Newspaper Cross-media Transformation Study

On June18,1972, the Washington Post made itself to be a part of the history forexposed the Watergate scandal. Forty-one years later, in August2013, an E-businessleader, Amazon’s founder Bezos invested$250million to buy it. This considered asanother sign of the newspaper’s recession, also caused a discussion of its future. Intoday’s newspaper industry，convergence with new media is very common, integrationis one of the best way for newspapers to seeking for development. The writer chosesouthern weekend as a representative in cross-media transformation, through literatureanalysis, case analysis, and content analysis as three main architecture researchmethods, willing to make a deep analysis of the southern weekend’s cross-mediatransformation and build an example to the others.The generation of new media, however, does not necessarily mean totalsubversion, its disadvantages are also emerging, huge amounts of information causedby the emergence of information overload, the lack of gatekeepers in the networkcaused more cost for the audience to select and identify information. From thenewspaper’s good, the long accumulation of credibility and professional reportingpractices is still at work, in the infinite rich content of the Internet age, waiters forjudgment and interpretation of information is more important than the informationitself. But this does not mean that newspapers can continue to rely on the past capitalstuck in the past, in the media industry with each passing day today, marking time isequal to retreat, will eventually be cast aside by the torrent of information era. Theentire newspaper industry is facing the impact of passive media transformation, butalso to reconstruct the arrival of the new media tools, broaden the product lines, injectnew blood for their own, creating development opportunities, break through the"secondary sale" mode and create the new profit point.It is important to note that in the new media is popular of the Internet age, singleand passive network convergence has can’t meet the demand of the development of new times newspaper, how to take advantage of new media technology, jump out ofthe traditional thinking, with the digital and Internet idea to think about their owninnovation and development is particularly important. In today’s newspaper, not of thepractice of new media in the media has been elusive, newspapers actively and broadenthe product line, new media fusion using Internet set-up the old production contentand the process of thinking, further to the media transformation is currently seekingfor the development of newspaper.The author chose a representative in all media transformation comprehensiveweekly southern weekend as an example were discussed. For three reasons: first is theinfluence of the strong, as was founded in1984, southern weekend take “justice,rationality, conscience, love " as the kernel spirit, has strong credibility and influencein the industry, is one of the most important domestic newspapers, occupy a positionin the history of Chinese journalism, the media transformation of vane typesignificance. Secondly, south weekend’s entire media transformation started earlierand product line is relatively abundant, including news web sites, mobile news client,digital publishing, fashion supplement to launch and so on, the partial products wonawards at home and abroad, received the affirmation of the industry, to study the pathand the content of newspaper media full transformation provides a clear overallsamples; Finally, southern weekend all media transformation adhere to the "have whatso-called" guiding ideology, is different from other newspapers, and other forms oftransformation, the same newspaper net fusion with Internet thinking and its owncharacteristics, especially in the content more thorough transformation domain,characteristics, is worth studying.This paper is divided into six chapters:The first chapter, introduction, brings out the Research propositions ofnewspaper’s cross-media transformation research. The paper’s Research selectedbasis and its value, detailed the research content and innovation points and emphasesand difficulties, the research methods are expounded, and the research trend both inand abroad were summarized.The second chapter, summary of newspaper cross-media transformation. Thischapter defines the concept of cross-media and summarized its characteristics,analyzed the driving factor of the transformation. At the same time, also summarizedthe backgrounds of southern weekly’s transformation, four large-scale transformationswere summarized, in order to find out the inevitable factors of its transformation.The third chapter, southern weekend’s cross-media transformation path. This chapter use the instance of southern weekend, through text analysis, analyzed itscommunication concept that pay equal attention to the new media technology andhigh quality content production, the whole media industry chain development ofinformation content.And analyzed the transformation of southern weekend inchannels and contents.The fourth chapter, southern weekend cross-media transformation’s problemsand countermeasures. This chapter analyzed the specific problems of southernweekend’s transformation. For instance, macro aspects of the media supervision andprotection mechanism is not sound, and the lack of cross-media talents. To solve theseproblems, especially the suggestions for profit pattern of newspaper transformationare put forward.The fifth chapter, southern weekend’s future way of cross-media transformation,competition and cooperation. This chapter puts forward the future development trendof newspaper and new media is both competition and cooperation. Establish theeditorial office without boundaries, keep on product high quality news, along withcross-media brand extension, continues to attract audiences, enhance the userviscosity, is one of the most important development directions in the future.The sixth chapter, conclusion. Summarized the full paper, that is, cross-mediatransformation is one of the best way for the development of newspaper.The focus ofthe paper lies in the "report" instead of "paper", and take deep integration with newmedia, provide users with high-quality news content and product experience is one ofthe most important topics for newspapers in the future.