Reflections on the development of community newspaper in China

Acclimatized？ Wen/Chen 2004 China's first community newspaper "Lane" was founded in Changchun, since then there are several sporadic community reports were born, but failed to end. The Press and publication Administration 2008 authorized the Shanghai Xinmin Evening News Group "mode" to carry on the community newspaper pilot, Shanghai's community construction in the forefront of the country, the newspaper group's resources and social environment, the success of the "mode" of the future development of China's community newspaper play a key role in the direction.　　In the past 3 years, "mode" to carry out a useful attempt and exploration will become the future development of Chinese community newspaper valuable experience, but subject to all aspects of conditions, still difficult. In 2010, the industry in the Community newspaper published a new trend, March, "Beijing community Newspaper" published, June "auction" jointly with Sohu founder of Beijing's first community electronic weekly "I Home", and also issued a paper version. At present, everyone in the stones at the same time, experienced some setbacks, so far no profit, may be confused also piling up. The author's heart has always been doubtful: is our understanding of the community newspaper biased? Or does the Community report not acclimatized in China?　　Even if not acclimatized, but also to find out the specific reasons. Compared with the difficult faltering of the Chinese community newspaper, the American community newspaper has gained a benign development. In terms of geography, the United States is a small town country, with a population of 200,000 people in the top 100 cities. In line with the newspaper distribution pattern, around the central city newspaper is surrounded by countless small community daily or weekly, the U.S. newspaper more than 90% of the income from more than 1000 regional dailies and weekly reports, due to the region and the coverage of the highly correlated, these newspapers are not familiar with the national scope of registration. America's three national newspapers, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and America today, have less than 5% per cent of family penetration in most cities in the United States, far behind local newspapers. According to the 2009 edition of the American Editorial Association, of the 9,056 newspapers in the United States, 8,866 newspapers were published in the tabloids under 50,000, with a total distribution of 9.7 billion per cent of the newspaper being 3 times times larger. Historically, localization has always been one of the strongest American values, the most influential people of American social values are the third President Jefferson's power of decentralization, the idea of local democracy, "if I were to decide whether we should have a government, no newspapers, no government, no newspapers, I would not hesitate to choose the latter　　” 。 These, for the Chinese who are accustomed to unification, it is difficult to imagine the small and scattered American society, imagine how the community newspaper is embedded in the daily life of Americans, as part of natural Community institutions.　　At the same time, China's urbanization construction and the United States, more attention to the construction of large and medium-sized cities, the concept of its community is not mature. Short board and Development path of Chinese community newspaper community newspaper is the embryonic form of the birth of newspapers, but has always been dazzling with ultra-high profitability of the big newspaper light obscured, the current attention is again because of the enveloped in the big newspaper mode has metThe subversion of the network, coupled with the invasion of capital, the newspaper industry is almost hinting.　　Panic in retrospect, people found that the Community newspaper model has its unique advantages: The positioning of a clear niche market, ultra-high news relevance, stable profitability and so incredibly all fit the new media era of the future development model. Therefore, in the community development is not mature in China, the Community newspaper has also become the development of the hot newspaper form, however, if only a simple transplant community newspaper concept of free newspaper, trying to make the community newspaper as a ground of the "subway", then the fate of failure is doomed to be difficult to escape. The core of the community newspaper is to serve the community, and the residents to build trust and good movement for the community Small Business services, the profit will naturally come.　　For China, the development of community newspaper is not an overnight process, from the (big) city daily to the Community weekly transformation is the gold cicada shell-like qualitative change, need time, patience and innovation. Concept first, practice can follow. The audience is a great challenge to the mass media, and the news industry has always sought to capture the largest readership with the lowest common denominator content, and has been quite successful. But the network completely reversed this trend, suitable for all readers less content, the media only to adapt to the trend to survive, of course, this turn will encounter a lot of resistance.　　