“The Days When Ideals Shined”: Journalistic nostalgia and the myth of golden age in China

“Yan’an in television journalism”

In Chinese journalists’ nostalgic writings, three periods are often identified as golden ages. They are associated with two particular news organizations, CCTV and Southern Weekly, but “the print media” (zhi mei) in general is also recognizable as a prominent player.

The dominant narrative of the golden age of CCTV unfolds along two plotlines. The first is to see the period under Yang Weiguang’s directorship (1991–1999) as a golden age. This plotline is most clearly manifested in the commemorating discourse on his death in 2014. In these writings, former and current television journalists across the country labeled the “Yang Weiguang era” as not only CCTV’s golden age but also “the golden decade of the 1990s of Chinese television” (47, p. 8). They emphasized that Yang Weiguang “created a glorious era for CCTV” (13) and “spent 14 years to bring CCTV into a golden age that is hard to duplicate” (4). His 1999 retirement from CCTV “ended the decade-long historical enlightenment of Chinese television” (7) and “brought the golden age of television to an end” (1). These sentiments, however, can also be found in similar expressions a few years earlier. In 2008, Shi Feike, a media critic who achieved national recognition through his journalistic career in Nanfang Media Group, wrote that the “Yang Weiguang era was the heyday of CCTV” (34). In 2009, CCTV insider claimed in an interview, “older employees still cherish the memory of the decade from 1991 to 1999, the most glorious years of CCTV” (42).

The second plotline focuses on CCTV’s program Oriental Horizon that was launched in 1993. According to former CCTV producer Wang Qinglei, the launch of this program “marked the beginning of a glorious era of CCTV” (52). Given that the program is often seen as a signature achievement of Yang Weiguang, this plotline is interconnected and overlapping with the first. And while Yang has passed away, the program is still part of CCTV’s regular offering. However, it is no longer a signifier of golden age as it once was, because, as some journalists profess, the show has “become an empty shell” (37, p. 298) and “only retained its name and logo” (15).

The second plotline has additional ambiguity. Unlike the end that was marked “naturally” by Yang’s retirement, when would be the “fall” or decline of Oriental Horizon as a symbol of golden age? Contributors of the nostalgia for the golden age have various answers to the question. First, some have taken as an indication the departure of the core members of the team that created the show. For example, some have written, the death of the producer Chen Meng in 2008 “to a certain extent signified the end of an era” (10), which meant that “the page of Oriental Horizon ha(d) been turned” (15). The sentiment is more fully illustrated in this passage:

(T)he life of Chen Meng belongs to the years of burning passion of the press reform at CCTV, which began in the spring of 1993, from the maiden broadcast of the morning program Oriental Horizon; it belongs to the News Commentary Department, which was often compared to Yan’an in Chinese television journalism; to an era when idealists came together and waved their flags. (36, p. 2)

This is a typical description of golden age. The metaphor of Yan’an, the birthplace of the Chinese Revolution, is frequently invoked by journalists: “twenty years ago, young people came to Oriental Horizon from all over the country, just like revolutionary youths went to Yan’an in the 1930s and 1940s, exercising their own free will” (29). In contrast, now, “CCTV is not Yan’an in television journalism any more; there are less and less normative concerns in hard times” (54).

Second, changes to the format and content of the show have taken place several times in its long history, some of which have been referred to as signs of the show’s decline. Shi Jian, a well-known producer of the show, noted, “in 2001, the show was shrunk from 150 minutes to 45 minutes; the press reform ceased to exist except in name and Oriental Horizon was on the decline” (59). The book The Days When Ideals Shined, an edited volume based on interviews with the members of the show’s founding team, limits the golden age of the show to an even shorter period. Although the book was published in 2013, as a tribute to the 20th anniversary of the program, it only focused on those 3 “years of burning passion” (60) or “days in Yan’an” (37, p. 96) immediately after its debut, which were “full of daring courage, wisdom, innovativeness, free atmosphere, egalitarian association, and avant-garde spirit” (37, p. 322). For the founding members, “that was the most glorious moment of Oriental Horizon; it was also a turning point in the ‘real revolution for Chinese television’” (37, p. 180). The nostalgic lament by the contributors of this volume for the golden age of Oriental Horizon is evident: “since 1996, the new Oriental Horizon has been transformed into a different kind of show” (37, p. 298).

