If you want to get your blood pressure up a few notches, head over to Danwei and read this maddening story. Excerpt (emphasis added):
Yesterday Danwei reported news that the Guangming Group had taken control of The Beijing News — Beijing’s best newspaper — from its more liberal and truth-minded joint venture partner the Nanfang Group. The Guangming Group is controlled directly by the Ministry of Publicity (neé Ministry of Propaganda), and it seems that most editors and journalists in Beijing believe the newspaper will soon go the the dogs under Guangming’s leadership.
An editor at The Beijing News named Wang Xiaoshan responded to the hostile takeover on his blog with a post in large highlighted characters:
There’s no way to retreat, so we won’t retreat. The butcher’s knife is already raised… We’re going to die so let’s make it a beautiful death.
The post was copied as an image by Massage Milk (reproduced above, links to Massage Milk below). But Wang Xiaoshan’s blog is hosted on Sina.com’s blogging service; less than 24 hours after he published his battle cry, Sina’s censors deleted it from his blog, together with all comments that readers had made to the post.
Go to to Danwei to read massage Milk’s evocative response.
1
By jeffery
express our mourning to the loss of freedom of press
December 29, 2005 @ 11:09 pm | Comment
2
By dishuiguanyin
The editor (not the one with the blog) has been sacked and 100 of the journalists have walked out? Anyone heard any more about this?
December 30, 2005 @ 8:45 am | Comment
3
By dishuiguanyin
Ok, ESWN and Shanghiist are onto the story.
December 31, 2005 @ 2:42 am | Comment