|
Front Page of the Day
Spot the real newsPosted by Joel Martinsen on Friday, April 23, 2010 at 5:00 PM
After two days of front pages that commemorated the tragedy of the Yushu Earthquake using black and white tones, China's newspapers are mostly back to normal today: colorful front pages focus on local stories and largely ignore the earthquake relief effort. Today's Shanghai Morning Post in particular makes up for lost time. After somber front pages on Wednesday and Thursday, today's front page is loud and ad-laden. Red headlines are normally reserved for holidays and important developments in national politics, but today's top headline is a stealth ad for Gome (国美), an electronics retailer. The second "headline" is an ad for Yongle (永乐), a Shanghai-based appliance retailer which was acquired by Gome in 2006. That deal was shepherded by Gome founder Huang Guangyu (黄光裕), once China's richest man. Huang is currently on trial in Beijing for stock manipulation, a piece of news that many other newspapers saw fit to feature on the front page. The only actual news item on the front page concerns how a "second home" may be defined under new rules for property loans that will be announced soon. Below that is a teaser for the paper's seven-page special section on the Shanghai World Expo, which opens in just eight days. |
Partner Links
Jobs in China
Recent Comments
Henry on
The Eurasian Face
Caroline W on
Big in China
Michael on
Julia Lovell on translating Lu Xun's complete fiction: "His is an angry, searing vision of China"
Brandon K. on
Clueless academic takes on popular fantasy novels
Media Partners
Visit these sites for the latest China news
China Media Timeline
Major media events over the last three decades
Danwei Model Workers
The latest recommended blogs and new media
 From 2008
Books on China
 The Eurasian Face : Blacksmith Books, a publishing house in Hong Kong, is behind The Eurasian Face, a collection of photographs by Kirsteen Zimmern. Below is an excerpt from the series:
Big in China: An adapted excerpt from Big In China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising A Family, Playing The Blues and Becoming A Star in China, just published this month. Author Alan Paul tells the story of arriving in Beijing as a trailing spouse, starting a blues band, raising kids and trying to make sense of China.
Pallavi Aiyar's Chinese Whiskers: Pallavi Aiyar's first novel, Chinese Whiskers, a modern fable set in contemporary Beijing, will be published in January 2011. Aiyar currently lives in Brussels where she writes about Europe for the Business Standard. Below she gives permissions for an excerpt.
Front Page of the Day
A different newspaper every weekday
From the Vault
Classic Danwei posts
+ Korean history doesn't fly on Chinese TV screens (2007.09): SARFT puts the kibbosh on Korean historical dramas. + Religion and government in an uneasy mix (2008.03): Phoenix Weekly (凤凰周刊) article from October, 2007, on government influence on religious practice in Tibet. + David Moser on Mao impersonators (2004.10): I first became aware of this phenomenon in 1992 when I turned on a Beijing TV variety show and was jolted by the sight of "Mao Zedong" and "Zhou Enlai" playing a game of ping pong. They both gave short, rousing speeches, and then were reverently interviewed by the emcee, who thanked them profusely for taking time off from their governmental duties to appear on the show.
Danwei Archives
Danwei Feeds
Via Feedsky
 (on the mainland)or Feedburner  (blocked in China) Main feed: Main posts (FB has top links) Top Links: Links from the top bar Danwei Jobs: Want ads Danwei Digest: Updated daily, 19:30 |
 |
Chinese media, advertising, and urban life. |
|
tweet
facebook
bookmark
HaoHao
digg
Comments on Spot the real news
Is it a compensation for the "loss" of yesterday and the day before? I'm not a fenqing, but for some fenqings, this would be considered as an offense and probably would get annoyed. In the commercial newspaper's side, i think no serious mistakes committed, they after all need finance to keep business running. But i have still to say,, is the "face" changed too fast from black to red? they need to take a bit more PR ideas into account in order to avoid "more a loss than gain".
Sigh. And I am the guy who said this is the only serious newspaper of Shanghai.
In their defense I will say that red advert headlines happen only rarely... they must have had a bad day!
I know you're down on the Oriental Morning Post because of its front-page advertising, but consider: its ad strategy allows it to run a hefty, ad-free book review section on Sundays (not a NYTimes-style book section like The Beijing News and Southern Metropolis Daily run, but a London Review of Books-style literature and culture section with multi-page critical essays. Pretentious, sure. But the ambition is admirable) and do in-depth culture reporting on a wide range of issues. Besides, the SMD, possibly the best-regarded paper in the country, frequently runs its own three-quarter ads on the front page.