Bottom line: Reuters decision to put its Chinese-language website on hold is partly a surrender to Beijing, but also acknowledges that new approaches are needed to succeed in the nation’s restrictive media space.
No one else is writing about the latest strategic shift at Reuters’ (NYSE: TRI) Chinese language news site in Beijing, probably because the actual number of headcount reductions is quite small, at less than 10. But the move has huge symbolic significance, since it looks like an admission of defeat to Beijing censors who blocked the site in China more than a year ago. At the same time, the move also represents a certain realism, and the fact that Chinese consumers increasingly get their news via other channels anyhow, most notably social media. Read Full Post…
I’ve been writing about China’s media industry long enough now to know that a blossoming love affair with Hollywood might be too much too quickly, and new comments from the TV and film regulator appear to hint that a crackdown or at least a slowdown could be looming for this fast emerging relationship. If it comes, such a crackdown would hardly be a new thing, as China has twice before signaled it was preparing to open its media to foreign investment, only to quickly slam on the brakes after the big foreign players got too aggressive.
There are some interesting new moves in China’s new and traditional media spaces, with Facebook, one of the industry’s youngest players, reportedly looking for young Chinese software programmers while the New York Times (NYSE: NYT), one of the oldest players, is taking a gamble on publishing in the market. Let’s take a look at Facebook first, as that’s the more interesting of the 2 developments as the company prepares for its highly anticipated multibillion-dollar New York IPO. Just last week I wrote that Facebook had registered a number of its trademarks in China (