“Whampoa in the South”

In a similar fashion, journalists’ nostalgia for Southern Weekly and Nanfang Media Group also created diversified and differentiated golden ages, albeit in a different setting. The first plotline is also formed around pivotal individuals. Zuo Fang, who is the paper’s fourth Editor-in-Chief (1991–1994), fit the bill; he was believed to have “created the first golden age of Southern Weekly” (65). But most journalists associate the paper’s golden age with Jiang Yiping, the Editor-in-Chief from 1996 to 2000. Jiang’s retirement in 2013 propelled many to proclaim the “Jiang Yiping era” as the “most glorious time” (3) of Southern Weekly; they praised her for having turned the paper into the “Whampoa Military Academy” ³ of the press (9), which trained many accomplished journalists for other media organizations.

The coming of age of the “golden generation” constitutes another plotline of this set of golden age narratives. As early as 2005, a special report on China’s Journalist’ Day sought to “look for the golden generation of Southern Weekly”; these are journalists who “have bought a newspaper into a golden age of Chinese journalism” (51). A Sohu webpage devoted to Jiang Yiping ⁴ lists 25 journalists as being members of this golden generation; included were Southern Weekly’s reporters Zhu Defu, who joined the paper in 1991, and Li Haipeng and Lin Chufang, who came on board in 2002. Despite the ambiguity, most of the writings included in the golden generation the journalists who were most active in the mid to late 1990s, roughly corresponding to the Jiang Yiping era.

If the Yan’an metaphor for CCTV implies attracting talented people from all over the country, the Whampoa metaphor for Southern Weekly suggests dispersing “battle-tested” journalists to other media outlets to achieve their professional successes. Just like the retirement of Jiang Yiping, the passing of the golden generation was also a marker of the end of golden age. For example, writing about Fang Sanwen, a journalist who joined the paper in 1997 but left in 2002 to become CEO of a successful social network site, a reporter described the end of golden generation:

He had experienced and witnessed the most glorious years of China’s most outstanding newspaper … But all of a sudden, his comrades began leaving … Before his departure, Jiang Yiping had left, Chi Yuzhou had left, Qian Gang had left, Chen Juhong had left; after his exit, others also followed suit. A whole generation of journalists left; an era came to an end. (55)

Another journalist, Li Yuxiao, also left Southern Weekly in 2002. According to an online author with the account name Silvia, they departed “at the heyday of the paper’s golden age,” without realizing that they were turning way from a paper that is “moving from its golden age to its twilight” (50). Ever since then, the “spirit of the South has withered away.” (63)

The fall of the print media from its golden age

Just as golden age narratives of CCTV and Southern Weekly, the departure of some prominent print journalists from the profession was taken to signify the fading of a golden age of the print media at large. This is well illustrated in this online essay saluting journalists:

[The Founder and Executive Editor] Feng Xincheng left New Weekly, [Editor-in-Chief] Zhu Wei resigned from Sanlian Life Weekly. All this marks the end of a golden age of the traditional media … The withering of print media is beyond the point of reversibility. New media, especially mobile platforms, are rising so quickly that they are the tidal waves of our time. (44)

Other journalists expressed similar sentiments. Wu Xiaobo claimed that “the departure of Qin Shuo [Editor-in-Chief of China Business News], to a certain extent, means the end of a golden age” (27) and the resignation of Phoenix TV reporter Lüqiu Luwei was also interpreted as “ringing down the curtain of the golden age associated with a whole generation of journalists and arrival of a brand new era” (26).

