Dou Fengchang: What did The Paper do right in the past ten years? “Old wine in new bottles”!
2024-08-20
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author:Dou Fengchang (Professor at the School of Journalism, Fudan University, senior journalist; academic advisor of this journal)
source:WeChat public account of "Young Journalists Magazine"
Introduction:
New media channels and new presentation methods are “new bottles”, while news and content are “old wine”. Media with good integrated development results have done a good job in both “new bottles” and “old wine”, especially in “old wine”, otherwise they will become flashy and superficial “false integration”.
On the afternoon of August 1, I went to The Paper for research. As soon as I entered the office, I ran into a media delegation from Inner Mongolia visiting. A person in charge of the live broadcast channel was introducing the business. Liu Yonggang, editor-in-chief of The Paper, said that there is an endless stream of research delegations from all over the country, with several groups every day. Because there are too many visitors, he can't receive them one by one. When the Inner Mongolia delegation came, he was preparing speech materials for a meeting the next day, the theme of which was the international influence of The Paper.
Undoubtedly, since its birth in July 2014, The Paper has become a model of domestic media convergence and has been recognized by domestic and foreign peers. According to reports, The Paper has 268 million downloads of its client and nearly 110 new media accounts on various platforms, including 32.43 million Weibo users, 24.36 million Toutiao users, and 41.8 million Douyin users. The daily reading volume of users on the entire network exceeds 450 million. According to the evaluation report of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee Cyberspace Administration, The Paper ranks among the top media in terms of total communication power and total influence. Over the past decade, The Paper has won more than 500 honorary awards, including more than 50 international awards and more than 100 national awards.
So, what is the secret of The Paper's success? Many experts, scholars, PhDs, and industry analysts have conducted research, written papers or reports, and provided answers from various angles. In my opinion, all these can be summed up in one sentence: "old wine in new bottles." New media channels and new presentation methods are the "new bottles," while news and content are the "old wine."
For many researchers, this answer may be too "ordinary": The Paper is well-known, and its ten years of development experience can be summarized in this sentence? In my opinion, the fact is so simple. In the past ten years of media convergence, countless media have reshaped Internet thinking, pursued digital technology, and built intelligent chains. These should be done, but these are all "new bottles". While the "new bottles" are well made, we must not forget the "old wine" of "news". There are a lot of so-called "innovations" with fancy words, but without good content support, readers and users will be lost, and the "four forces" will be lost.
Leo Tolstoy once said, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Looking at the past decade of integrated development of domestic media, we can find that media with good integrated development results are all like The Paper, which has done a good job in both "new bottles" and "old wine," especially in "old wine." Otherwise, it will become a flashy "false integration."
In fact, many people in the news industry have long been aware of this problem, but they still spend a lot of energy and financial resources on creating "new bottles" instead of brewing "old wine". This is largely a "helpless move" because there are many pressures and uncontrollable factors in order to create good content. In comparison, it is easier to "come up with new things" when creating "new bottles": launching a new client is innovation, and launching a new way of content dissemination is also innovation. From this perspective, "innovation" in form is easier than "maintaining" content, and has a greater "impact". However, if a media that claims to have achieved many results in integration and transformation cannot produce even a few decent and influential articles in a year, in what sense can it consider itself to have successfully transformed?
It is a fact that journalism is not easy to do well, but "not easy to do" does not mean "cannot do". On the contrary, "things are valuable because they are difficult to do". Over the past ten years, The Paper has achieved today's remarkable integration results precisely because of its emphasis on content. Next, let's take a closer look at how The Paper does news.
Firstly, in the assessment system, editors and reporters do not undertake any operational tasks. They only need to concentrate on producing good news. This provides a good institutional environment for the development of news production.
In theory, the separation of editing and business operations should be a basic principle in the media industry, but it is no secret that in today's media industry, there are not many who really do this. Many media reporters are required or encouraged to discuss cooperation and projects with the interviewed organizations. At The Paper, although the current operational pressure is also very high and it is also actively carrying out various government and business cooperation, the principle of separation of editing and business operations is strictly adhered to. The editorial staff's selection and use of manuscripts is basically not affected by the business department. They would rather not make a profit temporarily than maintain the credibility of the content.
Secondly, Pengpai insists on originality in content production and invests a lot of manpower and material resources to strengthen the production of original content to ensure that every manuscript is strictly reviewed and carefully polished.
At about 3 p.m. on August 1, the big screen showed that the number of original news articles on The Paper had exceeded 850 that day. At the same time, the number of articles published by various content creators on The Paper was 10 times that, reaching more than 8,000. Together, The Paper releases about 10,000 original content products every day.
Among the more than 800 original articles published every day, a large proportion include international news. The Paper is not only an influential media in China, but also has great influence internationally. Many international observers know and understand China through The Paper. Liu Yonggang said that in order to do a good job in international news, The Paper now arranges several overseas interviews every year.
