When was the last time you read a newspaper?
Newspapers, as a daily necessity for people, have gradually disappeared from our lives, and newsstands across the country have been demolished.
However, even when the Internet is full of information and people no longer read newspapers, newspapers are still printing.
So who are these newspapers for, and what will be the future development of the newspapers?
Newspapers, once the media for gathering information
Twenty or thirty years ago, almost every household would have subscribed to a few newspapers. This must include a national newspaper and a local daily newspaper.
At that time, newspapers sold a lot of newspapers, and the information was very up-to-date, and most newspapers were daily newspapers, and important information about society and the country was published in the newspapers every day.
Therefore, most newspaper reporters will rush to the front line of the news in real time, and every newspaper company wants to be the first to publish the news in its own newspaper, send news overnight, and write news before dawn.
At that time, although the television news was also gradually developing, most people still habitually spread out the daily newspaper, and the first reading material for many children to read was the newspaper at home.
The daily newspaper is sent out every morning, and people read the newspaper to learn about the latest events that happened the day before, and then return to their workplaces or in the streets and alleys to relish.
Although there are many types of newspapers in the country, there are only a few authoritative ones. As a result, most people have a single source of information, and it is easy for people to find common topics when discussing current affairs.
Unlike now, most self-media and online platforms will carry out personalized pushes according to personal preferences, so that everyone has formed a cocoon effect in the process of collecting information.
At that time, the daily newspaper was like today's portal, but it was more mainstream and rigorous than the portal. The content published in newspapers and periodicals must ensure the standard and correctness of the information sources, so as to avoid panic or cognitive errors caused by the public misreading the wrong information.
In addition to publishing news, newspapers and periodicals also have the function of aggregating information. Many people would advertise jobs in local newspapers, and job seekers would go to the newsstand to buy a newspaper and check out the jobs before reaching out for an interview.
In the past, newspapers would serialize novels by many authors, and people would wait in front of newsstands to catch up on novels, and queue up to see the latest serials as soon as possible.
The newspaper that fell from the altar
I have to say that in that period, newspapers were a must-have artifact for every household, and its audience covered men, women, and children, and its circulation was naturally not to be underestimated.
However, with the popularity of television, more and more television programs began to take on some of the functions of newspapers.
In addition to national and local news at a fixed time every night, there will be various types of serials on TV, which are much better than serials such as waiting for newsstands.
If the abundance of television programs has accelerated the decline of newspapers, the rapid development of smartphones and the Internet has accelerated the decline of newspapers from the altar.
After the rise of the Internet, the first online editors came from book and newspaper editors.
At that time, the online news was still published on a portal website, and the content was also written by professional editors, and the Chinese who were accustomed to reading the text were also convinced of this kind of news, and the online news at that time was as authoritative as the newspaper.
At this time, newspapers had begun to decline, but the traditional position was still very solid, and most newspapers disdained the Internet, believing that this new thing could only be popular for a while, and eventually the public would choose better quality newspapers to read.
However, I did not expect that the rapid development of the Internet, and that only a decade after the 21st century, newspapers have been reduced from a necessity to a garbage for advertising.
Because the Internet has a great timeliness, the news interviewed by reporters can be directly published on the Internet as long as it is edited, and "obsolete items" such as newspapers have to be typeset and printed, and can only be delivered to the hands by the postman the next day, and the income has been greatly reduced, and many newspapers have no choice but to publish a large number of advertisements to collect advertising fees to maintain their own operations.
In the face of the onslaught of the menacing electronic media, the newspaper was indeed caught off guard, and it was a bad move to publish large advertisements, and at that time, nearly half of the content of more than a dozen pages of newspapers was advertisements, which also made the old readers who were still willing to subscribe to the newspaper also have a disgusted mentality.
When the Internet is gradually integrated into people's lives, and the access to information is faster and more convenient, I don't know when, newspapers have quietly withdrawn from the mainstream of people's lives and become alternative reading materials, and now there are only a few newspapers that can still print newspapers.
Those practitioners who were enthusiastic about getting a good job may not have expected that in just a few decades, newspapers have fallen from a "sweet spot" that people are vying to circulate to a "cold bench" that no one cares about.
Without newspapers, people's lives have not been affected in any way, on the contrary, the information on the Internet is more convenient, the news on TV is more vivid and interesting, and newspapers can no longer arouse the interest of modern people.
Difficult transformation, striving for a new life
Although newspapers have declined, there are still many units and companies that subscribe to newspapers.
For example, many public institutions and government departments will have corresponding newspaper subscription fees every month, and these ordered newspapers will also be circulated in various departments and offices, and the information on them is still authoritative and worth reading and referencing.
Why do these departments choose the traditional way of subscribing to newspapers?
In the past, enterprises and institutions relied heavily on the information of newspapers, especially the major central newspapers, and there were many contents that needed to be studied.
On the other hand, newspapers on the mainland are not only channels for disseminating news and information, but also responsible for the dissemination of values by the mainstream media.
The content of online self-media is not comparable with newspaper news, and the People's Daily is very different from personal self-media in terms of information sources alone, so the most important news is more accurate from newspapers.
However, government orders alone are far from being able to maintain the daily operation of newspapers, and major newspapers and periodicals have aimed at the development direction of the Internet and started digital transformation.
Nowadays, People's Daily, Banyuetan, Guangming Daily, etc. have created their own apps, and users can read newspaper news on their mobile phones as long as they download the application of the corresponding daily newspaper on the mobile phone client.
In addition to mobile apps, many newspapers also have their own websites, which are more colorful and can be advertised, in a sense, it is like moving a black-and-white newspaper to a computer and mobile phone screen to become a color electronic daily newspaper.
Not only has the form changed, but the newspaper is also actively innovating, striving to be younger and more novel in content, hoping to attract more young people to log on to the website and download the app to read.
After all, many of this generation grew up reading newspapers, but the next generation does not have this kind of childhood, and cultivating the habits of new users is also a long-term task for newspapers.
In places that people have not paid attention to, the newspaper has come out of the square newspaper box and jumped into everyone's mobile phone screen, flashing with colorful light, waving to more young people and children, looking forward to being able to play the old value in the new media and recreate the glory of the past.
brief summary
The demolition of the newsstand has alarmed everyone who has adapted to the Internet age, and when people have lamented that time flies so fast and paper reading has become less and less in life, the newspaper has already embarked on the road of transformation.
Those high-quality news content, point-to-point current review articles, and neat Chinese characters have shone in our memories, and I believe that in the future, they will also return to the public's field of vision, although in another form, but the meaning they carry will never fade.