(Chinese Version)

　　As a matter of fact, we can already see such attempts before: People’s Daily live broadcasted the launch of Shenzhou-11, five major Chinese satellite stations have live broadcasted their New Year Gala through Yi.TV, CCTV News live broadcasted the Two Sessions through Sina Weibo... Statistics suggest that nearly 10,000 live streaming events were held on Sina Weibo throughout 2016, with over 500 million view times in total.

　　As traditional media are getting increasingly familiar with live streaming, they’ve grown into a new and competing force in the Chinese mobile live streaming market where internet celebrity and wemedia used to be the dominant forces.On February 19th, People’s Daily teamed up with Sina Weibo and Yi.TV and co-launched a national mobile live streaming platform. At the same time, CCTV News also launched a mobile news live streaming website “newscctv.net”. Together, they demonstrate that mobile live streaming has grown from preliminary attempts into mass experiment for Chinese media organizations and traditional media organizations have been embracing mobile live streaming in an attempt to usher in the second spring.

　　Grassroots journalists will stand at the front in the era of live streaming

　　Before the advent of live streaming, the new media era witnessed the fall of traditional media. While Sina Weibo gives rise to the era of citizen journalists, WeChat ushers in the era of citizen we media. Due to the zero-entry of posting information, the decentralization of information sources and the distribution of information circulation, heteroglossia has become the new norm in social media. Hearsays begin to share a hue with rumors; while truth begins to parallel with falsehood.

　　When persons concerned and witnesses can directly express their opinions, traditional media begin to lose their monopoly. Due to limits imposed by the writing and editing flow, traditional media have lagged behind as to the covering and reporting of hot-spot issues. In some cases, traditional media even include internet hot-spot issues as news clues and thus gradually transforming from active opinion leaders to passive followers. Although many city-level official media’s Sina Weibo accounts already have accumulated tens of thousands of fans, their contents are generally homogeneous since they often chase the same hot-spot issues during the same period of time.

　　Besides, traditional media and their we media accounts often convey completely different contents and information. Therefore, such attempts are often not so much as media convergence than media division. Traditional media used to boast professionalism and technology. However, their advantages can hardly be highlighted in face of the low-entry information distribution and circulation mechanism. As a result, many media’s official Weibo accounts simply end up becoming setters and porters of news, and new media editors begin to play a more important role than journalists, which is, from any aspect, like putting the cart before the horse.

　　However, when we look at traditional media’s performance through Yi.TV, we may realize that traditional media might have finally found their values through live streaming and have already been strengthening their non-duplicable advantages.

　　Picture used to be the truth in the past, but live streaming seems to be the new truth in this era.As the dominant content form changes from photos, texts to videos and live streaming, the threshold has been increased, leaving grassroots we media behind. Finally, traditional media have room to utilize their technology and professional team. Moreover, since they’ve already accumulated millions of audience before, so they will not be short of audience when it comes to live streaming.

　　More importantly, the idealist “citizen journalist” era has already ebbed away due to the “Matthew Effect”. In the past, a person concerned can be heard through Sina Weibo within 140 characters; however, as more contents become available on Weibo, social interaction has become more prevalent than ordinary information and content. Therefore, it has become increasingly difficult for ordinary to get heard. Indeed, the era of citizen journalists has gone.

　　With the rise of live streaming, only traditional professional media that can produce contents steadily and already have a steady audience base can win enough audience in a short time.

　　The reason why traditional media get lost in the new media era is that the relationship between the production and circulation of news changed. News circulation, in return, forced news producers to reform the way news were produced. In the new media era, new media were simply platforms to release contents, while readers’ interaction was limited to short comments. Therefore, things traditional media used to be good at, such as news selection, planning and production, aren’t of much importance. That was why traditional media began to find it increasingly difficult to catch up with internet hot-spot topics and attract enough audience as before. This was why they ended up becoming simply setters and porters of internet hot-spot topics.