The Form and Development Direction of Electronic Newspapers (I)

As the oldest traditional media, newspapers have been challenged by radio and television. After more than a decade of experiencing the challenges of the Internet, they have not become "dinosaurs" as some prophets have claimed. This has its own successes. Way. Combining the specialty of newspapers with the organic integration of the Internet should be the development direction of electronic newspapers.

The winning formula of traditional media

While the development of online media is on the rise, Murdoch, an international media giant, pointed out that the development of the mass media industry has always been full of uncertainties, and change is the only definite factor. The emergence of new mass media in history has brought a survival crisis to the conventional mass media at that time, but the so-called old media have survived the competition and have always occupied a certain share in the market. 1 In the face of new media competition, traditional media often “change their face” as technology advances. Radio's listening tools have evolved from earliest ore radios to radio tubes, freeing listeners from their headphones, and doing other things while listening to the radio, thus creating a challenge for newspapers. With the rise of television, transistor radios have replaced tube radios. The volume of radios is getting smaller and smaller, listening is more and more convenient, and the quality of listening has also been continuously improved. From mono to high-fidelity stereo, it gives us “acceptance”. The feeling of its environment. Televisions range from black and white to color, from general definition to high definition, television receivers from kinescope receivers to rear projection, plasma, liquid crystal displays, transmissions from ground to cable, satellites, to the internet, and watching television from the living room Extending to the outdoors, mobile TV and mobile TV emerged.

One of the reasons that radio and television media frequently change their face is that the receiving terminal has a high technological content. For the reader, for the reader, the receiving terminal is a piece of paper, and it can be said that there is no technical content at all. This is not necessarily a good thing for readers. Reading newspapers does not require operations. Literacy is ok (you can even read some pictures to get some information even if you are not literate); newspapers are cheap and subscription newspapers are sent to designated locations on time, retail newspapers. Buying is also very convenient; paper newspapers are easy to carry, easy to read, and easy to handle after reading. However, its shortcomings are also very obvious. Compared with radio and television media, the information release cycle is long. Compared with online media, the information capacity is limited. And there is no technical paper terminal, in addition to black and white color change and the size of the opening, there is nothing variable. Therefore, with the development of Internet communication, the newspaper's "face change" is the so-called "electronic newspaper."

The development of "electronic newspapers" can be traced back to "vide otex" in the early 1980s. Teletext is an experimental information dissemination system that connects users and large information databases via telephone lines. The database includes telephone numbers, stock prices, and various news information. Users receive information via TV sets and set-top boxes, and are billed on time. Teletext brought "e-newspapers" into the home, and industry insiders predicted that it would be the way to read newspapers in the 21st century. But that is not the case. The disadvantages of teletext are obvious: the image transmission quality is very poor, the speed is very slow, the cost is high, the user does not have the right to choose, and it is not convenient to receive, so it has not been recognized by the market. In 1986, Teletext was withdrawn from the experiment.

The development of the Internet, especially after the Internet opened up to the whole society, has undergone great changes. Some commercial online service companies have launched a variety of information services. They have purchased traditional media content and sent it to their own users through online services. As a result, someone called an online information service an "e-paper." In the mid-1990s, with the development of Internet and browser technologies, traditional media have established their own websites and posted their contents on the Internet. This is the “Internet version” of traditional media. In order to give full play to the advantages of network communication, traditional media are not satisfied with merely posting their own content on the Internet, but instead develop into a comprehensive portal. At this time, we opened some famous newspapers' websites and found that they are not much different from the general portals. Is this "electronic newspaper"? Or is this the "electronic newspaper" that readers need?

The basic form of newspaper media

In spite of the "change of face" in broadcast television, the basic physical form and mode of transmission of the media are unchanged. Broadcasting converts sound information into electromagnetic waves, listeners listen to them through the radio, television converts images and sounds into electromagnetic waves, and viewers watch and listen through the screen. The "Internet version" of traditional newspapers "changing face" has changed the basic form of traditional newspapers. As a print media, newspapers use paper as a carrier. The superiority of transmitting information through graphic and text is not available in other media and is irreplaceable. The basic form of newspapers can be divided into physical forms and transmission forms.

The basic physical form of newspapers is paper. It is the use of mechanical devices and inks to print information on paper in the form of text and pictures, and pass it to readers. At the same time, as a product of the industrial revolution, newspapers are always printed in batches. For hundreds of years, printing technology and printing technology have been improving. Today's newspapers have long since bid farewell to “lead and fire.” Newspapers presented to readers are black and white, colored, graphic and well-printed, but as paper The physical form of the media has not changed at all. It can be said that if you leave the paper, you will not become a newspaper.

The superiority of the physical form of newspapers is obvious. Newspapers can be folded, they can be curled, so they are easy to carry; paper is cheap, and they can be recycled, so they can be thrown after reading; newspapers can use the most comfortable posture, such as lying down In bed; can take into account other things, such as the table; can be in sports, such as in the car and so on.

The most basic form of communication in newspapers is the plane. The graphic information delivered by newspapers is displayed on several planes. When the reader opens a plane, all the information is at a glance, and the first impression the reader gets is that the information the editor of the newspaper conveys through the layout language, represents the attitude and viewpoint of the media, and satisfies the reader’s aesthetic requirements to some extent. . Graphical information published in newspapers is flat, but the information it conveys is “stereo”, and this “stereo” is achieved through the depth of reporting and analysis, and commentary, and through the reader’s imagination.

The so-called "electronic newspaper" now completely loses the basic form of the newspaper, and thus it is impossible to make use of its specialty.