Even the Daily Planet needs digital transformation to find success

By Cayetano Chimeno

Digo

Madrid, Spain

Connect      

In the year 2025, the Daily Planet is the most popular newspaper in Metropolis, but its sales have fallen drastically, people travel by subway, and everyone everywhere is absorbed in their mobile devices. Devices increasingly have larger screens, higher resolutions, and ultra-fast Internet connections everywhere.

Journalists Clark Kent and Lois Lane are concerned because they noted that, in recent years, about 2,200 American local print newspapers have closed, and the number of American newspaper journalists fell by more than half.

To stay relevant, legacy newspapers need to make the switch to video.
To stay relevant, legacy newspapers need to make the switch to video.

Clark Kent is aware this decline in journalism endangers world peace. Increasingly, Superman has to resolve more critical situations and is concerned about the future of the world. Viral, low-quality information targeted toward users according to their interests to increase media consumption time is making the world a more uninformed, scared, and polarised place.

As his editor-in-chief, Perry White, has called a meeting at the newspaper’s offices. In this meeting, he reminds journalists of the call of their conscience — of their mission in the world when they decided to prepare for their exciting careers — and praises the work of journalists.

He highlights the need for society to safeguard the basic principles of information such as respect for the truth, being open to investigating facts, pursuing objectivity even if it is known to be inaccessible, contrasting data with as many journalistic sources as possible, clearly differentiating between information and opinion, and confronting, when they exist, versions of a fact.

“Journalism must not die,” White says, “so we have decided to stop producing written news and only generate video content to reach the public where they spend most of their time: screens, screens, screens.”

An old-timer asks, “But then, will we become a television channel?”

White responds: “No, we need to be smart, bold, creative. We need to understand on which channels the videos are going to be disseminated, whether on social networks such as YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok posts, or hours of live-streaming on platforms like Twitch, or on televisions connected to the Internet. Whether on our platform or third-party platforms, video repositories on the Web or desktop.

“We will be different from traditional television stations because we will create a different content strategy for each medium. We will create hundreds — thousands — of videos every day, many generated with simple resources such as high-generation mobile phones. Others generated with Artificial Intelligence solutions capable of converting text into video.

“We will reveal our faces — the faces of journalism to the world — in videos where we will appear in first person.

“Ultimately, we have to reinvent ourselves and chart our path. We know like no one else how man has had to adapt throughout history and that precisely this ability is what makes us great as a species.”

And, this is the happy ending: In 2030, the Daily Planet is the most valued media not only in Metropolis, but in the world. Young people aspire to one day collaborate with it. It has become the seal of quality, reliability, and plurality in a world full of atomised content. It has created a business model based on subscription income, advertising income, communication income, and product placement, fluid and efficient.

The story above is fiction and based on ideals, but charting a trend toward video has become a goal and challenge for many media outlets. Colleagues: Let’s continue building the future of the media. We are on an exciting path.

About Cayetano Chimeno

By continuing to browse or by clicking “ACCEPT,” you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance your site experience. To learn more about how we use cookies, please see our privacy policy.
x

I ACCEPT