The Paper Janus: How exceptionalism based on regaining influence and doing new media help a Chinese mobile news app negotiate censorship for better journalism

Amid fleeing audience from the state legacy news media to the varied and vociferous new media, the Chinese government launched a mobile news app The Paper (Pengpai) in 2014 in Shanghai as a pilot test of digital journalism to “regain lost influence.” This seemingly against-the-tide expensive news project makes one wonder: How did The Paper come about and what is its nature? As a government-funded digital media, what old and new strategies have its journalists used in its marketing and content-making to achieve the designated goal of regaining lost influence/win public trust? Through in-depth interviews, this article finds the following: (1)The Paper is a product of patron-clientelism based on a consensus among imperatives of the legitimacy-seeking Party, Confucian-minded and job-losing journalists, and the quality-information-hungry public; (2) as it operates, The Paper has learned to speak both digitally and differently; (3) much like a Janus, its news executives initially used different narratives to the Party and the public to curry favor from both; (4) The Paper used both old and new strategies to negotiate with the censors, most notably two new exceptionalist discourses of “regaining influence” and “doing new media.” The author suggests that, using this exceptionalism trope, The Paper and a score of its clones across China have led Chinese journalism into a phase of “influence-seeking Communist new media-ism (2014–now),” during which Chinese journalists, while honing their digital abilities to propagandize China, have produced some quality digital journalism in public interest with the Party paying the bill