ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the changes in the form and style of news. It discusses how the reporters and editors have been encouraged to undertake “form innovations” of news while holding on to the line of “political correctness” in substance. It shows how their innovation efforts have led to a set of textual and editorial techniques being experimented within news, such as the increased use of clickbait headlines, emotional expressions, informal language and expression, visual and data elements in the presentation of news, and the subversion of the conventional news structure, as well as the tendency of moving the focus away from brief reporting on recent occurrences towards lengthy writing on backgrounds and narratives. These changes suggest that a new and drastically different form of journalism may be emerging, and Chinese journalism can be said to be de-professionalized and de-conventionalized congruent with the diffusion of digital technologies.
