How do Traditional Media Fight Back: Three Ways Publishers Embrace Digital Channels

The pervading digital media has long eclipsed publishers and TV channels. Nevertheless, several major traditional media companies have been playing catch-up on their digital channels to piggyback on the trend.

Since digital news outlets can no longer assume readers come to them, they need a strong social distribution strategy to reach where readers are. Washington Post has been experimenting with digital newsfeed channels from Facebook’s Notify to Apple News, through which generated greater social traffic. In addition, the Post balances its demand for viral hits with hard news coverage on Facebook and Twitter, allowing it to generate a much greater follower interaction than Times for each post.

Mobile has also been a major part of the story. Washington Post strives to reach new audience through launching its Rainbow suite of apps on various channels including Amazon Kindle. The Rainbow took a radically different approach by deploying a glossy, magazine-like format with only one story displayed on the screen at a time. With its cleaner display format, as well as its enticing visual graphics, this platform has successfully beguiled 5000 new followers in mere three days. Conde Nast also rebuilt its digital backbone to capitalize on the explosion in mobile and native advertising. Its titles like GQ have featured infinite scroll and feed-based navigation to drive more traffic so that more native ads on the site will be visible to the audience

Publishers have also embraced virtual reality to prompt readers’ interaction. New York Times released a VR film earlier this month – The Displaced, which chronicled the tribulations of Syrian refugees. The publishers even delivered more than a million pre-assembled Google Cardboard sets to home delivery subscribers, which helps to make its VR app the “most successful NYT app launch ever”. The Economist is also working on a VR project to make a virtual experience out of its Big Mac Index.

Related Links:

• http://digiday.com/publishers/conde-nast-uk-repositions-capitalize-mobile-native-ad-growth/
•  http://digiday.com/publishers/washington-post-leapfrogged-new-york-times-web-traffic/

The New York Times Gets Instagram!

In the face of hyper-digitialization, one could say that the newspapers struggled the most to find ways to survive. It was no exception for the worldly renowned company like the New York Times in its 160-year history. Last year was especially difficult with the executive editor Jill Abramson suddenly fired and leak of an internal report how the paper has been struggling to keep up with digital trends.

Well, it seems like this year has brought a fresh scene of change for the beloved newspaper company. Earlier this week, the Times got -- drumroll please -- Instagram! 

Already with 27.9k followers in four days, they have been posting photographs and snippets from their articles on the theme of "Beginnings" as exemplified by their first post on Insta:

On the company's new presence in social media, the new executive editor, Alexandra MacCallum said, "It's raising our profile with a different set of people than we're used to reaching, and I think that's a really important thing for the Times going forward." (source: Mashable article) 

So what does this mean for the Times and social media in the long run? People have increasingly been using social media as a source of their news feed (literally), and does the Times' Instagram acknowledge that? Is it simply a way to reach out to and engage more variety of audience for them? Or, is this a new way for the people get the real news fed into their minds while spending infinite hours on Instagram? How will the stories be curated anyways?

So many questions aside, many are responding with warm welcoming into their Insta world, instead of raising their eyebrows. I have a gut feeling that we could be witnessing a milestone moment in the history of news and journalism.