Traditional news media survives in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Is "customization" standard or not? | dil tumhara, rtp depo89

In the cold winter of the newspaper industry, another member of the "farewell" team has been added. On December 1, the Legal Evening News issued a "Suspension Announcement", stating that it would suspend publication from January 1, 2019. According to reports, its existing editorial team will be organically integrated with the editorial team of its parent unit, Beijing Youth Daily, to focus on building the "Beijing Toutiao" client of the integrated media platform.

Coincidentally, on December 2, Jiangsu Radio and Television’s mobile client “Lizhi News” announced that its APP downloads exceeded 20 million, and a new version 6.0 has been launched.

On December 6, on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, CBN Weekly issued a "Letter to Readers", announcing that it would publish monthly from 2019 and that "CBN Weekly APP will be integrated into CBN flagship APP."

One is a traditional newspaper, one is a traditional radio and television group, and the other is a traditional magazine. The three news reveals a common message: traditional news media are working on the "client", or have been "customized", or are on the way to "customized".

In recent years, the rise of live broadcasts and short videos has redefined the speed of news; Weibo and WeChat have become popular, and the social effect of content dissemination has been infinitely amplified; Internet companies such as BAT and Toutiao have reshaped the content field with multiple advantages such as platforms, capital, users, and investment matrices; after Qutoutiao went public, information APPs that copied the Qutoutiao model have emerged one after another...

In the dizzying changes, print media have fallen one after another, including more than 100 newspapers and periodicals such as the Bund Pictorial, Oriental Morning Post, Beijing Times, and Beijing Morning Post. TV news programs and radio news programs under the Broadcasting and Television Group system have also been affected, with ratings and listening rates showing a downward trend. Revisions, upgrades, and suspensions have become the norm in the industry.

The tide is like this, how to "survive"?

Judging from the trends in recent years, entering into integrated media and establishing a news client has become the first step in "Nirvana and rebirth", but where is the next step?

Abandon "paper" and focus on "integration", traditional news media are "end-oriented" in batches

A few years ago, traditional news media tested new media in the form of electronic versions, mobile newspapers, opening official Weibo, WeChat public accounts, and settling in comprehensive information platforms. As media integration further deepens, "clients" have become the main way for traditional news media to migrate to the mobile Internet and achieve interoperability and sharing, and have even become "standard."

Currently, news clients on the market created by traditional newspaper groups include Beijing News, The Paper (Oriental Morning Post), Bingdu News (Southern Newspaper Group), Nanfang+ (Southern Newspaper Group), Jiupai News (Changjiang Daily Newspaper Group), Qilu One Point (Qilu Evening News), Cover News (West China Metropolis Daily), etc. News clients created by radio and television groups include Knews (Shanghai Radio and Television Station), China Blue News (Zhejiang Radio and Television)Television Group), One Shenzhen (Shenzhen Radio, Film and Television Group), First Eye (Chongqing Radio and Television Group), Lightning News (Shandong Radio and Television Group), etc.

According to iiMedia Consulting's "2015-2016 China Mobile News Client Market Research Report": "The number of news clients of mainstream traditional media has reached 231, forming a pattern of 'surging in the east, reading in the south, covering in the west, boundless in the north, and nine factions in the middle'." After two years of development, the situation is even worse now. According to a relevant report released by iiMedia Research, as of August this year, there were 61 APP clients incubated by traditional news media in South China alone, and more than 40 in Guangdong alone. From the perspective of quantity and coverage, “end-to-end” has become a prairie fire.

It has been booming for many years, but what is the effect of "endization"? According to the statistics of "Monthly Independent Devices of Comprehensive Information APPs" in iResearch data, apart from central media clients (the three major central media mobile clients of CCTV News, Xinhua News Agency and People's Daily do not have specific data, they are not included in the scope of this statistics yet), there are only about 10 traditional news media APPs that have "breakout" in the top 100, including The Paper, China Business Network, Jiemian, Zhejiang 24 Hours, 21 Finance, Dongwang Hong Kong and Macao, and Jinyun.

Even "The Paper", which ranks high and has become a benchmark for integrated media transformation, has only 4.53 million independent monthly devices. Compared with Tencent News, which has 270 million units, and Toutiao, which has 240 million units, it is still far behind. Only China Business Network and Interface have a device scale of over one million, while most of the remaining client devices are within 300,000 units. From a coverage perspective, the basic influence is still lacking, the scale effect is far from being formed, and it is unable to reverse the "decline" trend of traditional news media.

The top news client in the market is still a news client upgraded from portal websites such as Tencent News, Sina News, NetEase News, Sohu News, Phoenix News, etc., as well as content distribution platforms based on algorithms and big data that have emerged in recent years such as Toutiao, Qutoutiao, and Yidian.com.

Whether they actively embrace it or have no choice but to cater to it, the trend and pattern of "end-oriented" traditional news media has been set. But if you do it, input and output are not proportional, market competitiveness and market share are insufficient, and the client becomes a face-saving project; if you don't do it, you will completely lose the information and traffic entrance, be replaced by new media, and be "swallowed" by the torrent of the times.

On the surface, everything seems to be in a "dead end" again.

The key to breaking the "post-endization" situation - creating a new "fission" chain

Media convergence is a general trend, but according to the author’s observation, the transformation of traditional news media into integrated media has mostly fallen into the awkward situation of starting from “two micros and one end” and ending with “two micros and one end”. To actively embrace new communication technologies is in itself a ""Awakening", but how to change the status quo from simple addition to deep integration? Some cases may provide "problem-solving ideas".

