How media industry is digitally transformed
Progressing through digital era, we knew that everything changes so quickly, as quick as Shazam! OK sorry, kidding. We can access many pieces of information within a sec. From A-Z, everyone are informed about anything. As the main machine of delivering information, digital transformation means a lot for the media industry. How can? In this article, let’s talk about it.
By using the speed of internet, media companies are in a hurry to win the battle in this digital era. They always try to be the first in delivering the news through their online platforms. Clicks, traffic, and views are their main metrics to boost their advertorial business. But, does converting metrics to digital transform media company digitally?
“This is the new era of the mass media world, with a rushed, fast-paced and fierce nature. They are illusory to display the first information, the fastest, while forgetting that the first is not necessarily the best. “ — Redana, Senior Journalist of Kompas
Talking about the fastest, Sapto Anggoro, as the founder of Tirto.id, also said that ‘the fastest thing’ in media industry nowadays is something that he concerned. Fast information makes people not validating its content. From hoaxes to partial truth, many people keep sharing it all the way. Fast is good but doesn’t guarantee the truth. At Retrospekt! Conference last year, Sapto explained about how industrial revolution 4.0 affects media industry besides the speed of the information. What’s that? Differentiation!
Differentiation, but in what way?
Kumparan has its hybrid feature that the content is can be created both by its readers as user-generated content and its editorial team. Kompas, innovates its subscription business model as it differentiation. And Tirto, transforms their content production process. Remember, digital transformation is not only about making an app or website! It’s about changing everything.
In the news production process, the conventional method doesn’t require certain steps that we can access nowadays within the help of digital technology in their workflow. And this is what Mr. Sapto said about the ‘differentiation’ that is already applied at Tirto.id which are:
- Content planning
In conventional journalism, a journalist will report anything that happens in the field by going directly from place to place which hot issue is to be discovered. For this, primary data is the only material that they can use to deliver good news at the right time. What happens next, is the culture of news by accident, which means, there will be no news if there’s no “news” happening. Additionally, the contents are sometimes not well-managed and documented.
Using all technology available in the digital era, the editorial team could assess tools that can help them to manage the content plan based on the timeline. They can manage, prepare, execute or even control how the content is being made. So, the content is made by design and not by accident anymore in some conditions.
2. Deeper research through data-driven analysis
Through digitalization, primary data from the research process is easier to be gathered and documented. It can be used as secondary data for the next research to validate or strengthen the material. These things are helpful for the media company to deliver in-depth content and news. In-depth & data-driven news are the new value that we can foster instead of mere fast news. From the customer perspective, we also could use this approach to fight against hoaxes.
Another utilization of data, some media companies are using the power of machine learning to generate content. Quoted from Data Strategy by Bernard Marr, Forbes already uses this method to generate articles. By using Natural Language Processing (NLP) model, Forbes’s machine is specifically trained to generate articles as same as human-written articles.
Even actual news writers couldn’t distinguish which article is written by human or machine. Is that only used by Forbes? Confirmed by Mr. Sapto, Tirto also use this approach to crawl data from any source on the internet to generate the content. But, it should still need to be edited manually by the editor. For him, media is about delivering the message to human, so the human approach is still the best way to make humane news.
3. Social media utilization
Social media keeps growing bigger and even more. With many features that it can provide, it drives another approach that can be used by a media company. For example, Tirto claims that they are the pioneer of the media who design infographic as a content delivered through Instagram. And it’s proven that they know about how Instagram’s user behaved. By making intuitive and eye-catching data-driven & in-depth content, Instagram user can effectively be attracted to the content. It showed that Tirto team applied a customer-centric mindset as one of the parts of the digital transformation.
Now, I also work for HOOKSpace, a platform that provides news, opinions, and videos; and focuses in grassroots music movement. We agree that platformization which hugely depends on UGC can’t scale without the support of other services. Hence, we in HOOKSpace try many ways to develop not only as a digital media, but also as an enabler to music movement. And we can’t do it alone, therefore we invite listeners, musicians, content creators, and event producers to push the boundaries by creating a supportive place for music itself to be fully enjoyed.
Looking at what media franchises have done, I’m optimistic that digital transformation in media industry will discover its new form in unique way possible. It’s all not about how to survive, it’s about how to embrace the change.
