“Digital transformation is an inevitable trend of news and media agencies,” said Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Phan Tam at a conference on task deployment in 2021 held by the Ministry of Information and Communications. 

As lively and complicated as life, news flows require news and media companies to take an active part in this process, otherwise they will be left behind or eradicated as a result, in modern life rapidly driven by digital transformation. News agencies must always conduct inclusive reforms to reflect issues correctly, timely and rapidly, and analyze them rationally and compassionately. Thus, the contemporary press can continue to reshape the path of life before the impact of digital transformation.

Unlike newspaper digitization, digital transformation means digitizing the entire operation of a newspaper but the website is just a type of publication. Therefore, for successful digital transformation, each news agency must have its own digital transformation program within an overall newspaper plan. Depending on real context and conditions, a newspaper agency can handle its divisions separately, but the real effect can only be achieved when the whole is digitally converted so that all digitized parts can be interconnected and work together.

To date, almost every newspaper maintains an electronic version but it is just a component of the complete digital transformation process of a news agency. According to experts, there is not a universal digital transformation model for all but, based on foundational standards, each industry and each unit has its own needs for and ways of digital transformation.

Digital transformation also requires structural and operational innovations. A digital transformation strategy for news and media agencies at the macro level and for each news agency (for example, printed newspapers, digitization expressed in development investment in electronic newspapers, electronic newsrooms in the internal publishing process) is essential. Therefore, news agencies need to build an integrated newsroom model and a multimedia agency where digital publishing is placed at the center, tasks are assigned to right persons, and there is an agreement between print/radio/television divisions and electronic publishing divisions.

According to Professor Dinh Xuan Dung, Central Council for Theory and Criticism of Literature and Arts, in order for news agencies to fulfill their function in the context of digital transformation, the leadership first of all must be agile, capable, qualified and technologically knowledgeable to direct the press to act timely, accurately and alertly, especially against pressing, sensitive or critical issues of the country. At the same time, in order for news and media companies to promote their mission, journalists are supposed to be honest, fair and brave in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. Reporters and editors need to constantly improve their expertise, writing skills and professional ethics; renew their thinking, working methods and creativity as well as equip themselves with new knowledge and technology skills to create more attention-catching masterworks of high quality to realize the stated mission of the press. In particular, to stand and develop in the face of competition from social media, newspapers need to have the trust of readers with their own strengths of information quality, information accuracy, logic, humanity and high social responsibility.