How Did The Hong Kong Free Newspapers Survive In The Internet Era

As large amount of information is available on the Internet,free newspapers have been regarded as the direction of the future development of the newspaper industry.Nowadays,since the emergence of Internet content products,free newspapers have begun to face circulation decline in the mainland China.At the same time,Hong Kong's free newspapers still maintain a good development trend.Based on this background,the study explored the survival situation of Hong Kong free newspapers by analyzing the operation management status,newspaper layout,content characteristics,the habits of reading newspapers,and the influence of the Internet industry on Hong Kong media.The free newspaper in mainland China was used as a reference to analyze the differences in the development path of the newspapers in the two places and the reasons behind.This study took the'Headline Daily'in Hong Kong as the object,and took Nanjing'Oriental Guardian' as a reference.Firstly,based on the analysis of the publishing strategy and advertising revenue of the Headline Daily,the study investigated its management expertise.Taking the news stories on the Headline Daily in 2018 as the analysis sample to analysed the basic characteristics of the content of the newspaper,in terms of its reporting theme,layout,design and advertising content,and the integration of news stories and urban culture in Hong Kong.Secondly,in-depth interviews were conducted with six typical readers of the 'Headline Daily' to answered the question why would the Hong Kong people be keen to read free newspapers.Finally,analyzing the development of the Internet industry and the Internet content products in Hong Kong to find the reasons for the failure of the Internet content platform in Hong Kong.The study found that the free newspapers in Hong Kong,represented by 'Headline Daily',used the advantage of delivery to improve the effective circulation,which formed a positive cycle 'high advertising revenue-large investment on content-high reading quantity'.In terms of content,Headline Daily attracts public readers with its high density of news information,main focus on local and entertainment news,and a large number of original columns.At the same time,it promotes the sense of intimacy through displaying Hong Kong's urban culture and establishing a civilian public space.On the other hand,the long history of Hong Kong newspapers has cultivated people's reading habits.As a commercial society,Hong Kong people have a strong demand for information.The commercialization of newspapers has made readers' demand oriented,and the aging of the population has left free newspapers a large number of readers.However,in the wave of the Internet,Hong Kong's bad innovation environment,the narrow domestic market didn't leave enough living space for the Internet companies.The rise of nativism has led Hong Kong to unintentionally integrate into the Chinese Internet world.Hong Kong lost place in the world Internet,and the traditional media market has not been affected by Internet content products.In general,the reasons for the different development of free newspapers in Hong Kong and the Mainland China are not only the efforts of operations and content,but also the social and cultural background.More importantly,the development of the Internet industry in Hong Kong is lagging behind,and the pace of social innovation is slow.Therefore,the free newspapers in Hong Kong can still meet the needs of readers and obtain enough living space.