Full text: Development of china's news media in 2015

2. Integrated development of newspapers and news agencies. China's press at all levels is pursuing the full integration of traditional and new media. As a result, steady progress has been made in the transformation of the news collecting and editorial platforms, the content products have become more colorful and technological level has been further enhanced, the number of subscribers has increased, and their influence and public trust have markedly enhanced. All this indicate that a solid beginning has been made and brought about brighter prospects for integrated development.

People's Daily has put media integrated development at the top of its agenda. It is building its brand on various new media platforms, changing itself into a new mainstream omni-media and media group with over ten platforms and hundreds of terminals, such as newspaper, magazine, website, web TV, webcast, electronic board, mobile news, Weibo, WeChat, and clients. People's Daily now has 30 branch newspapers and periodicals, 44 websites, 118 Weibo accounts, 31 mobile phone client portals and 20,000 electronic reading boards. It is estimated that all the subscribers amount to more than 300 million. By July 5, 2015, People's Daily downloads had hit 28.25 million on Baidu and Tencent app stores and App-China, and its followers on Sina and Tencent Weibo exceeded 52 million. In 2014, People's Daily set up a research center for integrated development of traditional and new media to study how to coordinate its work in this respect. By fully exploiting its omni-media platform, it innovates its production chain — from planning content, collecting information, editing, and releasing — to introduce a model in which news, once edited, is released on a variety of platforms. It expands its coverage by posting information on its Weibo and WeChat accounts and its clients. It strengthens its influence and content by delivering in-depth reports, comments and theories. Its omni-media platform project, as the prerequisite and strategic engine to boost integrated development, is the foundation to realize the connectivity of news resources and business transformation and upgrading. This platform includes omni-media news hall, news production and management, news supermarket, and cloud services for media convergence. Through optimizing its platform, improving production process, integrating resources, readjusting the target subscribers, better management and decision making and an innovative business model, it has enhanced its influence and increased profitability. In March 2014, People Daily Media Innovation was founded with a commitment to cultivating a first-class core team for media technology in China.

The Xinhua News Agency embraces the internet spirit of "openness, innovation and cooperation" to seek breakthroughs, making information transmission mobile, intelligent, personalized and data-driven. It strengthens top-level and strategic design in new media development, committing itself to intensive, large-scale and standardized development of new media. It takes new media information transmission capability as an important booster in building its "online news agency." It is building an omni-media platform to explore more efficient ways for a modern news agency to collect and edit news. Based on the omni-media platform, a so-called incubator, or test field, it produces over 300 headlines each year to create an omni-media platform through which unified command is implemented by cooperation from different departments. New concepts and means of news production are innovated to realize the full coverage of news on both traditional and new media. It focuses on upgrading content on new media, offering subscribers specific services with big-data, visual, graphic and mobile news products. It is building more powerful transmission terminals and has launched an upgraded Xinhua News Agency app and website. On June 8, 2015, the updated version of Xinhua News Agency app went online, sending its news to millions of netizens. On the launch day, the highest hits on one single item of news exceeded seven million with over 70 million page views. By the end of 2015, 100 million users had downloaded the Xinhua app, ranking top among all mainstream media apps. On June 15, 2015, the new version of Xinhuanet.com was launched as the first news website to become omni-media and mobile, with over 120 million daily page views on desktop and mobile terminal coverage of over 130 million subscribers. It values cutting-edge technology such as big data, artificial intelligence and virtual reality to promote their full integration with news production. On November 7, its express robot writer Xiao Xin started to work, marking the launch of its robot writing system responsible for writing newsflashes and brief stories on sports, economy and securities, producing over 100 pieces per day. Xinhuanet.com is the first to introduce unmanned aerial vehicles to news reporting, which helps to offer a unique perspective from above when covering emergency events.

Guangming Daily is relying on its integrated media center to gradually establish a multi-media and multi-tiered communication and reporting system covering different platforms such as newspaper, website, mobile internet service, social media, and electronic boards. Economic Daily uses new technology and platforms to boost communication on its newspaper, website and Weibo account, giving full play to each of their strengths. Local newspapers, such as Zhejiang Daily Press Group, Dazhong News Group and Shanghai United Media Group, are all engaged in various plans involving media integration. Some 95% of periodicals nationwide have opened up digital publishing businesses, realizing omni-media communication as part of an industry strategy of digital transition. Some periodicals can be accessed through mobile phone and iPad apps, internet database and other terminals, marketing on Weibo and WeChat accounts and doing electronic business.