Beijing Youth Daily

Our second tour of the day was the Beijing Youth Daily, established in 1949. Mizzou has had a long time relationship with the BYD, their staff has given guest lectures at MU and our faculty has visited China and given their staff training. They have four newspapers, ten magazines and two websites, with a total distribution of more than 600,000 copies every day. Their different magazines target different audiences including middle school students, low-level readers, high-end consumers, mainstream consumers, elementary age students, and young professionals. During out tour we were given

I’m kind of glad that I waited so long to blog about our visit to the newspapers because today I heard the third lecture about the history of Chinese Journalism. Why? During our tour of People’s Daily we were given water, a company notepad and an ink pen that has a calendar rolled in it. At Beijing Youth Daily we were given water, magazines, and a small backpack with a mouse- it is the year of the rat here in China- they really do go by the years, it’s not just an ancient idea that looks good on a placemat in America! I got a used feeling from the Beijing Youth Daily; they really want us to work for them by sending them articles and such. But it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it and the deliverance is what tipped me off, even after losing meaning from translation I still heard the undertone loud and clear. I felt like the bags were a bribe and today during the third lecture I found out that bribes are the cultural norm here in China. It is a very common practice for reporters here to accept money, trips, food, and so on from those they interview- this is just one of the moral issues China is dealing with in its news industry. Others include making news, telling interviewees what to say, using people unnecessarily, etc. So now I don’t feel so disgusted, I just got to fully experience the culture of Chinese journalism.