By Sunny Lee
Korea Times Correspondent
BEIJING ― A couple of months ago, I happened to be in the same room with News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch during the first-ever World Media Summit, held in Beijing.
I gazed at the "media mogul" with uncommon intensity and made meticulous observations of every move he made. In response, he did exactly what I expected: he took no notice of me.
The same thing is happening to the newspaper industry. There seems to be a general consensus that newspapers are teetering on extinction. But readers are turning a blind eye, not coming to its rescue. Let's not blame them for their lack of loyalty.
It's time for the print media to change. Many business sectors reinvent their wheels to survive in a constantly changing environment. Media organizations are not an exception. They are also forced to review their business models in a very serious way. In the past, for example, the primary information delivery platform was newspapers. Then, information moved on to the Internet. Now, it's available on mobile devices, even as moving pictures and customized video.
According to Poynter Online, a Web site run by media professionals, within 10 years, 80 percent of newspaper readership will be gone, and the only way newspaper companies can survive the change is to merge networks and adapt to the digital and multimedia environment.
Although some media outlets highlighted the Beijing gathering as an occasion for Murdoch to call for more openness from China, in fact much of the discussion among media executives was really about sharing their deep-seated fears and brainstorming ways to survive in this time of transition and uncertainty. The feeling was especially pronounced among newspaper publishers.
Many newspapers have gone into bankruptcy in the past year, resulting in thousands of reporters being laid off. Last week, a colleague of mine who writes for a major U.S. newspaper here expressed her long-held fear: the newspaper will shut down its Beijing bureau.
As I look back on my notes from the media conference, the following points stand relevant and I feel it's worth sharing.
Firstly, newspaper editors should no longer feel ambiguous about adopting digital technology. The share of paper newspapers will continue to decrease. They should embrace the change and adapt to the new Internet and digital platforms. They should also make up their minds to see the change as an opportunity, rather than a threat.
Secondly, they should be ready for a transitional period in which they are not likely to make profit. One common problem identified by media experts was: "Revenue is lost in the traditional media, but it is not yet found in the new digital media."
Thirdly, the focus is shifting from simply providing information in the traditional media to communicating and interacting with readers. This interactive feature of communication on the Internet has been called "Web 2.0."
Media strategists are also realizing that an audience is not a monolithic entity, but increasingly fragmented. That means that one should customize the news to different audience groups.
Fourthly, industry experts point out that mobile device application is not an option, but a must. Mobile device users are known to display a deep loyalty to their machines: 70 percent of mobile users sleep with their instruments. Some even went as far as to predict: "Mobile technology is the only true new opportunity." Mobile technology is also leading "media convergence," combining together services that have been separate, including the Internet, television, cable and the telephone into one gadget.
Fifthly, today's citizens, armed with cell phone cameras, often become the first to break news. Information on the Internet also spreads a lot faster than in the traditional newspaper platform. The increasing trend of citizens "bypassing" the traditional media outlets and distributing their own "news" on the Internet is inevitable.
The phenomenon of people not relying on journalists naturally poses challenges to the traditional media organizations.
But instead of being guarded about it by attempting to disqualify the "citizen journalists," it was suggested that online newspapers should recruit their help for faster news gathering and distribution, by linking the news Web page to blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Lastly, in the digital media age, advertisements will no longer remain as the primary source of revenue. For this reason, Reuters is experimenting with a customized financial video that is available as "video on demand." The Associated Press of Pakistan is providing news in several languages. A Russian news outlet is offering a dating service on its Web site.
Decades ago, media scholar Marshall McLuhan famously declared: "The medium is the message."It denotes the power of medium in influencing people's behavior. For example, after the invention of TV, children's reading ability decreased. With the intensified presence of the digital media in our life, people's behavior of reading paper news is likely to transform into "scrolling" news on a hand-held device.
Finally, the optimists view is that the death of newspapers does not lead to the death of news. As the media will be increasingly operated on a multi-platform basis, expanding into moving pictures and mobile devices, they argue people's demand for information will also grow accordingly. Others argue that when newspapers die, so does reporting. It's because much of original reporting originates from newspapers, while Internet Web sites are mostly rehashing it. They also fear newspapers' objectivity will be compromised in the process. The only way to preserve "news," they argue, is that newspapers should be subsidized.
At the moment, the jury is still out. No one seems to know where the shifting journalism landscape is headed. What we know for sure now is that the Web will play a much bigger role and the "paper" newspaper is losing out as a generator of revenue as a news organization.