Changes Of Front Pagetopics On Party Newspaper

Party newspaper is a prevalent political-cultural phenomenon in China. Party newspaper has great influence on such aspects as setting news agenda, discussing hot issues, shaping leading values, and broadcasting major events. As the official newspaper of Jiangsu province, an advanced province in economy and social undertakings, Xinhua Daily covers political, economic, cultural and social developments in Jiangsu province. The fact that Xinhua Daily is a famous provincial party newspaper makes it a good example for related studies.Focusing on Xinhua Daily, the thesis discusses its current and previous front pages, comes to an objective evaluation about party newspaper itself as well as its development, and concludes that the social changes reflected in party newspaper are a "sketch of time". The thesis is a case study, not only discussing the "sketch" features in party newspaper, but also trying to answer the following questions through statistics and analysis. Do political features of party newspaper overtake its news value? How much do reports on conferences and leaders account for in the front pages? Is it possible to dig out the social changes through the front pages of party newspaper? How much attention does party newspaper pay to people’s livelihood? How much and how effectively does party newspaper work in media supervision? What are the features of reports on individuals under the context of collectivism? What changes does the reporting style of party newspaper obtain?Based on1300front pages of Xinhua Daily in the past16years since1978, this thesis discusses the contents and changes from the perspectives of agriculture, people’s livelihood, media supervision, headlines, reporting style, reporting frequency on individuals, reporting ways on big issues, and so on. Besides that, a series of statistics and analysis are also done on elements like science and technology, culture, transportation, environment, society, education, diplomacy, and health. With relative theories of social change, social communication, news agenda setting,"person who has the final say", cultural lag and others, this thesis mainly adopts the research methods of sampling, literatures and interviews. Most existed researches are done from the perspectives of news reporting, front page topics or media guidance, while this thesis studies party newspaper from the perspective of social changes. With plenty of first-hand materials, this thesis has made certain progress through research on the above topics.Instead of following the conventional idea that it is hard for party newspaper to reflect social reality, this thesis holds that party newspaper sketches the social changes in a general way. To conclude, political features overtake news value in the front pages of Xinhua Daily. Statistics on news elements in front pages could reflect main social changes. Reports on people’s livelihood have been gradually increasing and turn into an important part in front pages. Media supervision has been enhanced despite its still-existing inefficiency. The increase of reports on individuals mirrors the ideological anxiety of party newspaper. The reporting pattern has transferred from official-centered to civilian-centered. In addition, the thesis also points out that it is the lack of market orientation that leads to the influence decline of party newspaper, thus to warn party newspaper of its crisis of communication failure. To continue developing in the future, party newspaper has to undergo transformation.