A Comparative Study Of"China Sporls Daily"and"Titan Spons"(1988—1997)

China Sports Daily was the first professional sports newspaper in China. As the official newspaper of the National Sports Commission, it has long been occupied the leading position in sports newspaper. Titan Sports was born out of a newspaper created by Hunan Sports Commission. However, it transformed from a small local tabloid to the largest sports newspaper in a short period of time. The year between1988and1997was the important period of the changing and competitive formation of the two newspapers.This paper uses the method of document analysis, content analysis, expert interviews and logical analysis. It studies the content characteristics and the causes of change between China Sports Daily and Titan Sports in1988to1997.According to the circulation of China Sports Daily and Titan Sports and the expert opinion, this paper divides the study into two phases: China Sports Daily leading phase (1988-1992) and Titan Sports gradually beyond phase (1993-1997).Studies have shown that, during the year between1988and1992, China Sports Daily got the sports information easily, its reports focused on the concept of knowledge, the balance of event selection and the value of advocacy. On the other hand, Titan Sports had the difficulty in obtaining the sports information, its reports focused on the concept of competition, the emphasis of important event and the value out of politics. Overall, China Sports Daily is better than Titan Sports in influence and circulation during this period.During the year between1993and1997, China Sports Daily selected pan-sports-oriented content, unified style, local vision and the purpose of serving the sports system. Relatively, Titan Sports chose the professional sports content, personal style, global vision and the purpose of serving the readers. All in all, Titan Sports was successfully in the marketing operation, and gradually surpassed China Sports Daily during this period.Through this study, the author summarized the external factors of the changes between China Sports Daily and Titan Sports in the decade as follow:the difference in the news reforming promoted by the reforming and opening up and the changing of the economic system, the difference in the reported content brought by the development of sports and the difference in the location of newspaper decided by the changing needs of the audience. The internal factors are the difference in the concept of news production between starting from the source and from the audience and the difference in the newspaper marketing and management method between official newspaper and market newspaper.