This year I have noticed that there is a new king of newspapers among Beijing’s subway commuters. No longer are people reading Information Reference or Global Times. Instead, they are reading the Beijing Daily Messenger (Xin Bao), an old newspaper that has repositioned itself as the ‘subway’s only newspaper’. Xin Bao’s repositioning obviously trumps the crappy free magazines that have been and gone. I haven’t gotten my hands on a copy of Xin Bao yet, but I have glanced at its front-page and it seems to be free.
Xin Bao’s reemergence as a subway newspaper follows the wide-ranging adjustments in the Beijing print media industry that occurred after the cardboard baozi scandal. On 1 August 2007, Danwei reported that Xin Bao had suddenly changed into an entertainment-oriented newspaper. Obviously that wasn’t a popular move, so Xin Bao has moved to the subway to improve its popularity. I am not sure whether a newspaper can make money while be given away for free to subway commuters, but it certainly seems very popular at the moment, thus it is an attractive option for advertisers.
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