Whether can fundamentally accept the concept of the audience plays a decisive role, otherwise if still holding the idea of being as big as possible, vowed to do all the free community newspaper is typical of the cart before the horse to catch small amplification of the directional misjudgment. Media profiteering period has passed, but the focus of the publication still exists in the rationality and the market, the media are struggling to find a highly homogeneous market for the content of the operation. The benefit of the community newspaper is to delineate a clear audience group and coverage, a market that can be touched, highly correlated, and difficult to replicate. Something happens every day in a certain geographical range, and as long as you report it, it's important for the people involved. Relativity is inversely proportional to geographical area, and it exists only within a certain range.　　The definition of the Community newspaper in the United States has a maximum definition of circulation: 50,000, meaning more than this size of the newspaper, the coverage of the expansion of the content of the dilution, and the reader's relevance will be significantly reduced. In the new media era, the increase in advertising channels to make profits more evenly divided, the media can only play difficult to copy the advantage of a piece. What is the advantage to the newspaper? Depth？ Entertainment？ The local characteristics of newspaper advertising determine relevance is its killer. Many surveys have found that the main purpose of people surfing the internet is entertainment, and the free model of the Internet is a major blow to the news agency's newspaper, but who will report the highly local press around? Community newspaper.　　In the new media environment, newspapers should see their own disadvantages, to avoid weaknesses, do a good job of their own field is the foundation of survival. Change the substance and optimize the reporting structure. At present the domestic community basically still exists in the concept level, lacks the substantive connotation.　　For example, community-level sports competitions, volunteer activities and so on are almost blank, then the community reported what? North American popular A saying "no Report NoCheng ", banks, churches and newspapers are the basic hardware that makes up a community, and communities without communities are as soulless as churches without shrines. Schramm once said, "Communication is the tool that society can form." It is no coincidence that the word spread (communication) has a common root with the word community (community).　　Without it, there would be no community, and no community, no communication. "If living in a community is only a geographical presence, its existence in the social sense is not comprehensive", in particular, the community loses its main social significance. The sense of community belonging to the existence, development and construction of the community is obvious, this is far from the Community city newspaper even if the financial strength is no longer available.　　The community newspaper is the indispensable carrier of the cohesive community. So should the media be involved in community building from scratch, or wait until community building matures? The news exists in the social context, democracy is a kind of system construction, the significance of the research of community newspaper is not only to know the object. In the early 90 's, China began to build community, and the model of "big government and small society" changed quietly. From the point of view of news, the Community newspaper is not only a kind of publication that can make money, but also a great booster of community construction. In the construction of China's Harmonious society system engineering, the role of the media has not been paid enough attention, which is a temporary deficiency that can be understood. Because the community in China is a relatively unfamiliar concept, what is the community and what is the nature of the community? How to build a community? And so on, are all new concepts that need to start from scratch. But the experience of the United States has taught us that the cohesion of media plays a decisive role in strengthening the concept of community, and the social transformation will be more stable and efficient if the Community newspaper can actively intervene in the initial stage of community construction.　　Chinese community newspapers need the support of sociology and the innovation of journalism in order to create a suitable way for the development of human condition. The presence of a large number of community newspapers in the United States gives personal value a chance to be given full attention, and for Chinese media people accustomed to the big media, it may be doubtful whether such a trivial matter is worth reporting. Would anyone like to read such trivial news? The first responsibility of the American community newspaper is to oversee the local government and ensure the transparent operation of the local government. Because of the great differences in the political system between China and the United States, at least at the present stage American characteristics cannot be copied to Chinese. Every community in the United States has different characteristics, conservative, free, rich, poor, have their favorite content of the report, the media is to have a difference, but there are always some basic laws can be applied.　　