Absrtact: News production has moved from "primary communication" to "secondary communication" era. In order to do a good job of "secondary communication" news products, the traditional media itself needs to adjust, explore the path from "primary communication" to "secondary communication", update the writing style and reporting form, realize their complementarity, from addition to integration, and achieve the "1+2 > 3" communication intensity.
Keywords: "once spread"; "secondary transmission"; media convergence
More than 30 years ago, the American scholar Itcher Soller Poole first put forward the concept of "media convergence". Today, with the media change of China’s network from fixed network to mobile network, the traditional communication market is shrinking day by day. Then, traditional media have sought "new outlets", and media integration has really become a "frontier phenomenon" of news communication.
The media circles began to make various attempts at "integration". As a result, there are "integration" practices such as central kitchen and media platform. However, after several years of "touching the net", it seems that the traditional media have inevitably encountered obstacles to development on the road of "integrating media".
■ News is more "new" and needs a win-win situation-
Form an "effective secondary communication" of traditional media in cooperation
In 2015, The First Year of Convergence-Annual Report on Media Convergence Development in China compiled by People’s Daily was published. If we count from 2014, China’s media integration has gone through six years. In these six years, mainstream media such as Liberation Army Daily have made various efforts on the road of integration and gained valuable practical experience.
Up to now, all kinds of mobile phone apps developed by the PLA News Communication Center and WeChat official account have achieved "touching the net". However, we must face the reality that in the era of the rapid development of mobile phones from the media, traditional media news is often not direct enough, relatively slow, and the communication effect is not obvious.
In 2019, when President Xi participated in the collective study of all-media era and media integration development in the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, he emphasized that to promote media integration development, it is necessary to enlarge and strengthen mainstream public opinion. In today’s communication era dominated by mobile phones, it is necessary to ensure the effective communication of traditional media news in order to "make the mainstream public opinion bigger and stronger". In other words, traditional media must do a good job of "secondary communication".
On September 20, 2020, the People’s Liberation Army Daily published the article "15 kinds of new clothes, such as new warm training clothes", which was immediately reprinted and released from the "No.1 sentry post" and "Three Musketeers" in WeChat official account, and attached the "buyer show for border guards and soldiers", with both hits exceeding 100,000+.
At the same time, the People’s Army, the Western Army bugle, the Karakorum Guardian and other media in WeChat official account also "re-processed" relevant news within a few hours and quickly pushed it, which once again broadened the communication channel of this traditional news. Compared with traditional newspaper communication, the audience group of new media communication has changed, and the audience coverage is wider through the "secondary communication" on the mobile phone side.
In the mobile phone environment, people get news more according to their personal interests. Therefore, the "secondary communication App" that integrates and edits news according to individual needs is very popular. In 2019, the top 10 domestic news apps were: Today Headline, Tencent News, Netease News, Phoenix News, Sina News, Daily Express, UC Headline, Sohu News, ZAKER News, and a little information.
It is worth noting that in the top 10 apps, although there are some "first-hand news" productions, such as Phoenix News, the self-manuscript rate is relatively high, but most news articles or content productions are from "secondary news". That is to say, the product source of "secondary news" that people pay attention to comes from "primary news", which is the news production platform of traditional media.
The writing style, reporting form and "depth" degree of "primary news" directly affect the quality of "secondary news" products, thus affecting the whole communication chain.
How to make news more "new"?
Today, news products "primary communication" cannot replace "secondary communication", and news products organized by "secondary communication news" have become the mainstream of mass news consumption. How to make the "secondary communication" of traditional media improve the effect and force the traditional media to realize the transformation and development of content and form is a new topic.
■ Deep integration is not "grafting"-
"One-time news" producers should devote themselves to improving product quality.
In the self-media WeChat official account, which walks away from the road of "secondary communication", "No.1 sentry post" leads the communication trend.
In the late autumn of 2020, the People’s Liberation Army Daily published a series of logistics support news about "food, clothing, housing and transportation". Within a month, "No.1 sentry post" successively updated WeChat official account’s article: "New combat uniform, debut!" "Finally! Fifteen new types of border patrols have been installed and collected. ""The People’s Liberation Army is engaged in infrastructure construction at the grassroots level. This must be praised! " "Brother Bing, it is necessary to cool down!" "Finally! Type 20 is loaded and type 19 military products are distributed! " "Live for a long time! The troops distributed field washing machines. "
The same news content, they are good at "secondary processing": repackaging words, collecting videos and photos, integrating screenshots of netizens’ interaction, enhancing publicity resonance through interaction, sincere and grounded expression, which makes people feel the charm of "self-media net text". In addition, they also integrate news links into the page, and concentrate on packaging and pushing to increase the amount of news information.
