ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Newspaper X,1 a local commercial newspaper in China, has changed under the joint influence of political, commercial and technological forces. Southern China-based Newspaper X is a commercial newspaper at the provincial level. It was well-known for its investigative reports in the late 1990s and early years of the 2000s. The qualitative analysis of the content published in its sampled front pages between 2016 and 2017, however, reveals that it no longer gives priority to critical and investigative reports. Instead, two features are obvious in its front-page content: strong partisanship and tabloidisation. On the one hand, it shows a predominantly pro-government partisan feature, in terms of selection of agendas, lexical choices and narratives. On the other hand, however, its front pages are characterised by tabloidised and sensational content. This ‘Janusian’ content is the result of the influence of the changes in the context – especially in the political climate, media markets and digital technology. Interviews with journalists of Newspaper X between 2015 and 2016 helped interpret the patterns found in the content.
