The forum "New Media in the Era of Digitalization" was held in Vitebsk
The forum is attended by heads of district newspapers, journalists and university professors, representatives of the youth movement of the Vitebsk and Smolensk regions. The main topic was the digitalization of modern media. The transformation of the media space, the use of messengers to popularize print publications, technologies for promoting regional newspaper websites, the dissemination of unreliable information and countering fakes are the issues discussed by expert speakers with an interested audience.
Ivan Sinichkin, Deputy Director - Editor-in-Chief of the publishing house "Belarus Today," told the media forum participants how to attract new visitors to the media website, increase their loyalty, and increase the profitability of the online resource. "Every regional media outlet has a website. And the issue here is the lack of growth, development. The texts and headlines, it would seem, are interesting and good, the presentation is not bad, but no one notices this resource. Websites and messengers should become a single system, and for each resource, the presentation of information needs to be changed," the expert noted. He compared having a website to a car: when you have one and it looks quite decent, but it either drives slowly, or it has no engine at all. This indicates that some heads of regional newspapers do not even look into the "guts" of the website, and therefore do not know how to make it visible to search engines and, accordingly, to network users. It is important here to understand the technical side, to know how search engine algorithms change and what can draw the audience's attention to a particular website.
Guests from Smolensk shared how they use websites, messengers, and social networks to promote and popularize print publications, what content presentation they use to make online resources and the paper version of the newspaper interesting, and how they attract new readers. "Our main task is to publish our content in print. Visualization, tactile sensations, and the smell of printing ink are all very important for most of our readers. We all understand that our audience is aging and we need to attract a younger one. One of the ways we use is to publish notes and articles about youth and schoolchildren. Their parents, reading the newspaper, gradually become its subscribers, including to save newspaper clippings as mementos. We also constantly hold various contests timed to coincide with various holidays, including family ones. Readers and network users themselves evaluate these contest entries, which further increases the popularity of our media. Regional and district newspapers have their own websites and messenger groups. In each of them, we focus on different information. For example, for 'Odnoklassniki,' we prepare posts for the older audience, and on 'VKontakte,' we post youth content, and so on. At the same time, the information there is not duplicated with the newspaper; it is presented in measured doses, the full text of articles is only available in print publications, while the networks only provide announcements," said Marina Proskurnina, Chairperson of the Smolensk Regional Branch of the All-Russian Public Organization "Union of Journalists of Russia," in response to a question from a BELTA correspondent.
Marina Proskurnina
She also added that district print media are trying to reduce costs, including by saving on postal services. District newspapers offer so-called editorial subscriptions: residents of the district pick up newspapers from the editorial office themselves, and the cost of such a copy is many times less than if it were delivered to their homes by postmen. "Imagine that 600-700 people come to a district newspaper weekly. What does this mean for the newspaper? It's an opportunity to conduct a survey, learn about the needs of ordinary residents, their hobbies and interests," the expert explained.
For the forum participants, online seminars on various topics are held. Attendees ask questions both in a specially created Telegram channel chat for the event and verbally. As emphasized by the event organizers, the forum is of a working nature, during which each party will receive the necessary information and find new directions for development, including web journalism.
Also at the forum, one can visit an exhibition of retro cameras, assemble a jigsaw map of Belarus, and participate in the "Our Children" charity event by collecting gifts for children from orphanages.-0-
