The advantage of paper media is still the deep cultivation of high-quality news content, rather than one-sided pursuit of online click-through rates. People still need the media to understand the world and are willing to provide high-quality content. Pay. Author: Hu Yong (Professor of Journalism and Communication, Peking University, “Information Society Forum 50” members), the original title: “Still said paper media is a sunset industry?
Key points:
1. “New York Times” deputy editor-in-chief Landman believes that the challenge of the digital transformation of the media is to create an environment where the right people can provide high-quality manuscripts.
2. The strategy pursued by The New York Times for its transformation is to emphasize that it does not follow the traffic route, but insists on “subscription first.” A reasonable business strategy is to provide powerful news that millions of people around the world are willing to pay for.
3. The advantages of paper media(regardless of whether the final carrier is still “paper”) still lies in the deep cultivation of high-quality news content, rather than the one-sided pursuit of online Click-through rate, and people still need the media to understand the world and are willing to pay for high-quality content.
The newspaper industry has become one of the top industries facing digital disruption today. A decade ago, a world without newspapers was unimaginable. However, today, it is clear that, at least in the current situation, newspapers will be unable to survive.
In the first decade of the 21st century, the New York Times, one of the world’s largest newspapers, found its prospects bleak and its company was losing money very quickly. From 2009 to 2010, newspaper advertising lost 30% of revenue. In 2010, the entire new media department of The New York Times received only $212 million in digital advertising.
Although this number is considerable, it is only just enough to fill the editorial department’s annual business cost of 200 million yuan, without including administrative expenses. On average, for the 30 million unique visitors to its website, each visitor only created $4.66 in value.
Abandon traffic thinking and pursue “subscription first”
The New York Times saw the bad omen and appointed Jonathan Landman as its deputy editor-in-chief, authorizing him to reinvent the newspaper around the Internet. Landman said: “Our proposition for high quality is at our core.” According to Landman, the challenge of digital transformation is to create an environment where the right people can provide high-quality manuscripts.
For this reason, the strategy pursued by The New York Times is to emphasize that it does not follow the traffic route, but insists on “subscription first”(subscription-first) . “Our focus on subscribers sets us apart from other media organizations. We don’t try to maximize click-through rates and sell low-margin ads. We don’t care about winning the pageview contest. A more reasonable business strategy is to provide powerful news that millions of people around the world are willing to pay for. Of course, this strategy is also consistent with our long-term values.”
The New York Times certainly understands that the core dilemma of newspapers lies in the weakness of the print advertising and traditional forms of digital display advertising. But it firmly believes that by being subscriber-oriented, it can maintain a stronger advertising business than many other publications. Advertisers are interested in subscriber engagement: they stay in the newspaper and keep reading.
So, the essence of transformation is to maintain news advantages and continue to innovate-this is not just in-depth investigative reports and first-hand information from around the world, but also interactive charts, virtual reality displays, and Emmy award-winning videos. Only in this way can we attract the audience that advertisers want to reach.
Be news that readers can use
The New York Times is deeply aware that in order to retain current readers and attract new readers, we must dare to challenge the old The deep-rooted habit of printing as the center.
An obvious reader demand is that they want news reports to be more intuitive. Although the New York Times has excellent reports, it is still unable to use digital narrative tools to achieve richer and more attractive news. Too many daily reports are still a series of texts. Therefore, photographers, videographers, and graphic editors need to be more involved in the process and play the primary rather than secondary role of news reporting.
The 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning work “Avalanche: Turner Creek Accident”(Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek) is As an example, the work reported the experience of 16 ski enthusiasts experiencing an avalanche, which overturned the traditional newspaper’s news presentation method in terms of reporting technology, combining text, audio, video, animation, and digital models with (DEM), satellite model linkage, etc. are integrated and published on the website of The New York Times.
As it enters unknown waters, The New York Times has become an experimental machine. It often introduces new technologies to produce more products and attract readers, and always adheres to the high standards of the integrity of newspaper editors as its core values.
Twenty years ago, it published a column comment page every day, but today the “New York Times” has innovated such as “Mind Forum” (Talking Heads) This kind of thing allows elites who are not working in the “New York Times” to discuss major practical issues while recording the entire conversation with a webcam.
Actually, The New York Times sees itself not only as a content creator, but also as a community builder. Finding that readers are eager for life advice from The New York Times, it turns itself into an all-encompassing guide, from film and television to fashion to cooking.
“New York Times” column navigation
The shift to personal service driven by personalization echoes the previous chapter in the history of The New York Times. In the 1970s, the newspaper launched a series of sections designed to attract advertisers, such as Weekend(weekend), Home(home) and Living(Life). Today, the “New York Times” re-emphasizes “news that readers can use”, I believe that readers read the newspaper not only for news and entertainment, but also hope that the newspaper can help them make decisions in their daily lives.
The New York Times CEO Mark Thompson (Mark Thompson) wrote in a long memo: “The newspaper always plays an important role The role of the service: to help readers decide what programs to watch, what books to read and what apartments to buy-we believe we can add more value to mobile devices. “Its current practice is to try to extract the “New York Times” news report Turn it into a digital experience that solves specific readers’ problems, allowing readers to pay for it. With traditional media and digital-first media struggling, these efforts have partially increased the revenue of The New York Times.
Embrace digitalization
The subscription priority strategy of The New York Times was inspired by Netflix, Spotify, and HBO: invest heavily in core products(For the New York Times, this This product is journalism), while constantly adding new online services and functions, making newspaper subscriptions essential to the lives of existing subscribers, and more attractive to future subscribers.
