The de-professionalization of Chinese journalism

Abstract

This paper content analyzed 1584 news samples from 10 newspapers in China in 2012 and 2018 with the aim of exploring how the style of news has changed concurrent with the rapid expansion of digital media. The results showed that newspaper journalism in China is currently undergoing de-professionalization. Among six conventional indicators of professional news, three (brevity, immediacy, plurality of sources) are in significant decline, and the other three (adherence to conventional news structure, objectivity, and public orientation) are in partial decline. Such a shift can be interpreted as a decline in news quality, or alternatively, the formation of new journalism.