Those journalists who left journalism tended to associate important moments of their career, their entries and exits in particular, to the rise and fall of golden age, conflating, consequently, individual nostalgia and collective storytelling. For example, one former reporter wrote, “I am very lucky to start my career with Xinhua News Agency [in 2001] at a glorious moment of print media” (16). Another wrote, “people like me, who joined serious journalism business in the summer of five to six year ago [2007], were really working in good times” (24). A former Southern Metropolis Daily reporter recalled,

In July 2005, I was a reckless fresh graduate with a master’s degree and very proudly found a job at Nanfang Media Group … Back then, journalism was thriving and print media were glorious … Ten years later, the golden age has gone. This is the case of not just a particular newspaper, but the whole newspaper business. (21)

Against this background, scandals or crises in the business have also been critical moments for journalists to lament the decline of golden age. In September 2014, Shen Hao, a former senior editor of Southern Weekly and the president of the 21st Century Media Ltd, was arrested and charged of extortion. The scandal shocked the journalist community and generated a wave of public outcries, as reflected in the following commentary on the case by Hu Yong, a journalism professor at Peking University:

Shen Hao’s inspiring words, including “even if journalism goes extinct, it will leave behind countless dedicated disciples” and “may the powerless find strength, may the pessimists march forward,” reflect, to use Shen’s own words, “the idealistic spirit of the generation of journalists who worked at Southern Weekly during the 1990s.” Shen’s fall from grace is a sign that that era is gone forever, and the curtain has closed on the golden age of commercial media in China. (46)

“May the powerless find strength” was a widely disseminated New Year’s Day well-wish published on Southern Weekly in 1999. Shen penned those words. If Shen Hao’s past corresponds to the glorious days of Southern Weekly, his dramatic fall from grace signals the end of golden age of Chinese journalism. As one media commentator wrote,

in the golden age of print media … there would never be such systematic journalistic corruption from top to bottom … The current financial circumstances of print media cannot be compared to the time when Shen Hao wrote “sunshine brightens your face” [in 1999] (38)

when print media were more confident about its capability to make money together with good news.

The golden age of print media emerged from such nostalgic narratives referring to the decade from 1995 to 2005, which is also the decade of media becoming rapidly commercialized in China. For journalists, those 10 years are “commonly believed to be the best decade for print media, especially for metropolitan newspapers” (57). To many, this “golden decade” (20) was marked by “blazing youth and burning passion,” (57) when “the market-oriented media marched forward triumphantly” (40). But in the current “decade of stagnation” (58), “traditional media have reached the final stage of their lifecycle” (18). Most of the observers who contributed to the corpus of the golden age for print media attributed this decline to the rise of new media. In the nostalgic turn to the past, journalists lament not only the passing of a golden age but also hail a new era.

“Forever young”

In the golden age discourse, “youth” denotes the youthful years of the narrators who were active journalists during that era. It also refers to a certain kind of organizational atmosphere or zeitgeist that was neither stale nor rigid: “Those were the glorious days of the (CCTV’s) News Commentary Department’s youth, when (an anchor of CCTV) Cui Yongyuan was also very young” (41). The CCTV anchor Jing Yidan, acknowledging that she was no longer young during those years, nevertheless felt the youthful spirit: “When I joined Oriental Horizon, I had already passed the age of being young. But working in that team, you could always feel the vigorous energy and youthful strength” (12).

For some journalists, the golden age meant “the era when you could be the best young journalist” (37) and “achieve a professional career that was worthy of the golden years of your life” (8). But no matter if it was the youthful years of journalists or the “adolescent stage of the newspaper industry” (12), in the reminiscence of youth, its blossom simply had to fade. After Chen Meng passed away in 2008, CCTV’s celebrity anchor Shui Junyi wrote, “in our tears and condolences, we feel sad about the passing of the youthful years of a generation of television journalists. Our tears are shed for Chen Meng but also for ourselves.” (10) Whether referring to the actuality of youth or used as a metaphor, “youth” weaves together the individuals, organizations and the journalistic community to form a coherent story of the prime of life, with a beginning and an inevitable end.

