After China’s reform and opening up at the end of the 20th century, an interesting phenomenon occurred in the media. Many good reporters and good articles came from the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the media. The Ministry of Economic Affairs has become a place full of talents. This stems from China’s The focus is shifting from class struggle to economic construction. This Ministry of Economic Affairs phenomenon not only appears in the People’s Daily, but also on CCTV. From a historical perspective, during China’s Cultural Revolution, the International Department of the People’s Daily was the most popular, and the best talents seemed to be in the International Department. We might as well call it the International Department phenomenon. According to this historical law, where will the next sectoral phenomenon appear? Or has traditional media become a place for individual soldiers to fight?
We can now imagine a scenario, that is, when people who watch "Xinwen Lianbo" meet people who read "Global Times", what will happen? Because both media seem to have been included in the category that can influence the world view, but the audience of the former is slightly older, has a stronger sense of information, and has more domestic presence. The latter has stronger nationalistic sentiments, more prominent viewpoints, and a stronger sense of international presence. For audiences who only pay attention to one information channel, they are often more likely to believe the information in this channel and exclude other channels. These two media can be said to represent some of the existing status of traditional media in China today.
Under the pressure of new media, one question that traditional media may have to think about is, should news and comments be separated? From a journalistic professional perspective, opinions and facts should be separated, just as editing and operations should be separated. However, whether in journalism teaching or in front-line news reporting, it is not difficult for us to see a subtle change, that is, news commentary has increasingly become an integral part of news writing. This seems to be a challenge to the objectivity of news, but if you look at it from the perspective of the content industry, it is not difficult to understand, because after all, news is not written by robots. Why can’t machines completely replace people in writing news? In addition to employment considerations, this is more like a futuristic issue. When Google began to use search engines to capture news, it seemed to replace the work of editors. Machines seem to be able to replace poor journalism, but not good journalism. Machines can be more cold-blooded than humans. However, humans can be proactively objective, while machines can at best be passively objective. Moreover, journalism also requires emotional writing.
On this issue, we can look at the situation of documentaries. Why are documentaries more easily accepted by Western society? From a morphological point of view, documentaries are a product of the West. Therefore, in cross-cultural communication, formal identity may be one of the reasons why documentaries are easily accepted by mainstream Western society. Besides, who is closer to history, documentaries or news? Usually, we say that news is the history of tomorrow. However, if we completely use news to constitute history, we may come to two conclusions. One is that heroes create history; the other is that news is a thing of the past and will decay quickly. It seems that it is not enough to bear the responsibility of history. . The documentary's informative nature seems to be more in line with historical requirements. However, documentaries are often not satisfied with recording history; they also have to influence contemporary society. Therefore, we often feel that documentaries are more real than news.
What are the differences between news and documentaries? The former is fast, the latter is slow; the former is objective, the latter is subjective; the former is short, the latter is long; the former is an open fragment, the latter is closed and complete; the former is like a product, the latter is like a work; the former is elegant and vulgar*** appreciation, the latter is full of spring and snow; the former is fleeting, while the latter is truly reappearing; the former rejects art, while the latter is easily regarded as art; the former is a thing of the past, while the latter is long-lasting.
From the perspective of traditional media, has the level of our news gathering declined? At least this is true from the perspective of TV news interviews. It is rare to see a wonderful news interview program nowadays. CCTV's "Focus Interview" and "News Investigation" programs seem to have been marginalized, and news interviews have a tendency to be hosted. , the host is becoming more and more talkative, and is no longer a reporter interviewing. In the past, it was said that hosts would not do interviews, but now it is said that news has become the norm. The highlight of the rest of the interview seems to be the street interview.
(2) People who understand new media
An important direction in the transformation of traditional media is the integration with new media. However, a generally pessimistic view today is that the old media People often fail to handle new media. Why? A popular saying is that people in traditional media lack Internet thinking. Let’s not talk about whether the concept of Internet thinking is accurate. Just saying that this phenomenon is already very alarming. Since online media became popular at the end of the 20th century, almost all traditional media across the country have launched their own websites. However, the actual situation is that the newspaper has not been able to establish a website for ten years. The reason is that in addition to policy and institutional factors, the biggest problem that traditional media has suffered miserably is the lack of Internet genes.