For the initial stage of the Chinese community newspaper, the more realistic and feasible choice is to enlarge the law of universality, such as the importance of the neighborhood news, through the coverage of community activities to strengthen community sense of belonging, to do the community's information center, so that people face a lot of celebrities appear in the newspaper, etc. Adjust advertising strategies to serve small businesses in the community. Newspaper is not a charity, profit is the most basic goal, but the content of the report and advertising is closely related. Reporting agencyThe nature of the district is to serve the community, and will their daily necessities depend more on the big department stores or the community stores? What are the main areas of consumption behavior of residents? Can you give advertisers enough detailed data to prove the potential spending power of your reporting target?　　American community Newspaper 95% of advertising is a small local commercial advertising, do not underestimate its unit price, Mickle is also very objective. With enough popularity, the thriving community can provide adequate advertising resources for the media, which in turn can more fully cover the community and allow the public to share more public information. The more people in the community know about the community and the more activities they participate in, the more they feel the sense of community belonging.　　In the United States, the closure of a community newspaper may be a symptom of community decay, which may indicate that people have moved away for a variety of reasons, and that the basis of advertising has faltered, and that such communities are disappointing. Carefully select the network version. Can China, as a successor, be able to cross the paper stage and enter the Internet age directly?　　Moreover, many communities have more mature forums, and many people are thinking about their possibilities and putting them into action. In the middle of the 90 's, the United States newspapers have set up a network version of the paper media prospects wasn't, that the network is about to become a traditional media killer.　　After more than 10 years of repeated, at this stage of the newspaper industry's attitude towards the network more rational, more clearly understand their strengths and weaknesses, although the network has such advantages, at least in the foreseeable future, and the newspaper is complementary relationship between the network to replace the traditional paper medium is unlikely. The 2008 Pew Research Center project, key news audience, found that about One-fourth of the American public is often also a user of networks and traditional media, relying on the quality of the content of traditional media, the speed and breadth of the network. In order to maximize profits. And the biggest advantage for newspapers is the high value of paper advertising, almost 20 times times as much as online advertising. Leave the paper media, the individual network version is unable to survive, even if the current most successful fee news website "Wall Street Journal" is relying on traditional media resources to achieve profitability. Despite the rapid rise in the number of Internet users, the network's profit model is still a mystery to be solved.　　In many of the newspapers I interviewed, several community newspapers were prepared to start charging this summer with a monopoly on local news, but the outlook seems less rosy. Many American publishers now realise that the time and effort needed to nurture them was greatly underestimated when they created the web community, and that the huge drop in inputs and outputs made them more happy with the future viability of the paper media. The "90-9-1" principle means that in any community, 90% of the people are lurk, 9% contributors, and 1% are regular participants. Converting 90% of people to 9% requires a lot of work, and micro-communication is important, and it's more important to interact with netizens in a humane way. They are not only the code of the Void, the active participation of netizens is the key to success. No dedicated community site, like a garbage station, is doomed to failure. Internet users have so many choices that they feel that sharing their experiences with their community sitesGive them a great value to enjoy before they become regulars.　　But how hard it is! Almost from the beginning of the community newspaper in China has a huge potential development prospects, the media era must require market segmentation, still holding the concept of mass communication in China's newspaper industry encountered a development bottleneck, in the process of finding a way out, the community newspaper entered our horizons. Its solidity, Gao interest rates, etc. are easy to see as a gold mine to be dug, it seems difficult to dig, but recent attempts have shown a gap between the results and expectations. is not to borrow the concept of the success of simple imitation, should recognize the development of the Community newspaper, social environment, political system and other American characteristics, if in the "confidant may be very short, know not to mention" state hastily began the publication of the community newspaper, how can the hundred War not perilous?　　China Community newspaper must be a development model with Chinese characteristics, the development of China's community newspaper will not only find a way out for the media, but also the media's social responsibility is not hesitate to play. This article is the 2009 Ministry of Education Humanities and Social Science Research Planning Fund Project (Project approval number is 09yja860027) "Sino-American Community Newspaper Development pattern and trend research" one of the periodical results The author is an associate professor of foreign Language College of the University of North Carolina