We can detect three different ways in which “youth” appears in golden age discourse. First, remembering and celebrating the youthful years becomes the purpose of recalling the golden age, as in “giving proper respect for our youthful years” (37, p. 322). Second, lurking behind the journalists who were young in the golden age, there was a story of them being summoned by the spirit of the time. The Yan’an metaphor for CCTV in its golden years is a vivid illustration of this narrative, while Southern Weekly in its golden age was also “a place that almost all young people from all over the country dreamed about” (33). Former Southern Weekly reporter Fang Kecheng captured this connection when describing his personal journey of choosing a career in journalism:

I have told the story of an adolescent boy being “bewitched” by media in the south on many occasions. That was a special time—the SARS epidemic, the Sun Zhigang incident, ⁵ and the Southern Metropolis Daily Case; ⁶ also a special stage of growth for myself … I bought Southern Weekly every week, and mistakenly believed that being a reporter was a better option to undertake social responsibilities and promote social progress than being a scientist. (19)

Third, youthful passion, which expresses the spirit of golden age, constitutes the core element of journalists’ personal recollections. Individuals’ personal growth serves as the bridge between the narrative of youth and the development of Chinese journalism. Often in poetic terms, these nostalgic subjects offered thick descriptions of the “fearless mental state full of creativity and wicked ideas” of the “martyr-like hot-blooded youngsters who left their families and previous jobs behind” (37, p. 180). In such recollections, they also emphasized that golden age provided an environment for their growth that enabled them “to establish their career and reputation at the right place, and the right time” (37, p. 101) and gave them “the courage to face the world boldly” (37, p. 262).

Idealist spirit

In addition to passion and enthusiasm, being young also means being idealistic, as reflected in such book titles like The Days When Ideals Shined (37) and The Gene of Idealism (32) published on the 20th anniversary of CCTV’s Oriental Horizon. A term frequently appearing in nostalgic narratives, “idealism,” is seldom defined. Journalists assume a tacit understanding of its meaning, lying unsaid between the lines. The indicator of idealism is in the labels that attached to professionals, such as “fearless watchdogs” (27) and “journalistic saints at No. 289 Guangzhou Avenue” (56). ⁷ Ruminating over the golden age, a journalist described an idealist as “Confucian journalist,” who “used the ideas of professionalism and muckraking journalism from the West as tools to uncover the truth with perseverance” (22). So, the idealism imbued to the youthful pursuits in the golden age is said to combine the spirit of traditional Chinese literati and journalistic professionalism imported from the West.

The idealism is often set in a sharp contrast with “reality,” which in turn enables a template for comparisons between the past and the present. As the opposite of idealism, reality first implicates material conditions: To say that there once was an atmosphere “full of idealism” is to mean that “the aspiration to material success, even though was present, but was not nearly as strong as in the more recent period” (37, p. 149). It does not mean that golden age was a time of journalists suffering from scanty material means. On the contrary, journalists long for “a past when they were idealistic, had high social status, and received a booming income” (57). An illustrative temporal comparison stated, “ten years ago, journalists working in print media were regarded as ‘uncrowned kings’; now, they have become ‘migrant workers.’ Parallel to the demise of idealism was the decrease of income” (53). Moreover, reality also points to the political environment of news making. When the tough reality replaces idealism, golden age ends. From “waving the idealist flag” (23) to idealism “being laughed at” (21), journalists no longer fancy to “turn idealism into something real”:

When you mention idealism to a journalist, how would he or she respond? Ten years ago [in 2002], he or she would probably say, without any hesitation, “may the powerless find strength, may the pessimists march forward.” At that moment, you would see the sunshine brightening his or her face. But now, he or she would possibly reply sarcastically, “You are the one who is idealistic! Not me!” (53)

In this excerpt, the author used Southern Weekly’s 1999 New Year’s editorial to illustrate idealism. The inspiring statements from the editorial expressed the sense of responsibility of news media and the optimism that journalists once embraced in the golden age, whose decline, as one reporter wrote in a social media post, implies that “journalistic idealism has been turned from an embraced belief to being a wishful fancy, and to finally, despair” (61).

