Never "Undress," but rather "Dress Up"

According to the State of the News Media 2012, last year, most sectors of the news media managed to stop the audience losses they suffered a year earlier. First of all, news websites saw the greatest growth. Monthly unique audience to the top news sites was up 17%, and seventeen of those 25 continue to be legacy news outlets. Average evening news viewership across the three networks increased 4.5%, local TV news and cable TV news 1.0% respectively.  

Nevertheless, decline in overall news consumption may be incontestable fact in Web 2.0 era. So? What should news media do to stop the audience’s leaving and draw their attention? What is clear is that the model like Apple Daily – making audience sensory-saturated with alluring stimuli – should not and cannot be the answer. For product differentiation strategies, I think ‘absolute market-driven’ or ‘entertainment-driven’ journalism signs its own death warrant in the long run. The same is true of softer news, to my mind. For long-term attention management, I believe that news should not undress by myopic 'infotainment' and softer news, but rather dress up with news more significant and relevant to audience.

I agree on the following argument regarding how to make journalism’s storytelling interesting and relevant:

“... The infotainment strategy is faulty as a business plan because when you turn your news into entertainment, you are playing to the strengths of other media rather than your own
… The value and allure of news is different. It is based on relevance. The strategy of infotainment, though it may attract an audience in the short run and may be cheap to produce, will build a shallow audience because it is built on form, not substance. Such an audience will switch to the next “most exciting” thing because it was built on the spongy ground of excitement in the first place.”

Nieman Reports
(Excerpt from "The Elements of Journalism" by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, p. 195)