Ninh Binh Newspaper faces the challenge of digital transformation of journalism

As one of the press agencies of Ninh Binh province, Ninh Binh Newspaper currently has two types of newspapers: print newspaper and electronic newspaper.

The printed newspaper is published 6 times a week; the circulation is about 13,500 copies/time. The online newspaper has many sections, comprehensively reporting issues and events quickly and accurately; fast access speed; the number of visitors and page views is increasing.

Up to now, Ninh Binh Electronic Newspaper is among the top 20 local Party newspapers with the highest number of visitors (in November 2023 alone, for the first time, Ninh Binh Newspaper rose to 14th place out of 63 local Party newspapers). In particular, Ninh Binh Newspaper has spread information on social networks such as: Zalo, Facebook, Youtube, some digital platforms Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, Spotify. The quality of information and the professionalism of the staff are increasingly improved.

In 2023 and the first 6 months of 2024, Ninh Binh Newspaper was honored to receive the following journalism awards: 1 C prize (national award for foreign information); 1 Encouragement prize, 1 C prize (Golden Hammer and Sickle award); 1 Encouragement prize (Contest for writing electronic works on the topic: "Ensuring security and order at the grassroots level" of the Ministry of Public Security).

Digital transformation of journalism is an inevitable trend of all press agencies in the current period and Ninh Binh Newspaper cannot stand aside. Digital transformation of journalism is the process of applying digital technology and digital media platforms to change, improve and optimize the operations of press agencies. On April 6, 2023, the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 348/QD-TTg approving the strategy for digital transformation of journalism until 2025, with a vision to 2030.

According to the above decision, the goal of digital transformation of the press is to build press agencies in a professional, humane, and modern direction; fulfill the mission of information and propaganda to serve the revolutionary cause of the Party and the cause of national innovation; ensure the role of leading and orienting public opinion, maintaining information sovereignty in cyberspace; effectively innovate the experience of readers; create new sources of revenue; promote the development of the digital content industry.

For Ninh Binh Newspaper, implementing the digital transformation strategy of the press has the basic advantage of receiving the attention, direction, and multi-faceted facilitation of the Provincial Party Committee, People's Council, and People's Committee. In recent times, Ninh Binh Newspaper has had significant changes in digital transformation of the press such as: developing electronic newspapers; having many multimedia works; gradually perfecting the converged newsroom system; posting information on a number of social networks, interacting with the public...

However, Ninh Binh Newspaper is also facing major challenges, especially technological infrastructure, lack of synchronous and modern equipment, multi-faceted journalism human resources that do not meet the requirements of digital transformation, and data that has not been digitized to serve content production. Social networks are creating great pressure on press agencies in terms of information competition and journalism economics; the situation of copyright infringement of press works has not been effectively prevented.

To improve the capacity of information production and attract a large number of viewers and followers, it is necessary to have technical infrastructure with new and modern technology. That requires financial resources to invest in additional technical infrastructure, software upgrades and operational means to optimize press activities.

Over the years, the team of journalists of Ninh Binh Newspaper has always maintained the qualities and ethics of journalists, and has quite good professional capacity. However, journalists who have accumulated a lot of experience mainly work in print journalism, now have to work in electronic journalism with many new requirements and skills such as multimedia journalism, converged newsrooms... have to create journalistic works following the trend of digital journalism; put content on digital platforms, social networks... In reality, there are still people who have not kept up with the reception and use of information technology in the process of multimedia journalism, which is still difficult. Meanwhile, the number of civil servants of Ninh Binh Newspaper is decreasing according to the roadmap.

For Ninh Binh Newspaper to successfully implement digital transformation by 2025 and towards 2030, the most important solution is to develop and improve the quality of human resources. In the immediate future, Ninh Binh Newspaper is focusing on training, fostering, and improving the professional qualifications and skills of the existing staff, reporters, and collaborators. At the same time, it is recommended that the province pay attention to policies for Ninh Binh Newspaper to sign labor contracts as reporters, editors, graphic designers, information technology, cameramen, etc. according to the level of financial autonomy to supplement human resources to ensure immediate and long-term tasks.

Pay more attention to creating favorable conditions in terms of resources for Ninh Binh Newspaper to invest in technical infrastructure equipment to produce multimedia press programs and products, especially for electronic newspapers and build a converged newsroom to serve the task of making newspapers according to the process of digital transformation of journalism.

Nguyen Dong

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