This kind of "second dissemination news" has also been ridiculed by netizens as "manuscript washing". However, their "click data" of 100,000+proves the desirability of this media convergence operation mode-"secondary communication" can last for the publicity effect of "primary communication".
In the discussion of media convergence, people are generally willing to understand "convergence" as "production transfer" from traditional media to online media, or "content transplantation" from traditional media to online media.
The "production transfer" from traditional media to online media is indeed a style of media integration. However, the successful experience of "No.1 sentry post" reminds us that the better integration mode is not simply to "graft" traditional media to interactive media, build a newspaper electronic database, develop a mobile App, or upload electronic versions and pictures to the network platform to achieve the integration goal.
Because such media convergence is not an open convergence, it is a "closed loop" road of independent production and operation. Mobile phone news communication, "closed loop" form of news communication is difficult to effectively "penetrate". If you want to make traditional news and positive energy enter the mobile phone effectively, it is an effective attempt and choice to get out of "closed-loop communication". Of course, there is not only one way of media integration, but also other "ways".
Media convergence needs communication cooperation. On the issue of media cooperation, a news industry expert once said: "The future path of media integration must be cross-media cooperation between platforms and content producers, and they need to take their own needs, debug themselves, move towards each other and domesticate each other."
In this regard, the author also feels the same way. However, the author and the expert’s views are not completely consistent. What we call communication cooperation is formed on the basis of propaganda division of labor. Only by further division of labor can the quality and productivity of news products be improved together.
"Division of labor" refers to the task decomposition of news content production and "secondary communication" on the mobile phone side. Content producers-producers of "primary news" should strive to improve news quality and communication efficiency, for example, by means of in-depth reports, charts and news links, to improve the extensibility and readability of news products, so that they can better meet the needs of "secondary communication".
The "secondary communication" platform should make better use of the information provided by "primary communication" products, so that it can better achieve the goal of traditional news communication through "secondary communication". At the same time, through the cooperation with the mobile phone platform, it will bring more penetrating communication effects to mainstream news.
■ Sincere and broad fusion mind-
Facing the "secondary communication", do your homework well.
Regardless of "primary communication" or "secondary communication", the key to determining the communication efficiency is the audience.
For a long time, the audience groups faced by traditional media are relatively fixed. Therefore, traditional media and new media should do their homework in terms of voice, reporting angle and depth.
Editors and journalists also need to do their homework. Traditional media reporters face traditional audiences, and their language and reporting angles are relatively solid, but it is difficult to "earn traffic" on the mobile phone side. The voice of new media can meet the needs of most netizens, but it is difficult to fully present it in traditional media, especially in newspapers, so it is difficult to become a business orientation.
Under the development trend of "secondary news dissemination", traditional media should have a broad mind of integration if they want to complete their historical tasks.
What do we need to do?
The first is to improve the quality of "primary communication" content production, and properly invest energy to complete "secondary communication" to ensure the influence of traditional news communication on mobile phone news consumption.
Secondly, we should carefully study the characteristics of the "second spread" news, and make a proper "turn around" when producing the "first spread news": it should be more lively, easy to understand and more enjoyable, and the sentences should not be like official documents or recitations. However, it needs long-term business accumulation and sharpening, and it needs to learn and study the text characteristics of "secondary news dissemination" to form its own style and style.
At the same time, we should abandon traditional writing techniques and increase in-depth reporting in "one-time news dissemination". Editors should accept news stories, learn to write stories and tell stories, so as to make them deeper, livelier and better-looking, and make traditional media have more initiative in communication.
On November 15, 2020, the People’s Liberation Army Daily published a heavy news that the backbone of newly trained cadres had post allowances. In the afternoon, "No.1 sentry post" issued "official announcement! This post allowance has been paid! " A penny. This news commentary, with an unofficial style, made a "second editing" of the newspaper manuscript, explaining the implementation of the policy in a simple way. Within 2 hours of publication, the article reached 47,000 readings.
It can be seen that in the field of "secondary communication", the consciousness and ability of "secondary editing" are needed. On the mobile phone platform, traditional media should not only act as "porters" but also become "architects", and adaptively transform "one-time news dissemination" in the fields of content and interaction.
It needs to be clear here that "secondary editing" is an innovation of "one-time news dissemination". However, if the "secondary news" contains valuable news clues, traditional media should also interpret it quickly. This interpretation mode should focus on in-depth reporting, so as to "renovate" the "old news" again and promote the quality improvement of the "one-time news" product.
In recent years, some people criticize mobile phone news, calling it "increasing traffic and attracting attention", which leads to the prevalence of "fake news and headline party". This phenomenon does exist. We should seriously study the law of "secondary communication" and form our own style of "primary communication news" on the basis of learning, so as to more effectively narrow the distance between traditional news and mobile phone users.
(The author is the head of the combat readiness logistics group of the military news editing room of the People’s Liberation Army newspaper)