It is understood that The Paper now has a total of about 700 employees, including more than 400 editorial staff, nearly 100 technical staff, about 200 management staff, and a small and capable administrative team. From this personnel structure, it can be seen that in order to do original news well, The Paper has paid a huge human resource cost. In a horizontal comparison, how many domestic media have a 400-person editorial team? But without such human resource investment, how can high-quality news be produced?
Thirdly, handle the relationship between content quality and traffic well, focus on high-end serious news, and at the same time provide diversified content products to meet the needs of different users.
Current affairs news has always been the type of news that The Paper strives to produce. In the main battlefields of current affairs news such as the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, The Paper has been one of the most active media. According to statistics, since 2017, The Paper has been given 42 opportunities to ask questions at the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, ranking first among local media in the country and second only to the People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency and CCTV.
The Paper also attaches great importance to in-depth reports on public opinion supervision. In 2024, it launched a new column called "Pai Investigation", which focuses on constructive public opinion supervision. With the purpose of "going beyond the noise and returning to the scene", the content is closely related to major issues, public pain points, and governance difficulties. Within three months of its launch, "Pai Investigation" published 16 heavyweight on-site investigations, with an online reading volume of over 230 million times. Taking "Pai Investigation｜Ningxia Jingyuan: The "Radical Implementation Sequelae" of the Tens of Thousands of Mu of Black Fruit Mountain Forest Project" published on July 30 as an example, the reporter conducted an on-site investigation and conducted an in-depth analysis of the various problems that occurred in the process of attracting investment and developing poverty alleviation industries in the local area. After the report was published, Jingyuan County promptly set up a special working group to sort out clues to the problem.
In addition, The Paper also focuses on the diversity and inclusiveness of news content. It not only focuses on serious topics such as politics, economy, and society, but also on light topics such as culture, entertainment, and life to meet the needs of different users. This diversified content strategy enables The Paper to attract a wider range of user groups and enhance the overall influence of the media.
No matter what kind of news they publish, The Paper adheres to one principle, which is "paying attention to traffic, but not judging heroes by traffic alone." Therefore, they will not hype up vulgar news, nor will they publish news that is purely funny and attracts traffic. In the assessment, the number of readers is only a reference standard, not a hard indicator. They believe that truly good news is news that is both important and can bring traffic.
Finally, The Paper has created an internal business atmosphere that pursues excellence in journalism. In each business unit, editors and reporters are concerned with how to produce each piece of news, rather than how to attract advertising or negotiate cooperation. This kind of business atmosphere is already very rare in many media.
For example, in the news department of The Paper, more than 20 editors have been thinking about how to make news "accurately and quickly", and traditional news training, such as grasping news points, making headlines, writing news drafts, writing comments, etc., all came in handy. Without these basic training, these editors would not be able to quickly find valuable news points from a large number of official documents and conference press releases.
At the same time, The Paper attaches great importance to being fully prepared for upcoming news. Many editors from the News Department told me that to do a good job in reporting news, one must be able to draw inferences from one instance, and when seeing a piece of news, one must immediately think of other news related to it, and on this basis, integrate corresponding topics to add value to the single piece of news.
The current affairs department of The Paper also has such a business atmosphere. In February this year, Wahaha founder Zong Qinghou was critically ill. The Paper reporter got this clue, but was unable to confirm or refute it from Wahaha Group and other channels, so the article could not be written. However, The Paper reporter did not give up. After several efforts, he finally got confirmation from the Zhejiang University Run Run Shaw Hospital where Zong Qinghou was staying, and then quickly wrote the article, which became a "hot item" at the time.
The pyramid was not built in one day. It is precisely because of the constant pursuit and polishing of excellent articles that The Paper has been able to produce high-quality news for ten years and, on this basis, has formed an excellent media brand.
Therefore, if we were to ask what The Paper has done right over the past decade, it would be to “stick to news and not let go” and “focus on news”. If we were to find a theory to explain it, it would be the “comparative advantage” theory. In today’s Internet age, although the supply of content is extremely abundant, there is a serious lack of credible, profound, and serious content. Such content cannot be provided by various “self-media” or platform-based media, but only by new mainstream media such as The Paper. This is the relative advantage of mainstream media in the new media environment.
This article emphasizes the creation of "old wine" as content, but it does not mean that the development of technology as "new bottle" is not important. In fact, The Paper has always attached great importance to technology research and development, and has established a technical team of nearly 100 people. It has leading capabilities in platform construction, algorithm recommendation, intelligent production and other fields, and has become an indispensable support for The Paper's development. However, also out of consideration of "comparative advantage", no matter how advanced The Paper's technology is, it is unlikely to be compared with Internet giants such as BAT. Technology "is good enough as long as it is sufficient."
After ten years of integration, some media have neglected the quality and value of news content, and even become cultural companies in media disguise, which is actually a kind of "false integration". However, The Paper's experience tells us that no matter how the media form changes, the quality of news content is always the foundation for the survival and development of the media.
This is just simple common sense, but unfortunately, it has been intentionally or unintentionally thrown away by many media outlets.
