Journalism Paradigm Shift: From Civilian Reporters To Party Cadres

This study examines the process of remolding of private newspapers and newspaper men in Shanghai at the beginning years of New China, by focusing on the remolding process of Takungpao and Wenweipao, the two highly reputed private newspapers in 20th century and further exploring the variation of journalistic paradigms under the circumstance of radical political change from the four dimensions as organization and institution, gestalt worldview, journalistic practice and news exemplar.This study also discusses the theoretical implications of different mechanism between journalistic paradigm change under radical and mild political change and the possibility of reinterpretation for the theoretical significance of Chinese media reforms since 1978.The basic conclusion is:there will be a paradigm shift, of which all the four dimensions varied under the condition of radical political change, which is manipulated by the political power rather than the journalistic organization and journalistic staff themselves. For the four dimensions, organization and institution, gestalt worldview, practice and exemplar, the activity of the agency descends from the first one to the last one. Paradigm shift is not likely to happen if the four dimensions do not shift at the same time during media reforms in China since 1978, although competitive journalistic paradigms has been coexisted for a long time.