New digital hope for suffering newspapers

How have Chinese newspaper publishers and editors reacted to billionaire amazaon.com founder buying the mighty The Washington Post, an icon of American journalism?

You can bet that each and every one of them has followed the deal with intense interest, because it is widely considered another milestone of the rise of the Internet over traditional media. Three years ago, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman and publisher of The New York Times, caused quite a stir in China when he hinted half a world away that the newspaper would stop printing "sometime in the future".

The sale of The Washington Post creates a sense of apprehension also because it comes at a particularly difficult time for Chinese newspapers. The sales of market-driven papers, different from their government-supported counterparts, continued to slide last year, with national ad revenues posting the biggest annual drop ever.