Idolized golden age

As the heyday of the news business, the golden age was supposed to produce a large amount of good journalism. Journalists frequently mention certain news stories in their golden age narratives, including, for example, the investigative coverage of Yinguangxia manipulating the stock market by Caijing magazine in 2001, and the investigative series of the Sun Zhigang’s death in 2003 by Southern Metropolis Daily (57). While these stories left indelible impressions as cases of journalistic excellence, there is no commonly accepted epoch-making or milestone piece, as, for example, the Watergate coverage was in American journalism (Zelizer, 1993). Instead, journalists regard “people” rather than “works” as the scaffold of golden age. The rhetoric of connecting the departure of well-known and influential figures to the passing of an era illustrates this point. Among those journalists being recalled, leading figures are granted a privileged position and are always portrayed in an idealized manner:

The “whole era” defined by Jiang Yiping was an era when you could see among the older generation, integrity and backbone, and among the younger people, respect and aspiration. Ms. Jiang never got involved in any fractional politics. She developed her professional career together with the advances of the press in the country. She influenced at least three generations of younger journalists who had great respect for her, and inspired countless more. By bidding farewell to Ms. Jiang, our spiritual mentor and shelter, we come to the realization that we have to adapt to the world without her. (11)

The idolization of the leading figures is in congruence with nostalgia of the atmosphere of the past, and these towering individuals’ departure is said to “have taken the air out of the whole golden age of the press” (11). The focus of such portrayal is not the professional achievements of these leading figures, but their personality, charm, and charisma. In the nostalgic recollection, it is primarily about the lack of bureaucratic aura. Jiang Yiping is compared to “a beautiful tree in the Southern Weekly” (6), embodying the old saying that “a man of true worth attracts admiration” (17). As veteran journalist He Sanwei recalled, “after joining Southern Weekly, I learned that news executives such as Zuo Fang, Fan Yijin and Jiang Yiping, were news people, not bureaucrats” (3). Similarly, Yang Weiguang of CCTV is addressed as “a considerate old captain” (2), “an experienced captain,” and “Old Yang” (4). Moreover, the influences of these idols were said to transcend their own time and reach later generations. One reporter, although joined Southern Weekly after Jiang Yiping being removed from her position, considered himself among “the small flames ignited by her” (8). The younger generation “recited those New Year’s editorials written or edited by Jiang Yiping and strove to find a way between high ideals and hard reality” (12).

“The unusual years”

Golden age also implies a unique organizational culture and institutional environment, in which the journalists of the golden generation developed their careers. Bai Yansong, a well-known anchor at CCTV, described these “unusual years” in an emotion-laden way:

Oriental Horizon in its beginning stage was unusual, even abnormal, and because of that, unforgettable. The leaders and rank and file could pound each other’s desk without being considered disrespectful. If you had good ideas, you would be respected and the ideas could soon be turned into something real. All flattering or brownnosing was despised … People would not be laughed at when they talked about ideals and dreams. (29, p. 2)

Idealizing the past, as shown in this excerpt, is to depict an “unusual” working condition, characterized by a non-bureaucratic organizational atmosphere, open and egalitarian relationships between supervisors and subordinates. The recollections of golden age at CCTV are filled with descriptions of “cramped spaces” that tended to foster comradeship. The New Year’s parties at the News Commentary Department, for instance, were remembered as gatherings “to make fun of producers and other supervisors” (37). Such acts were taken as a good illustration of “the times when everybody worked together toward success and there was no rigid hierarchy” (43). In a similar vein, “Southern Weekly in the 1990s,” it was later remembered, “was more like a family workshop, making you feel like you were at home” (51). “Reporters or editors back then did not address their supervisors with formal titles, but with their first names” (46).

“Unusual” also means a unique institutional arrangement. In recalling the Yang Weiguang era or the golden age of Oriental Horizon, most journalists mentioned the “personnel and financial policies in this ‘special zone’” (37, p. 199), especially the then experimental producer system. In such a system, producers could sign a contract with the station, recruit his or her own team members, and retain a portion of the advertising revenues generated by the program that they produced. Under this flexible system, “if you did a poor job, you would have no money, and then you would have to leave. It was logical and reasonable” (37, p. 41). This was believed to have made Oriental Horizon an “incubator”: “As long as you have good ideas, passions, and ability, supervisors will approve your project and let you test your ideas” (37, p. 127).

