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Preface
Here's a question: Do you still read newspapers?
I think that for friends born in the 00s, newspapers are afraid that no one cares about old antiques for a long time, and only the old comrades of the post-80s and even post-70s, because of Xi problems, still retain the tradition of reading newspapers.
After all, in this era of highly developed online media, paper newspapers seem to be a thing of the past.
Then again, since online media can completely replace newspapers, why do newspapers still print newspapers today, and who are the newspapers that are printed and sold?
The declining paper media
You may not be able to imagine, but in fact, the newspaper is really not a foreign product, but a Xi that the Chinese began to develop in the Tang Dynasty!
During the Tang Dynasty Xuanzong, in order to better understand the policy dynamics of the imperial court tomorrow, Xuanzong deliberately founded the Kaiyuan Miscellaneous Newspaper as an information bridge between the imperial court and the people.
Although the circulation scope of Kaiyuan Miscellaneous Newspaper cannot be the same as that of later newspapers, it does have the prototype of a modern newspaper.
Unfortunately, although there are still remnants of the Tang Dynasty Kaiyuan Miscellaneous Newspapers to this day, most of them were taken captive by the British in modern wars, and can only be seen in the Museum of London today.
In fact, if you go back further, the Di Bao formed in the Qin Dynasty and the Western Han Dynasty is actually the earliest newspaper.
By the time of the Song Dynasty, the popular tabloids had almost all the functions of today's newspapers, and anecdotes, long stories, and commercial recruitment could all be found in these tabloids.
As for the newspaper in the modern sense of China, it is the "Universal Gazette" founded by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao during the reform period.
Although the Wuxu Reform Law failed hastily, the newspaper industry ushered in a spring in China and became the most important channel for the people at the bottom to contact social information.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, newspapers continued to play an important role in information transmission and were the most recognized media by the government and the people.
However, no one could have imagined that newspapers, which once played a pivotal role in China's media industry, would also become a sunset industry.
In 1973, the first commercial mobile phone appeared.
In the beginning, mobile phones only had the most basic communication functions, and it seemed that they had nothing to do with the media.
However, what people didn't expect was that in just two or three decades, mobile phones, which were once only used to send text messages and make calls, were given more and more functions and killed many popular products.
Especially when the mobile phone enters the intelligent era, as long as you hold a mobile phone, then, it is equivalent to owning a video camera, video recorder, tape recorder, navigation system, cinema and library, and even a game console.
It can be said that one mobile phone is enough to replace multiple industries!
In recent years, with the further development of mobile phone functions, even TVs and computers are a bit precarious.
After all, compared with TV dramas, mobile phones are not only easy to carry, but also search for whatever you want to watch, and order wherever you want.
Isn't this more enjoyable than watching a TV series?
While killing the intelligent media, the traditional paper media has been hit by dimensionality reduction!
If people want to read books, they don't have to go to the library to find them, they just need to open their mobile phones and search for them!
The same is true for what news people want to watch, they don't need to buy newspapers in any place, they can just open their mobile phones and search for them!
Whether it is in terms of the type of information or the accuracy, the information on the mobile phone is much stronger than the newspaper, especially those live videos, which are not comparable to the newspaper.
So, not surprisingly, the paper media ushered in the winter, and few people can read paper books anymore.
As for newspapers, it seems that they should be discarded by the times, but is this really the case?
How many newspapers are there in China?
You may not think that in 2022, there will still be more than 1,400 newspapers in China, and the number of printed newspapers will be about 58.4 billion!
Yes, it seems that few people around us read newspapers now, but why are there so many newspapers printed and so many newspapers?
Can they still make money by printing newspapers?
This is a lack of understanding of the newspaper industry.
In fact, if you know anything about newspapers, you should understand that if you sell newspapers alone, then the vast majority of newspapers will probably lose money!
However, other newspapers have never made money by selling newspapers, and the real oil and water of newspapers is to attract investment.
To put it bluntly, it is to advertise and get advertising money.
Unfortunately, however, the Internet is also significantly more publicized than traditional newspapers when it comes to advertising.
