Research On The Agricultural Reports Of Hunan Science And Technology News

As a special brand in Chinese media history, local newspapers of science andtechnology focus on the three rural issues (agriculture, rural areas and farmers) and havebecome one of the essential media forces that promote the development of these threerural subjects. Since the1990s, local sci-tech newspapers have suffered from decline incirculation, decrease in income and hardship in surviving. Founded in1957, thoughconfronting the same dilemma as the other local sci-tech newspapers, Hunan Science andTechnology News has remained a circulation of200,000per issue, which ranks firstamong all the local sci-tech newspapers. Based on its over fifty years’ experience ofrunning the paper, Hunan Science and Technology News, which is composed of threejournals——To Become Rich Guide, Review Weekly&New Village, has explored arelatively successful way of agriculture report. However, under the context of The ThreeRural reform, the newspaper is also facing the problem of sustainable development ofagriculture report and the newspaper itself.For that reason, based on uses and gratifications theory, agenda-setting theory andmedia ecological theory, this paper analyzes the agriculture report characteristics of thenewspaper, points out its problems and tries to figure out ways to resolve the dilemma.Objects of this research are418articles from To Become Rich Guide,416articles fromReview Weekly, and343articles from New Village which are obtained through stratifiedsampling.This paper suggests that the reporting theme, method and language feature of thethree journals cater for the need and taste of farmers——the audience. In summary, theagriculture report characteristics of this newspaper are as follows: first, its reportingform is readable by farmers; second, its contents fit the need of farmers; third, itsreporting time complies with the season and solar term; fourth, it emphasizes theinteraction between disseminators and audiences and tries to shorten the distancebetween them. The study finds that there are also shortcomings in the newspaper’sagriculture report. First, the diversity of the layout elements is insufficient and thus thepresentation form of the contents is very dull. Second, the contents of the layout areplatterized and the meaning they convey is not clearly expressed. Third, theconsciousness of planning is not strong and the contents are rather rigid. Fourth, thepolicy reports lack interpretation, market reports are rare in quantity, in-depth reports are not so readable and the interviewing and editing abilities are extremely urgent to beimproved. In terms of these, this paper deliberates on the promotion strategies ofagriculture report from the angles of reporting form, reporting content and reportingstrategies, i.e., enlarging the team of news gathering and editing, optimizing the systemof news gathering and editing, strengthening media consciousness and professionalquality, adjusting the proportion of all the kinds of information according to therequirements of the audience and create audience-friendly agriculture report.In the end, based on the reform of The Three Rural media ecology, this paperreflects on the development strategies of the newspaper and puts forward foursuggestions for reference: building up the sense of audience, competition, brand, andmulti-media, so as to win audience through multi-channels and multi-levels and satisfytheir information need and create wider development room for the newspaper.