The newspaper’s executive vice president of product and technology, Kinsey Wilson(Kinsey Wilson) said, “The only way to create value is to Various services are bundled together”. NYThe T Beta team was born for this. Their task is to develop a complete set of new editing products (whether it is an application, a blog or a vertical service), just like the expensive self-made of HBO and Netflix Programs can make existing subscribers come back and new subscribers are attracted in.
The new dance steps of The New York Times are not only reflected in its website design, its beautiful client, and its mobile application. It also boldly explored and made various cross-platform attempts.
For example, in 2015, we cooperated with Google to distribute VR cardboard headsets to 1.1 million Sunday print subscribers and created the NYT VR application, which has been downloaded more than 1 million times so far. In 2017, The New York Times started its first podcast The Daily. By June 2019, it had been downloaded 48 million times, ranking first among podcasts in the United States.
After several years of digital experimentation, The New York Times has become a magnet, attracting excellent web developers, multimedia producers and product experts. The publisher AG Sulzberg (AGSulzberger) even boasted: “Compared with any other news organization, the one we hire can write code There are more journalists.” It is impossible for the print media to do so much exploration.
Now, The New York Times is like a manufacturing factory, constantly trying new things. And the only purpose of this is to cultivate relationships and build trust with all kinds of completely different readers, “to meet them where they are in the way they want to meet them.”
Future direction: charge for valuable content
Which direction to go, this is the centuries-old newspaper “New York Times” in the digital transformation processUrgent problems in China. For example, does the New York Times website need to charge?
On March 18, 2011, the “New York Times” made an amazing move and launched a “digital subscription” program. This old newspaper shop went against the trend of “free” on the Internet and started a long brewing adventure: Since March 28, anyone who reads more than 20 articles on the New York Times website every month must pay for subscription. (less than 20 articles are free).
No large U.S. news organization has begun to put its content on paywalls after allowing users to read without restrictions. Therefore, all publishers are paying close attention to the movement of the “New York Times” to see if it can turn online news into a profitable business.
The New York Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr.(Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.) believes in charging for valuable content Is the future direction. But he also admitted that this is not without risk. The challenge is how to not scare readers away, but also to price good content.
In order to reduce the loss of readers, users can also read through social network links such as search, Facebook and Twitter, as long as the number of monthly visits is not reached, they can visit without hindrance. The traffic from these links sometimes accounts for half of the site’s visits. However, the plan also has a special provision: readers who log on to the New York Times website through the Google search engine can only read 5 articles per day for free.
For many years, newspapers have been providing content online for free, hoping that online advertising can cover the cost. However, although online advertising has been growing, its growth rate is not enough to compensate for the decline of traditional print advertising. Many publishers therefore hope to collect subscription fees from web users, just like paper. However, netizens have been accustomed to obtaining free content online for many years, and this habit was precisely cultivated by traditional media.
The “New York Times” approach shows some changes in newspaper thinking: a successful online business model depends on a small number of highly loyal readers, rather than a large number of clicks. If enough readers resist the “New York Times” charging efforts, then the Times may lose its status as the most visited newspaper website in the United States, and this status is highly valued by advertisers.
However, the reduction in advertising revenue due to reduced traffic may be offset by the higher premium that advertisers are willing to pay, because the remaining readers have higher loyalty to the brand. The New York Times estimates that 85% of its online readers will never exceed the limit of 20 articles. Therefore, the number of 20 articles is obviously well-thought-out. It not only guarantees to receive money from the most loyal users, but also does not drive away casual readers. They constitute the vast majority of the site’s traffic.
The savvy “New York Times” has cultivated users’ payment habits through the limit of 20 articles. Since its paywall covers all the contents of the newspaper, and these contents are must-read for many audiences, those who are willing to subscribe more and more.
One year later, the number of free articles per month will be reduced from 20 to 10; by the end of 2017, it will be further reduced to 5. But at the same time, the total number of subscribers rose to 4.3 million in 2018, and the number of online users was 3.4 million, five times the number of six years ago. In 2017, online revenue reached US$709 million. Online subscriptions break geographical boundaries, and subscribers from foreign countries are growing rapidly.
In the new era, the “New York Times” tried every means to transform itself. In 2010, “The New York Times” columnist Thomas Friedman (Thomas Friedman) was interviewed by the author in Beijing. I asked him: ” You have worked in newspapers for many years. Do you think there is a future for the American newspaper industry? Friedman gave me the answer that surprised me.” He said, “I have no idea whether the American newspaper industry has a future. The only thing I know is The New York Times must have a future.”
It can be seen that the New York Times has confidence in its future, but how much of this confidence is real and how much is illusory? Due to the year-on-year decline in operating profit, and people have been worried about how it will cover its cost-intensive reporting capabilities(The New York Times has more than 150 reportersCountries/regions, accounting for nearly 80% of all countries/regions on the planet), so the digital transformation of The New York Times is far from complete, but it has successfully established its own digital foundation, which may continue in the future Innovation.
Conclusion
The New York Times: It wants to prove that there is a viable digital news model that can provide the original, time-consuming and reliable news that the world needs. The advantage of paper media (regardless of whether its final carrier is still “paper”) still lies in the deep cultivation of high-quality news content, rather than the one-sided pursuit of online click rates. The media still needs to understand the world and is willing to pay for high-quality content. We affirm the efforts of The New York Times, regardless of its success or failure, it will certainly provide some very useful lessons for traditional media.