media - The online/offline war

A very slow internet and a busy personal schedule have cause a bit of a backlog at my RSS-reader as the has been no shortage of interesting news. I will try to catch up a bit in the coming days, but you might find some old news here too.

Howard French comes in the International Herald Tribune with some interesting details in the war between print and online media, Danwei identified already in December. Print media in China have found the limits of their previously unchallenged growth and are looking increasingly at the booming internet companies to try a see if they can get a piece of the action by charging them for news online media traditionally used for free.

French focuses on the IPR-issue, but at the spokesperson of Tom.com says about an upcoming court case by Beijing News, the situation might be a little bit more complicated.

Howard French digged up an academic paper, documenting the decline in readership of the print media:

According to one recent academic study, newspaper readership in China has declined sharply in the past three years, with the proportion of people who say they read a newspaper at least once a week falling to 22 percent from 26 percent since 2003.