Why is it difficult to successfully transform traditional media into new media? An important reason may be that many old media do not want to become new media, or it is unlikely that they will become new media in a flash. New and old media seem to be doing different things, and new media will not become traditional media. The current situation is that old media likes to pull the banner of new media and continue to do the things of traditional media.
Here, we tend to overlook a question, that is, how does the transmitter transform into the receiver? For a long time in the past, we paid more attention to how the audience became the communicator, which is the so-called self-media. However, we may have overlooked an interesting detail, that is, the transmitter will also transform into the receiver. On Weibo and WeChat, this seems obvious. Journalists are here not only to publish news, but also have a function, which is to enter the audience, not to experience life.
Why do so many people like to watch diving programs on TV stations? It’s not just because there are some world champions in China, and it’s not just because a few champions have married into wealthy families, but more importantly, I’m afraid that most people are unlikely to go high platform diving in their lives, so now someone has experienced it for them, and they still like it. Celebrities, why not! Nowadays, the experiential component of culture is getting bigger and bigger, and the switch seems to be touch. In the past we had experiential interviews, today we have experiential media. Mobile media is particularly obvious in this regard. The media seems to stimulate our sense of touch. From hearing to vision to touch, the experience of media seems to be gradually increasing. From others experiencing it for us to experiencing it ourselves, tactile media is crucial.
Another problem is the confrontation between newspapers and the Internet. Nowadays, few people seem to doubt that newspapers will die. However, it seems that newspapers are still very tenacious before their demise. The characteristic is that they use their best in-depth capabilities. Come and finally fight the online challenge. However, the problem seems to lie here. The newspaper's retreat from the fortress may have just missed an opportunity to embrace new media. The in-depth investigations and comments on which it relies for survival are difficult to integrate into the Internet.
(3) People familiar with big data and statistics
In the era of big data, acumen to numbers has become increasingly important, although this does not necessarily mean accurate journalism The resurgence, however, does reflect the importance of data journalism. Even if we have some doubts about the concept of big data, our news reports are indeed faced with more and more numbers and statistical tables. We obviously cannot just be satisfied with translating these boring numbers into interesting facts, that is, Digital science popularization. Today’s digital media and digital journalists are clearly standing taller than in the past.
Let’s take a look at the difference between big data and the Bureau of Statistics. It seems that the former is more reliable than the latter, because big data seems to tell more truth, and it also has less water. However, it currently seems to be as difficult to solve as the Bureau of Statistics, which is the relationship between individuals and groups, or the relationship between the minority and the majority.
A very intuitive aspect of big data is that it can divide users into many groups and strive to provide precise services. Audience segmentation is one direction of media reform in the big data era. Only by catering to market segments and focusing on a certain segment can we win people's favor. The more focused you are, the more professional you are and people will trust you. Theoretically, this is not a patent of new media, because one of the keys to the success of traditional media is professionalism, or professionalism, which highlights professionalism and professionalism. Toutiao, a personalized information recommendation engine based on data mining launched by Beijing ByteDance Technology Co., Ltd., has accumulated more than 90 million users since its launch in August 2012, making it the fastest growing information customer. end. Although it caused some controversy, it also gave traditional media some useful thoughts. The concept of front page headlines was originally a newspaper concept, but now it has been widely used in new media. Similar examples include the phenomenon of news opinionization and opinion newsization. In the new media era, this situation seems to be more likely to happen. What makes us somewhat confused is that new media seems to promote the advancement of opinions more than old media, and it seems to turn opinions into news, and in turn, turns news into opinions. News threads are an example. We used to often say that now is the era of opinion journalism. In fact, this era has truly arrived because of new media.
2. Talent strategy of traditional media
After all, the employment mechanism problem of the media reflects the employment problem of the entire society to a certain extent. The media is not a paradise, and it cannot be separated from the growth of talents in society. environment.
Speaking specifically of the special situation of the media, if the people in a unit are of high quality, then it is very likely that a person's ability will also improve accordingly. However, this refers more to the process rather than the result, because the internal friction among capable people is also very large. In addition, what attracts talented people together is often the unit that ignores efficiency. Therefore, units with many capable people usually experience greater brain drain. This phenomenon occurs in countries as large as countries and as small as provinces and cities.
Let’s look at the dialectics of talent recruitment. There seems to be a pattern when it comes to talent recruitment. Usually, if a recruiting unit is particularly good, it will lower the threshold because it is confident that it can identify outstanding talents. On the other hand, if your recruitment conditions are set too high, it may often give people the impression that you are not confident enough and do not have your own talent evaluation system. Recruitment is also a talent evaluation process.