In accordance with this innovative system, there was a “macro environment of ideological opening at the time” (34). For journalists, the political-economic environment outside their organization was like a “glass greenhouse,” while programs like Oriental Horizon were “trees” being nurtured inside. The greenhouse shielded the trees from wind and rain, but also set the limits for their growth. “Given the size of the greenhouse, how tall could the tree grow? Oriental Horizon has possibly reached the ceiling” (37, p. 214). One former producer of the show Shi Jian used another set of metaphors, a bird and cage: “The size of the cage matters, and the wisdom of the bird also matters” (59). He attributed the founding and early success of Oriental Horizon to the favorable ideological atmosphere and a need for reform in the early 1990s, and imputed its later decline to authorities tightening up political control and a growing pressure from ratings and profits.

Whether it is reaching the ceiling of a glass greenhouse or living in too small of a cage, the broader environment that made golden age possible no longer exists. Shi Jian laments, “without a hospitable environment, space, and passion, there is no way for my artistic vitality to thrive” (59). Similarly, He Sanwei, a famous reporter at Nanfang Media Group, pointed out, “now we also have the best talents, but they do not live in the best era” (3).

Ten years apart: before and after

On the 10th anniversary of Oriental Horizon in 2003, Sun Yusheng, the man who led the show’s founding team, published a memoire, A Decade: Starting with Changing Television’s Mode of Expression. In it, he chronicled the reform activities at CCTV from 1993 to 2002. Ten years later in 2013, another CCTV producer Zhang Jie made a documentary titled The Days When Ideals Shined and published a book with the same title, in which he invited veteran journalists to recollect their days at Oriental Horizon. Despite the 10-year interval, the two books have a lot in common. A Decade portrayed the News Commentary Department as “a tribe of idealists” and used metaphors like “Yan’an” or “Shenzhen ⁸ in television.” These expressions and imageries also appeared in the nostalgic texts of the later book. Many historical details in A Decade were recycled and invoked by later writers and have become important raw materials for golden age narratives.

Both A Decade and The Days When Ideals Shined were released on anniversaries of Oriental Horizon and began their story in the same year, 1993. But the stories told in A Decade ended with the publication date, while The Days When Ideals Shined focused on the early three years of the program. In other words, the former told the “unfinished stories” of an “ongoing reform” (35); the latter told finished stories of an era that no longer existed. On the first page of A Decade, Sun made a comparison between the launch of CCTV’s News Channel to the founding of Oriental Horizon 10 years earlier and noted that “these changes are signs of a new round of television reform” (35, p. 1). In the postscript of the revised edition released 9 years later, however, Sun did not provide any reflection on or appraisal of the decade between 2003 and 2012. This is probably due to the fact that the News Channel did not live up to people’s expectations, as “the live broadcasting of historic events made the News Channel popular for a while, but later it declined. Without ‘mechanisms for innovation’, CCTV no longer was dynamic or had vitality” (49).

There is a similar contrast between the essay Leaving by Chen Juhong in 2003 and the later nostalgic sentiments about Southern Weekly that have recently emerged. Although in Leaving Chen recalled a number of memorable moments in her career and displayed a strong personal nostalgia, the essay is more like a personal meditation on leaving her post. At that time, “even though some veteran journalists left, Southern Weekly was still the paper that it was known for, new blood continued to come in and brought with them youthful vigour” (51). Thus, such departure was still a normal job change and did not induce people to lament the passing of an era. Similar to Chen’s essay, resignation letters and other departure narratives produced in the early 21st century focused more on personal reasons for leaving. Authors would occasionally criticize the organizations they worked for, but seldom related their personal situation to the overall state of Chinese journalism. But from 2009 to 2015, many who left the trade bid farewell to the time or era (Chen & Zhang, 2016). Former The Beijing News reporter Tian Ying expressed a sentiment shared by others: “despair is the greatest sorrow … I felt extremely disappointed at the wider environment in which journalists work. Farewell!” (25).

As for Chinese journalism more generally, 10 years ago in 2005, the trade was thriving and journalists were thought to be like birds flying freely, as the veteran journalist Zhu Xuedong lamented, “Guangzhou was the nest, Beijing was the wings, and Shanghai was the furthest sky.” But in 2014, “the nest was poked and dropped on the ground, the wings were broken, and the new sky was shadowed by a curtain” (62).