After all, newspapers can only influence people in a certain region, while Internet advertisements can spread all over the country and even abroad.
For example, Brain Platinum, at the beginning, it was popular all over the country with an advertising slogan on TV, and I don't know how many people were harvested as leeks!
Therefore, in recent years, in order to be able to maintain their livelihoods, many smart newspapers have also begun to transform to the Internet.
Open your own account on the Internet to keep pace with the times in order to maintain your influence, for example, the Communist Youth League has a proprietary account on a certain station, and it also cooperates with many UP masters such as John Khan Jr.
It's just a pity that not everyone can play with Internet accounts.
In addition, the current Internet is too volatile, let's take advertising as an example, do you see how many live broadcast rooms do advertising and sell goods?
Except for a very small number of official newspapers with strong enough backgrounds and large enough authority to successfully complete the transformation of their accounts on the Internet, most local newspapers are actually not very good at operating their Internet accounts.
It's something that can't be helped.
Nowadays, people are more and more inclined to search for various information on the Internet, and they are more and more inclined to accept more fragmented and interesting videos.
But what are the requirements of authoritative newspapers? They are serious, they are pragmatic, and under normal circumstances, they are not very interesting, and their natural audience is relatively small.
In addition, the competition on the Internet is much more intense, and it is really difficult to win if you want to win on the same stage across the country!
Therefore, to this day, for many large newspapers, selling paper newspapers is their meaning of existence.
But then again, these days, there are fewer and fewer people who read newspapers, so who should they sell so many newspapers every year?
Who should newspapers be sold to?
First of all, there are the regular customers.
For young people, they are naturally not interested in reading newspapers, but for those elderly people who have long been Xi to reading newspapers and are not used to smartphones, they are still happy to read newspapers.
It should be said that this is a very large group, in 2023, the number of elderly people over 65 years old in China has exceeded 200 million! And more than 70% of these elderly people have the Xi of reading newspapers.
Alas, I really didn't expect that the newspaper that was once eager for everyone to have a copy has now become the exclusive domain of the elderly.
Of course, it is not only the elderly who read newspapers, but also young people in government careers.
If you work in a government agency, then you should be aware that every year these official departments have a quota for newspaper subscriptions.
Even, to put it bluntly, these institutions are the biggest financiers of Chinese newspapers today.
If you go to a government agency or institution to take a look, the newspapers are definitely piled up, and it is no wonder that some people ridicule what is the working state of the personnel of the organs, drinking tea and reading the newspaper at the same time!
However, it should be noted that these newspapers are not pretending, as government officials who want to serve the people, they must determine the latest policies above through these official newspapers, and understand the needs of the people below, so as to make a reference for their own work.
Speaking of which, some people may ask: If you want to know these developments, can't you search for them on your mobile phone? Why do you have to subscribe to a newspaper?
The reason is simple, a thing needs to be analyzed from many different angles.
The materials you can find on your phone are not necessarily the ones you need in government regulations.
In order to prevent the people below from finding the wrong material, it is better to order the newspaper honestly, so as to avoid mistakes and unnecessary accidents.
But this doesn't seem to be a hard flaw, or as mentioned above, if one day China's official newspapers have also established a complete account system on the Internet, then is there still a need for paper newspapers to exist?
The same problem is still in front of other paper media, with the further development of the Internet, will paper media also become history?
Where is the road?
In the past two years, more than 1,500 libraries have gone out of business.
As for the reason, it is also very simple, in addition to various teaching books, today's paper books are really not welcomed.
In terms of convenience, you can read the books you want anytime and anywhere with a mobile phone.
In terms of cost, how much does a paper book cost, and how much does an e-book cost?
There are even many cases where we can find those free resources for prostitution books!
In this case, what do you make those libraries compete with electronic media?
It can be said that the decline of paper media seems to be inevitable, but paper media will not disappear.
The benefits of paper media are also obvious compared to electronic media, first of all, there is no fear of losing information due to damage to the device.
Secondly, in the daily work and learning Xi, paper media is also more conducive to learning Xi than electronic media, after all, many people only love to read e-books, and they should play games when they watch them.
As a result, print media may decline, but it will not die.