News across the great wall: Asian news organisations’ web strategies for the China market

ABSTRACT

Asians comprise more than half of the world’s online population, and China has long surpassed the U.S. as the biggest Internet market in the world. Through a series of in-depth interviews with senior managers at five prominent Asian news organisations – Lianhe Zaobao (Singapore), China Times (Taiwan), United Daily News (Taiwan), Phoenix TV (Hong Kong), and Chosun Ilbo (Korea), this comparative case study explores how these organisations engage Internet users in mainland China via their Chinese-language Web sites. The findings reveal how leading Asian news brands approach transnational news management through different operating models. Of particular interest are their content, marketing, and revenue strategies, political, economic, and cultural barriers to entry, and the extent Chinese Internet users constitute a strategic focus. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• digital journalism
• elite interviews
• news media
• transnational media management

Acknowledgments

We thank all the interviewees for sharing valuable information on their journalistic and business practice. We are also grateful to our research associates for their assistance during the research process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. He owns the Want Want Group, the largest rice cake manufacturer in China.

2. Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo are two leading microblogging services in China.

3. The parent company offers other services such as udndata.com, a news archive service targeting businesses and libraries.

4. At the time of the interview, ARO data indicated that udn.com reached 6 million Internet users in Taiwan per month. The estimate based on Google Analytics was 12 million users globally.

5. Tencent, Netease, Sina, and Sohu.

6. With more than 400 on the editorial team.

7. According to Liu Shuang, ifeng.com attracted more traffic than the sites of CCTV, Xinhua News Agency, and People’s Daily combined.

8. The original sites are published in traditional Chinese characters.

9. For example, in China, a cluttered main page boosts page views.

10. Comparitech, WebSitePulse, and Greatfire.org.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.

Notes on contributors

Hsiang Iris Chyi

Hsiang Iris Chyi is an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. She specialises in the economics of online and print news and identifies universal patterns of user demand for multiplatform newspapers. Her book, Trial and Error: U.S. Newspapers’ Digital Struggles toward Inferiority (2015), challenges U.S. newspapers’ technology-driven strategy, calling for a critical reassessment of the future of the industry.

Chyi has received many research awards and has published more than 50 journal articles and book chapters. In recent years, her research on U.S. newspapers’ multiplatform readership has received substantial attention from the newspaper industry worldwide. She has addressed industry conferences in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe and offered advice to news organisations such as The New York Times.

Prior to joining the faculty at UT Austin, Chyi taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2000 to 2004 and at the University of Arizona from 2004 to 2007. She also has worked for several online organisations in the U.S. and in Asia.

Angela M. Lee

Angela M. Lee is an assistant professor in the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her research focuses on news use and effects, behavior prediction, journalism ethics, and science communication. Angela’s work is published in peer-reviewed journals, such as Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Communication Research, Journalism,andJournalism Practice.She has received a number of highly selective \s, including the Top Faculty Paper Award and News Audience Research Paper Award from AEJMC. Her work has garnered mainstream attention from outlets such as The New York Times and the Nieman Journalism Lab of Harvard University.

J. Ian Tennant

J. Ian Tennant is an Assistant Professor at the Elliott School of Communication, Wichita State University. His research focuses on business models, media history, transnational news operations, international journalism and photojournalism. He is the author of a chapter in The Future of News: An Agenda of Perspectives and his research has appeared in journals and at conferences.