In his presentation on Digital transformation in the context of Modern Journalism at the training course on digital transformation of journalism models on November 24 in Hanoi, Mr. Bui Cong Duyen, Director of ONECMS convergence Publishing House Products, clearly stated the key contents on global press trends, trends and policies in Vietnam, convergence publishing house models, key technologies - tools...
Survival requirements
According to this expert, digital transformation in journalism is not optional but an inevitable requirement stemming from three major changes: changes in user behavior, strong competitive pressure from digital platforms, and decline in public trust accompanied by a crisis of the business model of traditional journalism.
Currently, the first trend is the shift to "mobile first", when smartphones become the main means for users to access information.
Along with that, social media and video platforms have surpassed television and traditional news sites to become the main news source for the majority of adults in the US.
The process of exploding multimedia content, especially video, has become strong as the rate of online video news views has increased from 67% to 75% in just two years, while videos on social networks have increased from 52% to 65%.
This trend forces many news agencies around the world to restructure their newsrooms and establish video or podcast groups.
Competition from individuals, KOLs and independent content creators also poses a big challenge, because a famous individual today can attract the same number of viewers as a traditional press agency.
At the same time, global press continues to face a crisis of confidence: news trust has remained at around 40% for three consecutive years, and nearly half of users in many countries tend to avoid news.
Key technologies and tools
Currently, the appearance of AI in the press, with very different acceptance among countries; the rate of weekly AI chatbot use is only 7% globally, but in the under-25 age group it is 15%.
Mr. Duyen cited that in Vietnam, the press digital transformation strategy is specified in Decision 348/QD-TTg, aiming to increase at least 20% of press agencies' revenue by by 2030, 90% of which are on digital platforms, 90% of which are data and AI applications, 100% operating under the convergence court model, and half of which are press agencies.
The results of measuring digital transformation of the press in 2024 show a clear differentiation with the groups of excellent, good, good, average and weak, in which the weak group decreased sharply while the remaining groups increased.
Press agencies that proactively transform are focusing on the following directions: producing content according to a multi-channel model, expanding video and multimedia content, developing data journalism and solution journalism, promoting convergence and applying AI, enhancing two-way interaction with content personalization, and expanding presence on digital platforms.
In the AI application group in journalism, Mr. Duyen outlined the main areas including automating content production (shortcast, short report writing, creating columns), personalizing reader experience, automating content distribution, information verification, enhancing data exploitation capabilities, creating multimedia content using AI, automatic translations and trend analysis.
Mr. Duyen also mentioned examples of AI use in the world such as AP, BBC or The New York Times. However, AI comes with great risks of false information, deepfake, forgery and requires a strict censorship process.
With big data, he emphasized that data has become a strategic asset and modern newsrooms are moving towards a data-based decision-making model. A good data office will understand readers better, optimize the publishing process, allocate resources appropriately, increase productivity and revenue, and reduce waste of unreadable content.
Advanced publishers track reader behavior in real time and apply a day-to-day meetingroom model, in which all publishing decisions are based on data, helping to reduce emotional debate and closely follow the reader center strategy.
Some important recommendations of this expert for newsrooms include: Building a convergence newsroom model, placing readers at the center, developing internal data systems, focusing on in-depth and quality content, building an AI strategy in 3-5 years and developing a multi-skill team.
