Los Angeles Times: Will New Media Kill the Conventional?

“Will Hi-tech kill newspaper?”

When asked about the question, Mr Darrell Kunitomi, from Department of Public Affairs of the Los Angeles Times , always showed us his confidence in the prospect of conventional media including newspaper and magazines.

During today’s visit to the Headquarter of Los Angeles Times, we used the modern digital cameras to record what we saw at the 130 year-old world leading news press. A question floated in my mind: Where would newspaper go in this hi-tech prevailed world?

New technologies change many things. But not everything. You may surf, search, blog and shop online, but you still read. And you’re far from alone.

It is true that the amount of internet users are increasing. But you can not deny readership has also been on the rise over the past five years. “Whatever they read, they read!” said Darrell Kunitomi.

Talking about new media like mobile handsets and the Internet, he said, “News on our dot-coms and those apps for mobile handsets are always coming from our LA Times.”

He uttered the truth of the development of news media. Without the support of traditional approaches, new media are castles in the air.

Meanwhile, he did not deny the timeliness of new media, and admitted that readers of newspapers today are less than ever before. But he told us that LA Times has been a giant media group for a while.

“It is good to be a ‘group’ that we not only have newspapers but magazines and other approaches doing news.” said Mr Darrell Kunitomi.

Rather than displaced by “instant” media, it would seem that magazines are the ideal complement. It is obvious that magazines do what the Internet doesn’t. Neither obsessed with real time nor trapped by the daily news cycle, magazines do promote deeper connections, hence create relationships. That’s what makes a difference.

In fact, the power of newspaper and magazines even extends to advertising. Those advertisers sponsor the already scaled conventional media to spread. At least now, nobody has the means to kill this hundreds of years’ existing business.

Did instant food kill food?

(By Li Xinan Editor: Cai Shanshan)