Since the beginning of this 21st century, the traditional press of high-quality has walked firmly, in order to adapt to the preferences of a new generation of consumers of news content, modeled under the heavy influence of modern technologies applied to the communication of the masses.
Within this culture, brevity and promptness are the principles that rule the transmission of the news through social media, which have given shape to a very different pattern of readership compared to what predominated decades ago, back when the most powerful sources for the news broadcasting were the newspapers plus the television and radio stations.
These three primary ancient sources have been impacted by the innovations that emerged along with the Internet era, leaving them with no alternative other than to bet on their own transformation to adapt to the realities of a new culture, marked by the huge mass of audiences that dwell in the digital sphere.
In the case of newspapers, the traditional savanna models were giving in to the rise of the compact models or tabloid models, regardless if they were paid or free, especially in Europe, and today remain very few newspapers that keep the standard size. I don’t doubt that those will soon enter the stage of tabloidization.
In parallel, traditional newspapers were unifying this written platform with the digital one, a favorable springboard to eventually become multimedia, that’s to say, an hybrid source for transmission of written and audiovisual news.
They’re now more attractive because they’ve resorted to graphical criteria based on the new formats of interpretive visuals. This way, they haven’t only managed to connect with more readers or consumers of audiovisual content, but also have made a qualitative change in their style, while privileging a more investigative journalism, therefore, performing a deeper and more truthful job that serves an antidote against the flood of false news. And that’s why they are more capable of projecting the present and future whilst staying one step ahead of social media, where the news come and go much faster.
Now they offer modular or encapsulated contents to please the preference for brevity and cake-walk consumption of news; they’ve become more portable and manageable anywhere thanks to their compact size; they’ve bet on the quality of their digital image and impression by developing attractive designs and, thus, achieved a more direct and fluid relationship with their readers through their digital platform.
Big innovations and changes are already part of our reality and the best way to make the professional journalism an everlasting and serviceable exercise, is by leaning towards the freedom and plurality of ideas and threshing the path of transformation, without any hesitation or distrust.
– Translated from Spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 