|
Magazines
Girl dead at 22Posted by Joel Martinsen, November 27, 2008 12:23 PM
![]() Girl, December 2008 Girl (少女) was founded in 1987 as a general-interest magazine aimed at teens, one of the earliest of its type. Now, after 222 issues and nearly 22 years, its final issue appears on newsstands this month. The editor-in-chief has left Shanghai People's Publishing House, which ran Girl, and the rest of the staff have been transferred to other positions in-house. A sad day for the magazine's employees and readership, to be sure, but the rest of the industry has already moved on: Girl's demise frees up a precious license that will be reassigned to some lucky publication. GAPP is well aware of this. Today's China Press and Publishing Journal quotes Zhang Zeqing, deputy director of GAPP's newspapers and journals division, who pinpoints the problem:
How badly has it been held back? The article also quotes China Periodicals Association head Shi Feng, who notes that between 1978 and 1985, total annual periodical circulation rose from 762 million to 2.56 billion copies. Yet in the two decades since, total circulation stagnated and only broke 3 billion in 2007. Whether that number is reachable this year is still an open question. Girl started printing in color in 1998 and launched a mobile-phone edition in 2006. Ultimately, however, a low-end magazine (4 yuan cover price) is limited in what it can do to keep subscribers interested, particularly when production costs jump, as National Business Daily reports:
Century Wenjing publishes the popular Alice (爱丽丝) book series, launched in late 2007 by Guo Jingming's former collaborators. Conventional wisdom says that Alice will take over Girl's license, making it a legitimate periodical rather than a magazine published under a book license. Links and Sources
|
Partner Links
Jobs in China
Recent Comments
affordabe on
Blogspot unblocked, but Blogger is blocked
Adam J. Sc on
Snow in Beijing
Peter Kauf on
Bound feet in China
China Media Timeline
Major media events over the last three decades
Danwei Model Workers
![]() Recommended blogs and new media
Books on China
Xujun Eberlein's Apologies Forthcoming: Hong Kong's Blacksmith Books has published a short story collection by Xujun Eberlein.
Princess Der Ling: Two Years in the Forbidden City: Two years in the Forbidden City is largely a reminiscence of the minutiae of life for one of history's most powerful women, by one of her court attendants, a Manchu noble's daughter by the name of Der Ling.
Carl Crow's The Long Road Back to China: In 1939 Carl Crow - an American journalist, advertising executive and author who had lived in Shanghai for 25 years until forced out by the Japanese - travelled up the Burma Road from Rangoon to Chongqing on assignment for Liberty magazine - 'the most interesting assignment I have ever been given'.
Front Page of the Day
A different newspaper every weekday
From the Vault
Classic Danwei posts
+ The 'national' in National Day (2006.10): Xiao Feng writes about China's national flavor, national curse, national bird, national car, and so forth, Dongfang Yu writes on the true meaning of China's National Day in the age of angry youth. + Don't ask so laowai don't have to tell (2008.07): An essay was written by Geremie Barmé, scholar, filmmaker and author of the new book The Forbidden City. + 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.
Danwei Archives
Danwei Feeds
Via Feedsky
or Feedburner |






Comments on Girl dead at 22
Two of my favorite magazines were 童话大王 and 故事会. Yuanjie Zheng's fairy tales were something you (as a 80') should not miss.