industry is relatively developed, a number of big newspapers have been closed down, and some of them have been transformed into online versions. Many domestic insiders also use this as the basis for our newspaper industry will follow in the footsteps of the dust. But from the current point of view, the domestic newspaper market in many regions, there is no significant shrinkage. What are the reasons? How is the trend? This paper tries to interpret this from multiple perspectives.

China's newspaper industry is located in the Internet media environment of the specificity

China's newspaper industry is unique in this landscape, is determined by the newspaper industry and the Internet news dissemination laws of the specificity. News dissemination on the Internet, there are two main ways:

1. One way: blogs, microblogs, social networking sites news dissemination

The Internet is a very different kind of media from newspapers, radio and television. One of the reasons why newspapers did not lose out in the competition with radio and television, which came later, is that the way newspapers and radio and television communicate is very similar, and they all belong to what is known as "broadcast media" in communication science. That is, the media release the news and let all the audience to receive, that is, one-way information amplification, from a media transmission to a number of recipients. The characteristics of information dissemination on the Internet are completely different, every point on the Internet, there is the possibility of sending out information, the point of sending out information is often the core position of the news event in the person, or is the first-hand experience, or is an eyewitness, or only the relevant experts and scholars. The Internet is therefore a highly efficient "communication medium" with a "many-to-many" model.

Clay Schecky, who has been hailed as "the greatest thinker of the Internet revolution" by the U.S. industry, in his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, has said that the power of organizing without organizations is a key factor in the success of the Internet, and that it is the most important factor in the development of the Internet. In his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, Clay Schecky used a diagram (Figure B), which is commonly used in management, to express the complexity of groups. In fact, this diagram can also be used to describe the difference in communication efficiency between "broadcast media" and "communication media".

Figure A

Figure A shows the unidirectional communication model of "broadcast media" such as newspapers, where the letter "a" stands for the media, and there are only 9 connections between 10 individuals.

Figure B

Figure B shows a communication medium such as the Internet, where there are 45 connections between 10 individuals. This connection, realized through the medium of the cheap Internet, spreads with great efficiency.

This is the basis for the theory that everyone is a journalist and the mainstream media will eventually disappear. It is also the fundamental reason for the rise of blogs, microblogs and social networking sites. The Internet's communication characteristics are a big threat to newspapers and even traditional news portals.

In March 2011, America Online (AOL) acquired the online news and commentary site Huffington Post for $315 million. The Huffington Post, nominally a "newspaper", is actually a collection of blogs, that is, its founders artificially screened a large number of authoritative, representative bloggers and blog posts are aggregated and published; at the same time, the site also took the initiative to collect information to be selectively distributed to bloggers, who complete the writing and then send it back to the site, where editors compile it according to its content. At the same time, the website also takes the initiative to selectively distribute the information to be collected to bloggers, and after they finish writing, they will send the information back to the website, and the editors will compile and distribute the information into news news according to the content or deposit it into the database. 2007, Huffington Post once used this way to organize the coverage of the US presidential election. The Huffington Post, as a rising new media website, has made the slogan "The First Internet Newspaper". At a time when a large number of media news sites in the United States are struggling for survival, the Huffington Post has been able to obtain a huge influence and huge investment, which fully demonstrates the vitality of this mode of communication.

If this mode of communication is developed, its impact on traditional media cannot be underestimated. However, the characteristics of the public opinion environment in which we live have fundamentally cut off the dissemination path of this mode of communication. A large number of information dominated by the social management institutions, is the individual can not be released; a large number of importance, proximity, prominence and other news value of the event, which resides in the event of the core of the person, can not be issued by the report alone. This also dictates that the Huffington Post is not possible in our climate of public opinion.

2. Mode two: desktop computer news site news dissemination

Desktop computer news site, in essence, is still a kind of "broadcast media" which is not very different from the newspaper and television, which determines that the news site has an insurmountable "inherent shortcomings. "

(1) one-way dissemination of information, can not make good use of the Internet communication methods described above, low-cost, high-efficiency dissemination of the advantages.

(2) The identity of the audience target and the geographic location are not fixed, so the news website mostly relies on attracting traffic for brand advertising.

(3) Many clicks on news websites come from search engine links and are not sticky enough for readers.

These insurmountable shortcomings have determined that there is little room to enhance their advertising value, both in our country and in other countries. At present, there are only a few domestic news portals with large brand influence, which can rely on brand advertising to maintain survival. Most of the local news websites have to rely on the media groups in which they are based. Sina reported a net loss of $13.7 million in the first quarter of 2012, which was mainly due to a sharp drop in revenue, with branded advertising revenue, which accounts for 70 percent of revenue, down 24 percent from the previous quarter. Sina is now spending heavily on developing its microblogging platform, and Sohu is investing heavily in online video, both of which are related to the limited value-added potential of the portal's web ads. This shortcoming has made it difficult for most news sites to generate revenues that can counteract the operating costs of editorial and other activities, leaving less room for them to develop as independent media.

Currently, only a few global news media sites, such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, are attempting to pay to read news on their sites. Recently rumors of the New York Times second-quarter earnings, the New York Times circulation revenue (including online subscription revenue) for the first time more than advertising revenue, the industry for the leap. However, unlike our country, the distribution of most newspapers in the United States, like advertising, is also the main channel for newspapers to make money. The New York Times existing circulation revenue, paper newspaper circulation revenue is still the main. Charges for its online edition (especially for desktop computers) have not shown a trend that can support the main business.

Meanwhile, many U.S. local newspaper websites have truly instantaneous, multimedia news distribution and specialized news content, which, together with the high penetration rate of U.S. Internet penetration and free access to news, have made news websites a huge impact on the newspaper industry. And the news site in the damage to the newspaper market at the same time, they did not get substantial development. The development of local newspaper news sites in the United States is an interdependence between newspapers and their news sites that hurts each other.

In summary, the characteristics of China's news dissemination environment, decided in a fairly long period of time, desktop Internet news sites are unlikely to pose an existential threat to the traditional newspaper industry, can only serve as a supplement to the traditional media.

Based on this judgment, China's newspaper industry should have more room for growth than the U.S. newspaper industry. In other words, as long as the main source of news is in the hands of the current mainstream media, newspapers (or electronically terminated newspapers) will still have a strong viability as a broadcasting mode of communication.

Mobile Internet terminals will become the form of newspaper carrier

Judging whether a form of media vitality, not only to look at the advanced mode of communication, but should mainly look at this mode of communication can make the media have to carry the cost of the collection of various models of profitability. The mobile Internet is not a simple mobile desktop Internet.