What traditional media need to do now is to establish a competitive talent introduction and employment mechanism.
(1) Can satisfy the journalistic ideals of journalists
What is the journalistic ideal? I just hope to engage in journalism, think of the front line, and long to be a witness of the news, punish evil and promote good, and expose darkness. This ideal is not only shared by young people, nor is it only shared by students studying journalism. Not all professions will have such professional ideals, and not all journalists will naturally have journalistic ideals. Frankly, this is an ideal that every society should encourage.
We can often see several types of people in the media. The first type is people who understand clearly. The media can easily produce such people because they are well-informed, close to politics, and skilled. Be calm and understand the national conditions thoroughly. The second type of people also have journalistic ideals and passion. They are an important reason for the existence of the media. They are cynical, just like the angry youth. The third type is people who regard the media as a living and enjoy themselves like a fish in water. In a sense, the formation of these three types of people is also related to personal personality.
Now I choose to enter traditional media for two reasons, spiritual and material. Take a newspaper office as an example. Most people who choose to go to a newspaper office are those who want to do journalism and pursue journalistic ideals. But now some media, especially some urban newspapers in second- and third-tier cities, ask reporters to solicit advertisements. This will make reporters who originally have journalistic ideals feel resentful and mentally unsatisfied. In addition, the salary is not very high, so it is easy to cause Brain drain. What conflicts with the journalistic ideal is the official standard. Although many people know that the media industry is not a place to make big money, this does not prevent the official standard from invading the journalism industry.
This can be said to be a major difference between traditional media and new media. Traditional media has administrative levels. In China, it is generally believed that whoever has a higher administrative level knows more about politics, because the higher the level, the more political information they have.
I am afraid that the reform of the administrative level of the media is not suitable for one-size-fits-all. For example, some units are suitable for the concept of large administrative levels. The span between levels is very large, which facilitates communication between superiors and subordinates. This level method has Good for affinity. Some industries may be suitable for small administrative levels, with fine gaps between levels. This level mechanism can easily establish authority, but its weakness is that it will be regarded by many as increasing the number of bureaucrats. It is probably unrealistic to completely abolish the administrative level of traditional media at once.
This may also involve the difference between large units and small units. Most of the leaders of small units are transferred from large units. The larger the unit, the higher the administrative level. What’s even more interesting is that it seems that the larger the unit, the more likely its cadres are to be transferred out and promoted to other units. According to this logic, the political space of small units is relatively narrow. Perhaps because of this, the political level of small units is more detailed.
Generally speaking, external leading cadres sometimes affect the enthusiasm of personnel in the unit for official career. Lower-level units have more opportunities to select cadres within the unit.
Comparatively speaking, higher-level units will have more opportunities to engage in cadre exchanges, not only with leaders transferred from outside, but also with cadres transferred from the unit. Units with a high degree of specialization are prone to internal selection, while units with a low degree of specialization are prone to transfer from outside.
(2) We can learn from advanced foreign employment mechanisms
When discussing employment mechanisms, traditional media often reject the experience of Western developed countries. For example, in many studies on the reform of media mechanisms, it is very easy to find some studies that are beyond the control of the media. In other words, these studies place many factors that are not media behavior on the media, and the results appear to be nondescript. This is true not only of the political influence behind the media, but also of the economic influence. For example, the study of media as a court and the changes in political communication. What we can do in this regard is often let the media be the media and let them do what they can do.
Dragon TV has abolished the company’s original management structure and functions since March 2014, retaining the company’s legal entity, and newly established the Dragon TV Center, which consists of the original Dragon TV Center, Arts and Humanities Center, Large Activity Center, The related businesses and assets of New Entertainment Company and Xingshang Media Company were established to establish the Dragon TV Center, which focuses on the research and development, production and broadcast operation of entertainment programs, and is directly under the management of the station and the group.
This will make the complex organization more streamlined and clear, making it easier to integrate Taiwan's variety entertainment production capabilities and strengthen Dragon TV. The independent producer system can promote the professionalization of television production and explore new television models that can adapt to contemporary audiences.
Now, many units have introduced the concept of human resources, which to some extent has replaced the traditional concept of personnel department. The practice of assigning subjective scores to reporters that some media outlets used in the past also seems outdated.