In the digital age, it is an inevitable trend of media developing towards networking. In the wake of the internet gaining more popularity, more people are used to browsing news via internet, thus impacting the traditional paper media. But with the long term perspective, technical development will certainly bring along the change of media structure, and that will definitely be a pluralistic media structure, that is, newspaper, TV, radio and internet co-existing, embracing competition and interdependence.
Currently, websites are developing from strength to strength, and many traditional media by contrast are confronted with adverse conditions. News gathering, editing and printing in paper media is costly, and the income from advertisement for paper media is declining due to the fall in circulation, while the internet media can obtain substantial readership and reap huge advertising benefits by reproducing news. This is the objective problem faced by the newspaper industry, whose relationship with internet media has to be dealt with in order to solve the problem.
In China, internet media started its development in the 90s of the 20th century. Newspapers then provided news to internet media free of charge or at low price in the hope of increasing channels to reach readers and increasing influence, and the internet media at the beginning depended on the newspapers to provide substantial information, gradually gaining more support from the audience. Along with the increase of netizen, internet media became more and more popular, followed by the increase in their advertisement business, and had started to squeeze into the territory of the traditional media.
Therefore, many traditional media started to protest, and were unwilling to let internet media reproduce the news items that cost them a lot to gather and edit. However, the internet media, especially those with sizeable portals, had already possessed the audience that far exceeded the circulation of newspapers, and the news produced by paper media would increase its influence after being reproduced by the internet. As such, many paper media are faced with the dilemma: Don’t go online and don’t be reproduced, and the influence will drop sharply, which is rather impossible in the internet era; go online, payment from internet media is low, which means “working for others”. We say that content is the basis of existence and development to all media. To innovate in content product and enhance content quality requires cost. The model of operation that has long been using the low cost of content products is not beneficial to anybody. Our view is that, internet media should be encouraged and supported to work out a mutually beneficial win-win outcome with traditional media.
On the one hand we want to emphasize the protection of internet copyright, and on the other hand internet should also respect the copyright of those works while using them. From the outset, the co-operational process between traditional media and internet whereby the former providing content to the latter was certainly out of balance. From now on, internet content should be enriched on the one hand, and on the other hand content production has to be guaranteed in order to get reasonably paid. This would probably involve considerable time in negotiation. As far as the government is concerned, internet has been put in the copyright protection domain, as decided in the in the earlier discussion where the protection threshold had been lowered from the former 2500 yuan to the current 500 yuan before a fine being issued.
Internet should raise the rate of payment for the works of news items that they reproduce, but the problem now is that the definition of copyright for the works of news items is not clear enough. It is not distinctly clear who should own the copyright of the news content: whether the copyright should be vested in the newspaper or the reporter? Some news and actual report, for instance, is similar to literature, but there is still no unanimous understanding as to who is supposed to own the copyright.
Besides, how is the work of news item evaluated? It is currently based the number of words, which is unreasonable. I reckon it is more scientific to have it based on the event itself or the influence that the news carries. Moreover, internet has a very special feature where the significant news brings in a high number of clicks to internet, directly or indirectly affecting its interest, even though it is not related to the production of the content. Therefore, the amount of advertisement on the page should be taken into consideration when calculating the value of the work of news item online.
Along with the coming of 3G era, news on mobile phones is gaining popularity. It will bring more disputes in future if there is still no clear definition of copyright for the works of news items. There is division of responsibilities in professional work, it is not possible for the information department to directly produce news, and reproducing news from various traditional media is the only way. It is the same with portals, which are more willing to reproduce news instead of producing news on their own which would not only have high cost but also lack in professionalism. Therefore, they should cooperate with the traditional media and purchase news items from the traditional media at a reasonable price; while the traditional media also beef up their influence via internet media, and obtain more information from internet to produce more and better news, and thus achieving a win-win outcome.