Metropolitan Newspapers' Strategies Of News Communication From The Field Of Vision Of Reception Aesthetics

Since the mid 90s in the 20th century, an implanted newspaper—metropolitan newspaper (MN for short) — has grown rapidly in Chinese newspaper market. With its location on the comprehensive coverage of citizens' daily lives, MNs have achieved a great success. Under the effect of MNs, many newly-founded newspapers and some traditionally established ones copied the way of MNs. In broad terms, all these newspapers must be included into the category of MN. In current newspaper market, MNs have been gaining the most readers and the greatest profit with the most influence and dynamics.The "MN Phenomena", as a hot topic, has attracted great attention from the scholars in the academic circles of journalism & communication these years. Some describe the success of MNs, some analyze their market locations, news ideas and news planning tactics, some explore their innovative practices and theoretic contributions to the science of journalism & communication, some study the linkage and conflict between MNs and traditional evening newspapers, some discuss the competition strategies of MNs, others explore the features, connotations and denotations, management and marketing strategies, current situation and future development of MNs. Undoubtedly, these researches provide a sound basis for further studies of MNs. As far as I am concerned, the fields of vision of these studies are very narrow. They study MNs in a microscopic and concrete sense with their highlights on the experience summaries and operation analyses. They can not touchthe external and internal reasons of MNs' success from social and theoretical perspectives.The dissertation intends to explore MNs' strategies of news communication which conform to principles of reception aesthetics, and explore the formation of four markets of MNs, with the former aspect as the internal reason and the latter one as the external reason. The dissertation is divided into two parts. Part one is named '"Exploration of the internal reasons of MNs' success", which mainly analyzes MNs' news communication strategies from the perspective of reception aesthetics; Part two is named "Exploration of the external reasons of MNs' success", which explores the four markets—readership market, advertisement market, news resources market and investment market. These four markets are necessary social conditions for the emergence and development of MNs in the process of urbanization and marketization. The dissertation makes some theoretical analysis in order to discover the underlying basis for the success of MNs.With the direction of dialectical materialism, the dissertation adopts text analysis and case study as its major methods. Many typical cases about newspaper competition and news coverage which are selected from Chengdu, Guangzhou and Beijing are deeply analyzed according to some theoretic fields of vision. The dissertation uses Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser's reception aesthetics and Jurgen Habermas' publicsphere theory as its primary framework of analysis and, therefore, discovers the true reasons for the success of MNs.Part one "Exploration of the internal reasons of MNs' success" consists of three chapters. Chapter one "Introduction of Reception Aesthetics and its hint to Newspaper" points out that because aesthetics is the main content of mass communication and philosophical hermeneutics is the philosophical basis of reception aesthetics, so principles of reception aesthetics can be applied to all texts including newspaper and can direct the newspapers' communication strategies. The hints from the reception aesthetics for the journalists are: 1. the life of newspaper lies in reception and readers are the focus of news communication, so all thecommunication strategies must center on the readers; 2. readers are the target of information services and can not be infused with information; 3. Readers always selectively receive messages from their horizons of expectations, so newspaper must respect and face squarely reader's choice. 4. Journalists must keep readers in mind and invite them to participate in every part of news-making; 5. Readers' horizons of expectations are changing, so the newspapers must develop according to the current times and adjust their communication strategies to readers' horizons. Chapter two "MNs' Communication Strategy in conformity with principles of reception aesthetics" mainly discusses all kinds of communication strategies of MNs. MNs put readership as the sole focus in their whole process of news-making which includes interview, edition, publishing, sale and subscription. MNs serve readers whole-heartedly, respect the primary position of readers and accept their reception aesthetics. These are the true reasons of MNs' success. Chapter three "Updating Innovation and Future Development of MNs" mainly discusses their continuous innovations which provide content beyond the readers' expectation and improve readers' horizons of expectations. Through these discussions, the dissertation points out some trends of MNs' development as followed: 1. the forms of media have turned from civic newspaper to mainstream newspaper and integrated media; 2. the space strategies have turned from metropolitan newspaper to City-chain newspaper; 3. the media functions have turned from information platform to publicsphere; 4. the presentations of news have turned from one-dimensional reporting style to multi-dimensional one.Part two consists of two chapters which discuss the formation and cultivation of four markets under the background of urbanization in order to explore the external reasons of MNs' success. Chapter four "Urbanization and its 100-year development in China" mainly introduces the process of urbanization in China and its relationship with modernization and marketization. Chapter five "Urbanization and the formation of four markets" discusses the four markets of MNs under the macro-background of urbanization and maketization— civic society provides a great readership market,prosperity of urban economy provides plentiful advertising market, diversity of urban lives provide a rich market of news resources, loose political environment and emergence of media industry provide an investment market. With these four markets, the conditions that are mentioned in western journalism theories as the basis for a commercial newspaper have been mature. These conditions are both the social milieu and the soil of the success of MNs.