Forced by lockdowns during the first year of the Covid pandemic, many print newspapers suffered subscriber churn or abandonment of street shoppers.
Others definitively lost a large share of their traditional customers by suppressing the print editions and converting them to digital, the format to which news consumers turned en masse.
The digital “boom” in confined societies absent from their vital work and leisure spaces minimized the range of action of printed newspapers, forcing them to a tenacious struggle for their survival.
To stay afloat, they had to transform their business model, already decimated by the decline in advertising, and resort to new alternatives, such as promoted articles, product and service offers through their book clubs, and prop up content. quality.
By resorting to such diverse contents, which offer a broader and more documented vision of the effects of the pandemic on productive spheres and lifestyles, they set a distance from digital platforms which are saturated with breaking news or very superficial.
Now that the original conditions of the general disruption of 2020 have been changing towards a “normality” of another type, drastically reducing access and consumption times on digital platforms, print newspapers have the chance to reconnect their links with readers, powerfully.
It is enough to understand and assume the new realities, project them in good research papers, reports and chronicles from the streets, not from virtuality, adding the value of truth, equanimity and objectivity of approach, the best vaccine against misinformation, the lies and falsification of news that have unfortunately permeated digital platforms.
- Translated from Spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 