Digital: ‘Traditional media will continue to remain relevant’

More voices have continued to echo in defense of the traditional media over the unfounded speculations that the industry will wane due to emergence of social media.

In the recent time, there have been assumptions, as it was during the introduction of TV that radio will die, but Nissan’s global marketing chief, Roel de Vries, in an interview monitored in Ad Age strengthened the belief of others that “the traditional media will not disappear”

According to analysts, as some traditional media platforms de-exist due to various factors, not necessarily on emergence of social media, other print media organs still hit the newsstands. De Vries however said that “If you want to take the generic approach, the amount of money that will go to social and digital is going to keep on increasing. I think the traditional media will not disappear”. Vries who believes that marketing communication budget should go to those areas where customers want to engage however said technology is going to be huge. “Technology includes knowing what people are using and following. Investment in the world of data, analytics and integration is going so fast and it can help you; it can [also] fool you. But you really need to be on top of that”

With influence of technology, traditional media will however continue to retain their power and influence if they adopt convergence for news in the face of new media. Again and more importantly they need to  concentrate on investigative and researched stories for the hard copies of newspapers while incorporating the developed and regular event stories in the online media websites.

Though traditional media websites remain credible source of confirming some of the stories on social media but media copies may increasingly become extraneous and belated if they continue to report yesterday’s story today in the newspapers.

According to media analysts,  traditional media that rely largely on event news coverage in the face of digital technology is likely to face further readership decline with its consequences on revenue.

This is evident as the new technology has not only seen the rise in citizen journalism, the concept of public participation in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information but the online media have been quick in event breaking news. This means that literally they have become source of first hand news thereby relegating the traditional media copies.

Daniel Obi