Competitive Strategic Research On Newspaper Industry Transformation Development

Challenged by the new media such as internet,the golden age of traditional newspaper industry that has been lasting for more than a century has come to an end and quickly sailed into recession.According to McLuhan,'New media has always been competing with existing media in the field it entered in relations to time,revenue,attention and cultural loyalty.' He also pointed out that 'old technologies or media will either survive via innovation,or be preserved as an art.' What kinds of innovations that traditional newspapers should adopt in order to survive?What kinds of competitive strategies that can help newspapers to achieve this goal?By comparing with other selected three newspapers,this paper focuses on analyzing Southern Weekly,particularly on its competitive strategic planning,development and effects over the last ten years since 2006.The purpose of this study is to reveal the complex environment and the logics behind the strategic transformation of the Chinese newspaper industry,and to provide recommendations on the reconstruction of the value chain of the Chinese newspaper industry that is still under industry transformation and development.Based on Michael Porter's theory of competitive strategies,and the theories in communications,economics and etc,this paper elaborates the Southern Weekly's competitive strategic planning and innovations in its transformational practice and analyzes their pros and cons.The methodologies used in this research include in-depth dialogue,field recording,and literature review.Further,this paper applies the method of comparative research in the context of macro-environment,and summarizes/comments on the general attributes or public values via case study.An overview of this paper is summarized below:Chapter 1(Preface)introduces the research background,raises key research questions,elaborates the research methods and theoretical framework in coupling with case study on the Southern Weekly,as well as conducts literature review.Chapter 2 elaborates the industry recession the Southern Weekly faced dispite of its leading position in the industry.Chapter 3 explains that the transformation is the only way for the Southern Weekly to reservse the downturn situation,and analyzes its potential advantages for transformation.Chapter 4 conducts benchmarking analysis between the three selected Chinese newspapers and the Southern Weekly,and summarises the best industry practices in terms of competitive strategies.Chapter 5 describes the details of the two major strategic adjustments of the Southern Weekly during its transition over the last ten years.Chapter 6 comments on the Southern Weekly's achievements and shortcomings of its strategic transformation from the perspective of theory and practice.Chapter 7(Conclusion)summarises the common attributes of the transformation of Chinese newspaper industry based on the case study of the Southern Weekly,and provides recommendations regarding how to restructure the value chain in the process of the newspaper industry transformation.