美国报纸的发展现状及与中国报纸的比较

The Development of U.S. Newspapers and Compared with the Chinese newspapers

In USA, newspapers are the primary mass media from which receive news, more than one thirds of the people in this country read a newspaper everyday, for more than tune in the network news on TV in the evening. In Boston in 1690, Benjamin Harris published Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. This is considered the first newspaper in the American colonies even though only one edition was published before the paper was suppressed by the government. In 1704, the governor allowed The Boston News-Letter to be published and it became the first continuously published newspaper in the colonies. Soon after, weekly papers began publishing in New York and Philadelphia. These early newspapers followed the British format and were usually four pages long. They mostly carried news from Britain and content ed itor’s interests. At that time, papers were thought as the source of rebellion by the E nglish colonial government as they press their new thought through those copies. Colonists wants to continue their colonial domination so they shut down those early newspapers and prison some of those papers’bosses and editors. Even some times Americans allow to run a small paper, they were not independent. After the American Revolutionary War（1775–1783），newspapers in American got their opportunity to grow. In 1783, the Pennsylvania Evening Post became the first American daily. Then, newspapers booming with the American got richer and stronger. There were a lot of party newspapers in early American, and they were full of vituperation.

Today, there are about 1570 dailies and they put out 52.8 million copies everyday, more on Sundays. Those dailies can reach 127 million people owe to that each copy is passed along to an average of 2.2 people. The circulation of all the weeklies is close to the dailies’; they put out 50 million copies every week. But benefit from that each of those copies is passed along four people at average; weeklies reach 200 million a week. Now days, chains own most of the American newspapers. For examples, the Gannett holds 82 dailies and has a 5.5 million dailies circulation. It is the proprietor of the most popular national daily—USA Today, with a 2.2 million circulation by 2004; the Tribune Company is the owner of 30 dailies and they put out almost 5.2 million copies everyday; the New York Times, who holds 26 dailies, has a 1.7 million daily circulation. There are

only three national papers; the other two are the Wall Street Journal and, the Christian Science Monitor, the oldest. Others, including the most global highly respected daily—The New York Times—are all local newspapers. Although the New Y ork Times'primary audience has always been the people of New York City, the Times has gradually become the dominant national "newspaper of record." Apart from its daily nationwide distribution, the term means that back issues are archived on microfilm by every decent-sized public library in the nation, and the Times' articles are often cited by both historians and judges as evidence that a major historical event occurred on a certain date. The Times is the most profitable newspaper with a 1.2 billion dollars ads sale.

Except those major newspapers, there are a large number of hometown newspapers. They carry local Ads only. Big-city dailies are the most visible, like Washington Post. From the view of content point, here locates some alternative and minority newspapers like counterculture newspapers, gay newspapers in the USA. Today people in American prefer living out of the core city. So, community newspapers especially suburban weeklies are booming as people continue moving out of the core cities. Those weeklies can make large circulation. They were received in almost three out of five of the American households, now, it up to about one-third from 1970. The market change flown this phenomenon, advertisers put their ads to the suburban weeklies.

Advertising are the most important source of income of those newspapers. Although the American newspapers are still making a lot of money, both dailies and weeklies face couple problems. For comparison, in 1950, there were 1,772 daily papers (and 1,450 or about 70 percent of them were evening papers) , while in 2000, there were 1,480 daily papers (and 766 or about half of them were evening papers.) Daily newspaper circulation is also slowly declining in America, partly due to the near-demise of two-newspaper towns, as the weaker newspapers in most cities have folded: Between 1960 and 2000 the population of the United States increased from 179.3 million to 281.4 million, so daily circulation per 100 people declined from 32.8 to 19.8.（according to the data from Wikipedia）. Americans read papers less. Televisions have cut into newspaper display Ads and newspaper may loss their dominance as an advertising medium. With the new technology developments, the television has stolen the glitz and romance that newspaper once had. However, since the late 1990s, this revenue source of newspapers has been directly challenged by Web sites what they called new media like eBay (for sales of secondhand items),

https://www.360docs.net/doc/f3572711.html, (jobs), and Craigslist (everything). And after them, the bigger comes to be Google, the most valuable Internet advertising company. Now, more newspapers bankrupt. Can this oldest mass media fix its trouble as it did that when the radio is created and the followed television? Although someone says that it imposable for new media to kill a older media form like newspapers, and newspapers’ role played in human life can not be placed by any other medias. But time is changing, if newspapers want to survive, what they should do when they facing those challenges from new form medias are urgent.

Now, let us have a look at Chinese newspapers (main land).

In China, early government-produced news sheets, called Ti Pao, circulated among court officials during the late Han dynasty (second and third centuries AD). Between 713 and 734, the Kaiyuan Za Bao("Bulletin of the Court") of the Chinese Tang Dynasty published government news; it was handwritten on silk and read by government officials. In 1582 there was the first reference to privately published newssheets in Beijing, during the late Ming Dynasty. Chinese newspapers of the last century including today's newspapers of the People's Republic of China, Chinese newspapers overseas, and earlier papers such as Shen Bao, Xin Wen Bao, Zi Lin Xi Hu Bao, also draw upon other influences in the history of newspapers. Unfortunately, they all stop publication, now. Compare to the oversea newspapers, ours are so young. Certainly, Chinese could be the first reader of the modern newspapers, but the Europeans did it before us.

When you look to the hodiernal Chinese newspapers (of the main land), a very obvious phenomenon is China has a lot of party newspapers, every city’and provi nce’ government, the Central Government has its own party newspapers. They service for the governments and the Communist Party of China（CPC）. In China, there have 1935 dailies by 2006, 22.6%, 438 out of which are party newspapers, and they got the 40.55%of the total national daily circulation. Those party newspapers are the mainstream newspapers of China. The most important party newspaper is the People’s Daily which started from 1948, owned by the CPC Central Committee. It has a 1.93 million circulation. Different from American, the Chinese like evening or city’s newspapers than the traditional dailies. And in China, the evening newspapers is the only part of Chinese newspapers which are business newspapers, they do business in the market as other enterprise do. The most popular one is the Yangzi Evening News,owned by Xinhua Daily Group, with a 1.77million circulation in Jiangsu Province. But the most profitable dailies are the Guangzhou

Daily with a 2.14billion RMB income in 2006—it is a party newspaper of the city of Guangzhou’s committee. The most interesting is a teaching weekly called English Weekly get the largest circulation in China, in2006, it put out 16 billion copies every week! It’s so big a number! Well, the newspaper central government for foreigner called China Daily, its mission is to express the government’s policy to the world. All are country first.

Because of the special politic system of China, newspapers in China are not so free as American newspapers. As what the CPC always told to people, the party newspapers are the speakers of the government and the CPC. So in those newspapers here has only one thought usually When they face the people all over the world, they can’t got enough belief of the world, two words: without credibility. People around the world don’t believe what they said. Another side, most of Chinese newspapers are not like enterprise as American newspapers do. They are just out of the old Planned Economic System; there have a lot of problems waiting for. American newspapers are deferent, they have so long a history, and Americans have rich experience in managing a newspaper. The largest difference between two country’s newspapers is that in American there have hardly government regulations, but in China, newspapers can’t run without the supervision of all kinds of government’s media and news agencies. In American, people are free to write and free to choice which media to press their thoughts. So the American newspapers earn more respect from the world than Chinese newspapers.（finish）

References：

the Development Report of Chinese Newspapers Industry (2007) Lin Jiang / Feng Yuming. Social Sciences Academic Press

U.S. Media System Gu Xiaojin . Nan Fang Daily Press

the Media of Mass Communication John Vivian . Peking University Press