When exactly in this decade did journalistic nostalgia start to spread? Since 2003, Zhu Xuedong has been writing annual reviews of journalism. These reviews provide clues for us to capture the changes of journalists’ collective mind-set. The decline of traditional media and the rise of new media are the main plotline threading these reviews, and the years around 2013 can be seen as the turning point in the discourse about journalism and journalists. Around that time, expressions that popped up in Zhu’s reviews are “a big mess and devastation,” “loss of professional dignity and honor,” “the fall of the south” [in 2014],” and “the coldest winter of journalism [in 2015].” Similar expressions could be found in others’ year-end reviews. For example, in one of such reviews, the author characterized 2013 as a year when “journalists never felt so powerless” (61). Another claimed that by 2014, “the golden age of the market-oriented media in China has passed, and journalists will have to face a tottering and unstable decade” (45). Another indication was the sheer volume and variety of well-publicized departure statements. Among the 52 such essays collected by Chen and Zhang (2016), 49 of them were released from 2013 to 2015.

In brief, while the expressions of golden age could be found in earlier texts, only since 2013 have they been reformulated into the golden age narrative in the form of collective nostalgia. To a certain extent, the contrast between the narratives produced at earlier and later moments highlights the difference between real-time reporting and nostalgic recollection, between the narratives of an era as “history” and as “myth.” At this particular historical juncture, journalists’ nostalgic turn to the recent past has created golden ages of CCTV, Southern Weekly, and the print media at large; together, they form a historically configured myth of the press reforms started from the early 1990s.

The past and present in nostalgia

When journalists lament the passing of golden ages, they incorporate the past and present in their nostalgia. As I pointed out earlier, the death of Yang Weiguang and the retirement of Jiang Yiping provided occasions for the journalistic community to revisit the past and name golden ages. In both cases, naming an era after the person was retrospective. Whether their “reigns” were glorious or not rests not only with a comparison to the previous period but also with a contrast to the subsequent period. In other words, golden age is historically configured. It does not have natural or essential attributes that can be easily identified. Only by looking back from today’s perspective can that historical period be taken as golden age. As media commentator He Sanwei writes,

Many of the news reports and commentaries published then (during the time when Jiang Yiping was leading the Southern Weekly) would hardly get into print today; back then, you could offer political suggestions and express concerns over the country; you could talk about the rule of law, of the constitution; you could report whatever was happening in China …; you did not need to do watchdog journalism covertly. Back then, it was the bad guys who were afraid of news media, not vice versa … It was definitely the best era, wasn’t it? (3)

If journalists today could still engage in the activities enlisted in this passage, it would be hard to render some assessments on when might be the “best era.” As one media commentator writes in an interview, it is exactly because “journalists are facing the harsh reality in which they are more and more powerless, [that] they cannot help longing for the so-called golden years of Southern Weekly” (55). In a reply to the journalistic community’s sentiment expressed on her retirement, Jiang Yiping pointed out, “Under the current circumstances of traditional media being challenged by new media, people are more likely to recall and cherish the time passed. My retirement provided an occasion for them to do so” (5). Since many journalists are frustrated over the current state of journalism and unsettled by the rapidly changing media environment, they turn to the past and dwell on it as a way to locate their ideals or find a steady foundation to make sense of their career as well as their trade. As a result, “more and more people are getting involved in nostalgia … The tinges of nostalgia are just everywhere” (31). This logic is well illustrated by a former Southern Metropolis Daily reporter:

Print media in those days were much simpler and purer. They only cared about the content and quality of coverage. Journalists were very proud of complete independence of the editorial departments. Reporters and editors paid no attention to advertising and management, focused only on producing independent content. But it has become very difficult. Nowadays, no matter at which stage of news production, you have to consider whether it will sell or not. (23)

However, no media outlet in China, even the market-oriented outlets known to uphold a high level of professionalism, has ever achieved a clear separation of the editorial department from the business section. This excerpt thus clearly illustrates an idealization of the past. It is an imaginative undertaking rather than historical inquiry; it is informed by imputations based on some oughtness principles rather than factual connections among activities or events.

