Editors sacked and The Beijing News in enemy hands?

From Chinese news and politics blogger Anti:

"The Beijing News falls into hostile hands — completely taken over by Guangming Daily."

In addition to that snippet of information, Anti posted the image reproduced here. The three people are identified as Editor in Chief Yang Bin, and Vice Editors in Chief Sun Xeudong and Li Duoyu. The character for 'out!' or 'sacked' is superimposed on their portraits.

The Beijing News (新京报）launched on November 11 as joint venture between the Guangming and Nanfang Newspaper groups, targeting the high-end newspaper market. The Nanfang Group was once seen as the standard bearer for journalistic independence in China, although recent purges have rid the group of many of the more turbulent editors.

In May this year, ChinaPR.com.cn reported rumors that Beijing Media Corporation was going to buy the The Beijing News, but nothing came of it, and there was no word on the street about the machinations behind Beijing's snobbiest newspaper, until the news Anti reported today.

Commentors on Anti's blog have written the following about the matter:

- Where did you get this information?

- Shit!

- It seems that our Party does not like anyone named Yang Bin being a boss

- The South (i.e. Southern or Nanfang group) loses its Northern Campaign

- Bound to happen sooner or later...

UPDATE: A Chinese journalist who keeps the blog Non Violent Resistance has the following information:

A post on the Reporters' Home BBS just confirmed this. Apart from chief editor Yang Bin, according to the post, two other deputy chief editors were also removed. And yes indeed the studpid bastards from Guangming Daily will take over major management and editorial posts at the paper.

There has long been talk that, seeing The Beijing News's profitabilty grow in recent months, the bigwigs at Guangming were getting greedy and up to something like this. Now they did it. This, of course, also has a lot to do with the censorship authorities' displeasure with the paper for some recent coverage -- with that on the Dingzhou, Hebei violence against villagers in particular.