24-hour Information Engines

The prediction about newspapers is going to die is not true at all. We agree that paper will be no longer as a medium of newspaper but it doesn’t mean that newspapers will disappear. Juan Antonio Giner states that’s the newspapers in the future are becoming 24 hours information engines. As we know that broadcasting news today is a 24-hour information industry then the newspapers will be the same. The author also divides 3 eras in media industry which are Media Divergence in the past, Digital Convergence in the present, and Multimedia Integration in the future. This is going to happen because we are entering the most dramatic and revolutionary new media landscape of our life: the end of the mono-media world.

New media generation, a segment of the market that doesn’t read print media and bored with traditional presentation of news, is going to be the main audience in media industry. Thus, media companies should better pay attention to the new habits of the new multi-media readers. The information engine or 24-hour newsroom is the answer as a starting point to fulfill the audience demands. This new challenge should be followed by the changes paradigm of the publishers, editors, reporters, and also in marketing and advertising department. Other big challenges found in research are companies are lack of financial resources, the individualistic nature of journalists, and the lack of modern multimedia editing systems.

To become an ‘information engine’, there are several innovative steps such as to appoint a visionary multimedia CEO, to hire open minded and flexible people, to encourage cross-media job swapping and set up multimedia desk. However, one of the most important thing to be the information engine is keeping ‘the journalistic soul’ of our business rather than becoming obsessed with the new galaxy of technological utensils.