Such a narrative construction is part of the myth-making process. In this process, journalists not only narrate golden age stories in the present but also, as the above except shows, incorporate “the present” into their narrative and connect the past with the present. This logic of constructing golden age as a lens to view the present is clearly illustrated by a poem, composed by the CCTV anchor Jing Yidan in 2012. It was the occasion of the eighteenth anniversary of Focus Interview, a long-running TV show of investigative reporting modeled after 60 Minutes. She wrote,

At that time, for news supervision we had Focus Interview

At that time, ratings were not continually being shouted out to us

At that time, we cared more about honor, expectations and trust

At that time, reporters were like soldiers, on site, on location.

At the present time, we have the Internet; weibo and wechat shatter us like thunder, like lightning

At the present time, television is fading far away from young people’s sight

At the present time, passion has become a scarce commodity, a luxury

At the present time, wrinkles crawl to the corner of our eyes, also in our hearts. (31)

The poem sets up a contrast between the glorious “that time” and deplorable “the present time” and refers to two trends to characterize the latter. The first is the deterioration of the news environment in which material concerns of ratings have overwhelmed ideals. The second is the challenge from the new media. The poem also illustrates the general logic of the nostalgia for golden age that the past is better than the present. Glorifying the past is critiquing the present. For CCTV, the present also means the institutional sclerosis in the organization that was once open to institutional innovations: “those ‘special administrative zones’ outside the (state-control) system [innovations in organizational structure] have been gradually congealed into the rigid system” (14). For Southern Weekly and print media as a whole, “the news environment is getting much worse.” In the end, in journalists’ perception, “the media did not transform China,” rather, “China has transformed the media” (39).

The nostalgia for golden ages inevitably expresses disapproval or criticism of the current news environment. Such an inherent critical stance needs to be carefully managed in actual discursive practice. First, if a critique is too sharp, it may lead to censorship or self-censorship. Take Blog Weekly’s cover story “Farewell CCTV” and the feature story “Director Old Yang” as examples. Compared to the versions posted on the magazine’s social media account, those appearing in the print magazine had several sensitive paragraphs removed. One of these paragraphs, for instance, praised Yang Weiguang’s man-of-the-people style and compared him favorably to his successors. It stated that of all the directors of CCTV, only Yang Weiguang was addressed by subordinates informally, as “Old Yang”; others were addressed officially, as “Director So and so.” Even on social media platforms, which have a greater tolerance for somewhat deviant views and opinions, some farewell narratives were being censored. ⁹ Nostalgic subjects often resort to euphemisms and a circumventing writing style to avoid censorship. Media commentator Wu Xiaobo, for instance, attributed the fall of golden age to the “technological revolution of the Internet” and “social conspiracy” (27), but did not offer any specific explanation of the conspiracy.

Second, in constructing golden age narratives, news organizations are more reluctant to provide accounts of their own pasts; journalists as individuals and as a community became the main subjects of the nostalgia. More than 10 years ago, when Sun Yusheng published his memoire, A Decade, in 2003, he was part of the tidal wave of telling CCTV story to posterity, as witnessed by numerous volumes edited by CCTV staffs during the mid-1990s and early 2000s. This marketing and branding campaign culminated in a multi-volume series named Moving in Concert with Our Time in the same year to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Oriental Horizon. The director of CCTV at the time penned the preface. Clearly, commemorating this anniversary was primarily an institutional act. Ten years later, when CCTV producer Zhang Jie made the multi-episode documentary The Days When Ideals Shined to commemorate the 20th anniversary of this show, the situation was very different. It was not initiated and sponsored by CCTV, and in the end, it was not even aired on any of CCTV channels; it was only made available on CCTV’s official website. In contrast, on 20 May 2015, a market-based newspaper that did not come into existence until later 2003, The Beijing News, devoted 12 pages to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Oriental Horizon. After golden age lapsed, nostalgia might be a shelter for journalists as individuals or as a group with shared professional memories, but for media organizations, it is a burden too heavy to bear.