The Transition Of The Report Style Of Important Conferences In China: A Case Study Of Reports On The 17^th National Congress Of The Communist Party Of China

This article briefly reviews the history of the Chinese newspapers'reports on important conferences. Since the foundation of the People Republic of China, the major newspapers in China have established a particular report style on important conferences, which showed the features of"pan-politicization"and"one-dimension". Under the circumstances of journalism reforms in China since 1978, the report style on important conferences began to change.Based on the comparative analysis of the Chinese major newspapers'covering on the 16th and 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, this article describes the transition features of the report on important conferences in China. First, the differences of the report style between the party newspapers and city newspapers expand, which means that the conventional report style has transformed from unitary to multiple structure.Second, the transitions in the form are more significant than in the content in the party newspapers. Also, the changes of the reports on non-core issues and non-core editions are more significant than that on core issues and core editions in party newspapers.Third, the changes of city newspapers'report style are more significant than that of party newspapers. Nevertheless, on some special political issues, the city newspapers'report also complies with the routine journalistic practice.Using"centre and periphery"and"bounded innovation"theoretical frames, this article indicates that those frames, which are used to examine the journalism reforms in macro level, also apply to the transitions of the report on important conferences, which determines that the transition process could not be radical in a short time, but only gradual and bounded.