The fusion of the printed and digital platforms, something already very widespread, is now followed by alliances or media merges as part of the rearrangements that the press seeks to survive the Covid-19 tsunami.
Many printed media lost the battle by suspending their publications, and this refreshed reality of an ecosystem settled in the digital world and the use of technological tools is only increasingly narrowing the space of the paper format.
To some extent, the phenomenon also extends to other platforms that, such as radio and television, which have seen themselves forced to evolve due to the emerging changes in the preferences of their users and the business models that used to support them.
The pandemic really kicked off in February of this 2020, marking the start of an era where the household confinement of millions of people was the norm, which in our case translates to the remote work of journalists who were used to the newsrooms. Due to this lasting situation, the modalities of alliances, changes and mergers keep gaining ground.
These merges don’t necessarily have to occur between journalistic media, but between these and companies of a different nature, including those that use telecommunications technologies, just like the alliance between Verizon and The New York Times, to stimulate virtual education.
At the media level, during the pandemic there have been collaboration agreements and conjoined works between newspapers, digital media and radio news for some news coverage they can share with each other.
These days, NBC News and Telemundo, two strong pillars of North American television, have joined forces to cover the news of the Hispanic community, in both English and Spanish, betting on further growth of that audience.
We’ve also seen the striking alliance between three Bolivian media: Pagina 7, Los Tiempos and the TV broadcaster Asuntos Centrales, to produce the news program En Portada, with news content produced by the three.
This is, just like the architects of that alliance say, a way of transferring birthright of DNA from those two newspapers, with more than 120 journalists, to the power of social networking that Asuntos Centrales has, obeying to the model of adaptation that these new times we’re living in have required.
– Translated from Spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 