The confluence of the printed and digital platforms has held the virtue of converting the traditional journalism model into a newer one that knows how to take advantage of technological innovations to reach more readers, with a more precise knowledge of their tastes and habits.
Before, the offered content by the printed newspapers were organized according to the monopolistic condition that they had as the main and almost only source of reliable news information, but for these times they’ve had to appeal to other formats of communication in order to satisfy the demands of a public that is ever growing thanks to social media.
Dealing with false news has been a challenge on this matter. The use of technological tools that aid in discovering and filtering manipulated videos and false information, allows the strengthening of one of the main values of the professional journalism: content reliability and credibility.
This explains how the most emblematic newspapers of the pre-digital era, which have already assumed the reconversion process, were the ones to receive the most digital subscribers when many thought that their time had come for extinction.
By combining modern technologies such as bots and other artificial intelligences, the digital editions of the newspapers manage to reach more people in the market than before, because through all means they offer quality and depth content, adapted to the necessities of the new users.
Even when digital audiences have reached levels never seen before, we’ve seen the phenomenon of the vast bet on a so-called journalism of analysis, new content niches, in-depth chronicles and reports, instead of just the news of the moment. These things are what keep attracting the interest of the readers nowadays, and hence why the success of their subscription strategies, with which the fall in ad revenues on such physical platforms is cushioned.
Reconverting our journalism means adapting to the new culture of readership that the digital sphere has incubated, educating the reporters in the simultaneous management of two platforms, opening up to the application of new products such as personalized notes sent directly to the readers on regards of whichever topic they’re interested in, meticulously monitoring the audiences to thoroughly know what their reading habits are and how they might transform.
In a recent forum promoted by the “New Journalism Institution”, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it was concluded that printed media have learnt to change their strategies, and that there are many ways of exercising journalism: from joining small and medium-sized media to author journalism to even collaborative journalism on the Internet.
Over these paths of contemporary journalism and the role of universities to shape a generation not of bureaucrats of journalism, but of professionals willing to undertake and create their own journalistic initiatives, is where the written press draws a promising future, always in tune with a positive view.
– Translated from Spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 