Media practitioners urged to adapt to changing times

Tinomuda Chakanyuka in Beijing, China Sunday News Reporter
TRADITIONAL media organisations have been encouraged to come up with a cocktail of strategies to immunise themselves from possible extinction at the hands of new media.
This was said by Editor-in-Chief of the People’s Daily, China’s biggest newspaper Mr Li Zhiyong. He was addressing a group of 20 journalists from Zimbabwe who are in the Asian country for a three-week seminar.

Mr Zhiyong said many traditional media organisations were truggling to stay afloat as a result of increasing stiff competition from new media.
He said the significant decline in advertising revenue income for traditional media was indicative of the bleak future that lay ahead of traditional media. Traditional media refers to radio, television and newspapers while new media refers to digital, mobile phone and online or Internet sources of news.

Mr Li said traditional media needed to find new value for themselves or risk being pushed out of business.
In China, he revealed, advertising revenue for newspapers has gone down by close to 40 percent while for television it has gone down by 10 percent as new media establishes foothold in the industry.

“According to scholars 2043 will mark the end of the hard copy newspaper. Many media practitioners are quitting because they see no future of print media in the face of competition from new media. Traditional media need to find new value for themselves by providing content that new media can’t produce. That way they can keep themselves in the game for a longer period.

“New media mixes eyes of fish and pearls, confusing readers in the process and traditional media can take advantage of that to maintain an edge over their rivals. If you look at it, new media tends to focus mainly on breaking stories and are always ahead of traditional media, but new media seldom gives analysis or carry investigative pieces,” he said.
Mr Li said traditional media also needed to ride on the new media platforms to maintain their relevance in the news business.

He said in the wake of thinning advertising revenue, traditional media needed to devise new strategies of making profit and not rely on advertising revenue.
“Some newspapers have abandoned the hard copy and moved to the internet. However, the problem of dwindling advertising revenue needs one to come up with new ways of making profit.

“In Europe people pay to read newspapers online. That is another way newspapers can maximise their profits. Like I said traditional media needs to provide news products of high quality to remain relevant in the game,” he said.

The People’s Daily is the largest circulating newspaper in China circulating over 300 million copies daily. Its official blogspot has more than 40 million subscribers. With over 90 percent of China’s population having access to cellphones, the internet has drastically changed the media landscape in the Asian country.

Mobile phones and the internet account for about 47 percent of the media industry total volume turnover, while radio accounts for 1,5 percent and TV 17,3 percent.