Not long ago, a "grey-haired" grassroots secretary born in the 1980s in Yunnan Province became popular on the Internet because of his ID photo. The Paper's three video columns, "Qihuan Video", "Shang Live" and "Wangguan", released a total of 9 live interview videos with the white-haired secretary on their clients. According to the author's statistics, as of December 6, the nine videos had received a total of 2,970 comments and 4,587 likes. Compared with "hot hits" with traffic "highlands" such as Weibo or Douyin, which can easily attract millions of likes and 100,000 comments, the effect is not ideal.

However, the "external" display effect of these videos is amazing. In the new media matrix built by The Paper: On Weibo, The Paper’s series of live interview videos have been viewed more than 5.5 million times; on Douyin, The Paper’s “Onlooker” interview video has 112,000 likes, 884 interactive comments, and forwarded 4,418 times; on Today’s Toutiao, The Paper’s “Onlooker” interview video has been viewed more than 70,000 times...

As white-haired secretaries born in the 1980s have become a hot topic, Sina Video, ETtoday News Cloud, Military Affairs, Zhicheng Dingbing, Long Run Jiao Jialiang, Lao Xu Shi Ping, Han Dongyan and other Weibo Vs forwarded or quoted relevant interview videos from The Paper. The video cited by Sina Video alone has been viewed 7.3 million times, and the "duanwai" communication effect is amazing.

In November, Philippine President DuTerte's sentence "The United States is too far away and I don't have the money to go there" hit the internet. This video was filmed during the APEC summit. Duterte was interviewed by Shenzhen TV's "Live from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan" and made the above statement. On November 18, Shenzhen Satellite TV released this video in its new media matrix. According to relevant data released by Shenzhen Satellite TV, "Within three days, the video has received more than 12 million views across the entire network. If you include its presentation in various media and different platforms, this video is likely to have exceeded 100 million views within three days of its release."

It is easy to see from these two cases that although the news exclusively released by traditional news media is limited by its own client coverage and cannot achieve large-scale dissemination "in the body", with the help of its new media matrix and "traffic platform", it can break through the ceiling and create a communication chain with more ecological fission value.

Through this new fission chain, the role of traditional news media has also changed from a "content manufacturer" facing the audience in the client to a "content service provider" facing its own audience, other platforms, and audiences on other platforms at the front end of the chain.

Abandoning “paper” and replacing “fusion”, what are the advantages?

For traditional news media at this stage, this role change is extremely attractive regardless of their scale or commercial value. What advantages do they have to achieve this change?

The author believes that producing high-quality news and continuously improving the "word value" may be the key. In the new media era, expression channels have become more diverse and faster, but the quality of news has become more uneven, making high-quality news a scarce resource. The two cases mentioned above are typical examples of high-quality news in the current online environment. One captures curiosity, and the other makes “serious news” happy to hear and see, and therefore brings its own traffic.

In other words, news is never a question of "yes or no", but a question of "good or bad". From the perspective of creating high-quality content, traditional media’s existing advantages and direction of development are also extremely clear.

Leverage your voice with authority. Through the mouthpiece effect of "communicating the situation from the top to the bottom" for many years, traditional news media have formed a strong brand effect, and the accuracy and professionalism of their reports on policy control are beyond doubt. In November this year, the Cyberspace Administration of China twice interviewed self-media platform clients, including Baidu, Tencent, Sina, Sohu, NetEase, etc., but none of the traditional news media APPs were on the list.

Take advantage of monopoly information. Due to their professional reporting experience and endorsement of government affairs background, traditional news media can appear at the two sessions, local press conferences, and regular press conferences of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Commerce, and the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council. They have first-hand access to certain important information. These channels are exactly what new media rarely have.

Insist on in-depth reporting. In-depth reporting belongs to the "high-end products" in the news;, has extremely high professional standards requirements, and the information of new media tends to be "short, flat and quick", which cannot adapt to the time cost required for in-depth reporting. Seizing pain points and in-depth reporting on empathetic events may be able to create differentiated competition with new media.

Create PUGC-style short video news. Short videos are still at the forefront and can meet the audience’s needs for terminal and fragmented news. "Pear Video", which was born out of a traditional media team, is a leader in the PUGC-style short video news field and is rumored to be valued at nearly 3 billion yuan.

Continue to explore business transformation. Advertising revenue constitutes the main source of income for traditional news media, and now advertisers’ attention has been shifted to various marketing methods. At the end of last year, Caixin launched comprehensive charging for financial news, taking the first step in charging news apps. How to open up vertical audiences and form "content payment" for high-quality news may become one of the directions for future business transformation.

It is foreseeable that as supervision strengthens, high-quality "hard news" is the value of the development trend of integrated media, and this may be the "nirvana" opportunity for traditional news media.

"First Financial Weekly" said in its "Letter to Readers": "Since the 16th century, the development of media has always stemmed from technological innovation. Books, newspapers, radio, movies, television, and the Internet are actually in the same camp to convey information and stimulate public thinking. At the level of the media as a social public instrument, no one can replace the other. What we do is to re-adapt them properly."

No media can escape the logic of the great era. Now that an era has passed, let’s regain our strength and invest in the next era.

[Source: Fengmang Think Tank Author: Da Jing]