State media echo bureaucracy-busting campaign

Chinese state media have looked to improve their reporting style in pursuit of "short, solid and fresh" news stories, in an attempt to reject bureaucracy, formalism and extravagance.

The trend has been highlighted by some slight changes in state media's recent reports of top leaders' activities.

Xinhua News Agency has cut the length of some of its stories.

A story on the meeting between Xi Jinping, new leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Dec. 13 contained less than 100 Chinese characters. This is a contrast to the conventionally lengthy reports of leaders' activities.

Xinhua's report on the meeting between Vice Premier Wang Qishan and Lael Brainard, U.S. Treasury Department's undersecretary for international affairs, on Dec. 11 was condensed to less than 70 characters.

Xi Jinping's trip to south China's Guangdong Province from Dec. 7 to 11 was given only a four-minute time slot at the prime time evening news of China Central Television at the end of Xi's trip.

At a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on Dec. 4, participants approved regulations making explicit requirements on how Political Bureau members should improve their work style in eight aspects, focusing on rejecting extravagance and reducing bureaucratic visits, meetings and empty talk.

The regulations specify that "there should be less news reporting on the attendance by Political Bureau members to meetings and activities, and such reports shall depend on work needs, news value and social effects."

Liu Qibao, head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, on Dec. 11 urged state media organizations to improve their reporting style in pursuit of "short, solid and fresh" news stories, rather than "pretentious, lengthy and vague" ones. He said this during a visit to some Beijing-based state media organizations.

During Liu's visit, leaders of media organizations, including the People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency, Qiushi magazine, Guangming Daily, Economic Daily, China National Radio, China Central Television, and China Radio International presented the plans of their organizations to improve reporting styles.

New reporting styles are even more relevant at a time when readers are leaving traditional media for new media.

Yan Ting, a news writer in Beijing, said, "The stories and newspaper lay-out of some media organizations are often questioned, lambasted or even ridiculed by Internet users, which made me convinced that the reporting style has become a matter of life-and-death to today's media."