Is there a life line for newspaper industry?

Save yourself

Yes, we can’t deny that the newspaper is now in its downfall. If you talk a look at the report that announce by the future of Journalism or The State of Media 2009 Annual Report. The circulation of the papers is declining; the revenue from ad is decreasing. Many newspaper publishers are facing heavy financial pressure and they keep cutting their staff. To be a Journalist is never easy now, with the emergence of the internet, the “habit” of readers gradually shifts to Online. So they journalist have to adopt the change and put the news online as well. Tough and risky job, isn’t it? So you now know why Superman’s daytime job is journalist!

The change of reader’s/ consumer’s attitude towards news is enormous. With the extensive development of Information technology in the past 20 years, information are being “liberated” without the control by bunch of people related to the field. Journalist in printed media are now experiencing a revolution. Reader now realize what they NEED and WANT. Just simply go to their preferred search engine and type in the search keyword. With the blink of eyes, information is ready to read. They could get this so handy and convenience that they could do almost everywhere they WANT and anytime they WANT. Information is now abundant, is sort of overflowing. The problem now is does reader WANT to read the article.

So let’s put ourselves into newspaper journalists’ shoes, imagine if you are in your 40s, you gave the best 10 years to your company. You have quite a few good pieces of work under your belt. Now you are facing the risk losing your job. You just can’t sit right there and wait for the judgment day. So what can you do? Like what Barack Obama said during the election campaign: “we need Change!” Learn to work on the new things, learn how to upload video, sound clips and update the website. Join the Facebook and twitter. Start socializing in the social networking system online and building up a new kind of network that encourage and embrace real time multiple ways communication. Most importantly, start a blog. Write what you want to write about everything, keep open minded. Embrace the opportunities in communication and discuss with the readers of your book all around the world. So, there are too many blog here in the internet, aren’t they? Yes, but it is the best way for packaging yourself, creating a platform for the readers to reader. Because they buy your attitude, your way of seeing things, why don’t you use the chance to market yourself? It’s free of charge. Marketing and promoting yourself online is a good way to gain more exposure of your image and identity in both internet and the printed media. It would be unable to imagine how many comments will there be if John Motson starts his own blog (but he’s in myspace.com, for detail click here)

Great! You saved yourself by adopting some positive changes in catching up the ace of the ever changing industry. But wait, don’t you forget you are on a boat in a voyage that new things are going to happen everything second. It is good for us to learn something new and better equip ourselves for getting a better chance of success. But don’t forget we are sailing, so what if the boat sink?

No matter it is just a clipper (local newspaper) or in a giant cruise (national newspaper). Under the current situation and development in the trend, we’re now sailing in the rough sea and in the middle of troubled water. Here are

another blog post I read about the things that newspapers could do for helping themselves. This is not to criticize how newspaper is affected by the internet

The main thing in this blog here is to help change the prospective and the attitude toward the development of internet. They could work in complement. Blog could be an extension of story towards the matter covered in newspaper. It also enables the direct communication between writer and reader. By using this communication, journalist could also use the resource in the online discussion to formulate a piece of comment in newspaper.

p.s. Speaking of the revolution of information and the availability of information in different specialized area. There are some interesting findings about the new norm in USA- the emergence of info shoppers. I think the reason behind such a norm is similar to the online newspaper reader. They know what they WANT! They could make choice to fulfil their needs.

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