The traditional media all over the world today faces one threat – the new or social media that attempts to send it out of existence.

But while the world fears for the future of the sector, China’s largest print media, the People’s Daily (Ren Min Ri Bao) has been advancing and pushing the frontiers to remain not just in business but also relevant.

The People’s Daily Tower

At the People’s Daily Tower and campus, the resilience of the group has led to spawning various and diverse platforms that keep abreast with the trend of the times and still place the organization ahead of the challenge and advancements of media communication. The first was the online people.cn.

Two years and two months ago, the media organization took another step to stay on the beat by establishing the Peoples Daily mobile app in Chinese language and has yet another plan to soon commence the English language version of it.

Currently, the media group apart from the traditional newspaper, the flagship of the organization, has fanned out into 29 products or publications, including subsidiaries and also operates about 44 online platforms in nine international languages including English, French, Dutch (German), Russia, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese.

It also publishes in seven Chinese minority languages apart from the major medium, the Chinese Mandarin,

The advancement into online after its social media pages in the Twitter, Facebook has also been sustained over time with mega million followership.

At an interactive African journalists on internship at the organization had with Mr. Liang Changjie, Associate Editor of the mobile app medium, he explained that the app has been formidable success since its debut.

In the diversification pursuit, People Daily Online, the English platform (http://en.people.cn) has been on for almost 20 years, and one of the many efforts to integrate various technologies - traditional or new media to get the news to the largest possible audience.

People.cn, beyond the varied language reach is not only disseminating news but presents it in text, picture, video, Weibo and Apps round the clock. So far, it has created extensive readership consisting of users from countries and regions around the world.

It also has corporate blogging, corporate WeChat Public Accounts and People’s Daily Online Mobile. It has been giving attention to innovative technologies and their applications. As a result, it reports with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drone cameras, to record important footage for documentaries.

Additionally, on April of this year, People’s Daily Online (people.cn) established a virtual reality project, which explores the prospect of “virtual reality plus news.” And in May it conducted its first live broadcast that included virtual reality. This success confirms the prospects for the integration of virtual reality in future news delivery.

And there is a melting pot for the integration of all these resource platforms that is stylishly tagged Media Kitchen. With such appetizing name mentioned to you, you would be expecting a treat of Chinese meals, but that is wrong, the only meal prepared and served here is just news in the diverse forms.

Multimedia integration at the People’s Daily Online has been successful under a hardworking team led by media minds and experts.

One of the brains that push the innovations include Mr. Wang Yibiao, Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Secretary General of People’s Daily, who has been stressing and stretching the use of modern technologies to bring peoples and institutions together. Speaking at a media forum hosted by People’s Daily in July, Wang, who is also the Chairman of People’s Daily Online said: “Media from around the globe should join hands and take full advantage of Internet technologies. In doing so it is possible to bring governments, companies and media closer together, so as to further assist the Belt and Road Initiative and serve the people in Belt and Road countries.”

People.cn was founded on Jan. 1, 1997, and it is a large-scale news platform built by People’s Daily, one of the top ten newspapers in the world.

As a media organization with international influence, People.cn owns a number of subsidiary companies and has established 31 local branches across China. It strives to promote globalization by setting up bureaus and studios in Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, London, Moscow, Johannesburg, Sydney, Paris, and Sweden, which significantly boost its influence abroad and its ability to disseminate internationally. The People’s Daily Facebook (@PeoplesDaily) and Twitter (@PDChina) accounts, both operated by People.cn, have exceeded 23 million and 1.88 million respectively.

The People's Daily app news room

The mobile app Associate Editor, Mr. Liang said that technology allows for information to get to many people as fast as possible. So far, Liang said readership on the mobile apps has grown up to 137 million because of the real-time and interactive dissemination of information, news and entertainment in about two years of its existence.

The success of such media integration, Liang said, is based on the creativity of his department in producing appealing information and graphics, especially of interest to the younger generation that constitutes the highest percent of the platform readership. The innovation, largely mobile applications, has attracted many people who use the platform for advertising; which has boosted revenue generation by the department, which he put at about 100 million RMB.

According to him, about 300 journalists contribute to the platform while it gets news and information from other credible sources.

As the new media is outweighing traditional media, Liang pointed out that traditional platforms are still important and have their audience. “Yes, the traditional media is shrinking and will even shrink more in ten years, but will not be completely forgotten as feared,” he assured.

People.cn went public at the Shanghai Stock Exchange (code: 603000) on April 27, 2012, becoming the first news website in China listed on the A share market.

Gaye is the News Editor of the In Profile Daily Newspaper in Liberia, a fellow at the China Africa Press Center (CAPC) and an intern at People’s Daily Online.([email protected])