Why we are forced from Physical to Digital Newspaper!

One of the small-town newspaper publication agencies decided to go digital, looking at the sales drop of their paper.

Their newspaper, “Dainik Samachar” was serving the towns for the last 10 years. And also connected with major political parties.

“Dainik Samachar” daily circulation and printing was 4,000-7,000 copies.

With the rise of the Internet, digital platforms have been developed to keep up with transforming consumer demands. With respect to newspaper publishers, these technologies disrupt the newspaper business because they make online news more accessible to readers. These devices include computers, mobile,?e-readers, and tablets.

Consumers are moving to digital experiences for all of their needs.

With the latest young generation,?the?newspaper sales were dropping year after year. The dynamic of consumption is significantly changing.

Newspaper publishers have always depended on advertisers and readers for their revenue. A business based on declining ad revenues and falling circulation posed a serious challenge. Advertisers have not only reduced spending; they have also diverted a portion of their budgets toward online advertising, where rates are very low.

The Internet has also resulted in the growth of news aggregators, websites that collect content from multiple sources. News aggregators are fierce competition for newspapers.

Today, the news is not just about disseminating information, but also about customer experience. Online readers display the qualities of both scanners and methodical readers, whereas print readers are more methodical in their approach.

This mix of digital delivery and real-time customer engagement has resulted in the creation of trends, such as mobile journalism, integrated newsroom, convergence media, and citizen journalism.

The newspaper publication agency hired a digital consultant company named PrintuX to help its digital transformation drive.

The PrintuX team started with the gap analysis

Number one gaps in people, processes, and systems that were necessary for the very future of the organization

All the mechanisms to collect the information and formulate the newspaper need to be upgraded to a web-first approach

The data structure needs significant design and change to make it social media-enabled.

Every information now needs to be built for Digital first from Print-first. The right content at the right time, in order to make our readers almost partners in the business.

PrintuX team was also highlighting the type of news coming for digital media also changing. Digital news readers need different stories and they need more engagement. The print-first approach did not have all those options, which is very much possible in the modern Digital-first approach. Readers’ tastes are changing; so are their expectations and means of consuming that information.

The business model also needs to change. In the Print-first model, the business model was based on ad revenue. Classified and other ads provided more than 60% of revenues.

The PrintuX team was also highlighting the technology investment needed for the digital newspaper. They have proposed quarter-by-quarter technology investments and validated the long-term benefits. Investment for digital infrastructure, document management system, security, and training, etc.

PrintuX proposed an all-in-all transformation for the System, Process, People, Infrastructure, and culture of the organization that needs to reboot in the coming years to multi-years with huge investment.

• How can the Dainik Samachar team come up with quality impactful content throughout the day?

Fully integrated multimedia editors and reporters produced content centrally and distributed it through a set of media brands on different platforms; That is the ambition now. It is a massive shift for employees. The people's capability needs significant change and that started with hiring a few young journalists.

“Dainik Samachar’s top investors understood the need for change and they were helping in the transformation journey. They have experienced the same in other media organizations in large metropolitan cities. So they have invited others to come to their office and share their stories with “Dainik Samachar team members.

Building a transformative culture needs to start early in the transformation. They want to scale the Danik Samachar platform for all?the?geographies.

You are the product coach. Remco from PrintuX. How did you start your coaching journey for the Dainik Samachar team?

They want to spread the message with the “go Digital, go green and save the earth” campaign.

• Where do you start? What are your 60 days and 90 days plans? What are your 6 monthly plans?
• How does the new news website attract users? Do they need to be hooked to remain on the website?
• What could upskill and upgrade proposition so that team members can not only write small breaking news but start creating videos, podcasts?etc, for?social media feed
• How can they build a command center, and constantly push editors and reporters?
• How can you propose a new business model for revenue generation for the newspaper agency, like creating digital archives, news syndication, rental income, and commercial printing and subscription-based model, online paid content?
• How can you help capture readers’ changing behavior and satisfy those with new solutions? For example, Google News is one of the largest news aggregators that allows users to customize their home page with news of their choice and to request selective email alerts.
• A growing trend of consumer participation in the process of online news creation and distribution. How do we enable that to happen with Dainik Samachar?
• How do you guide infrastructure adoption?
• What will be the marketing strategy to attract digital users to use Dainik Samachar’s social media sites? How do you help them with news media or TV agencies now?

What do you think Remco might have achieved?