People's Daily to uphold media standards

In the Internet era, mainstream media will have to pinpoint itself as a filter for online information, as a mediator for emotionally charged public opinion and as a cornerstone of the people's state of mind, Zhang Yannong, president of the People's Daily, said during a college tour to Shanghai-based Fudan University on Thursday.

"This is what the mainstream media should have, along with other obligations and social responsibilities," Zhang said at the prestigious university, which was founded in 1905.

"Facing challenges from new media in recent years, the media conglomerate represented by the People's Daily and people.com.cn has strived to innovate and keep with the times, and to maintain the media's value, instead of being self-serving," Zhang added.

Fudan University has set up a course dedicated to researching the People's Daily at the Fudan Journalism School.

Xie Guoming, deputy chief editor of the newspaper, gave the first lesson to over 200 students and the newspaper will occasionally send reporters and editors to teach this course in the future.

The course is part of the cooperation between the two, as "a long-term mechanism will help more in areas of social construction and management, cultural prosperity and the State's policymaking," said Yang Zhenwu, minister of the CPC Shanghai Committee's Publicity Department.

"Currently, employees under 35 years old account for 57.6 percent of the staff, a demographic structure that shows the newspaper's strength," said Tian Junrong, a department chief at the newspaper.

"My stereotype of a newspaper as stiff has been refuted," a college student said before posing her question during the Q&A session.

More than 500 students and faculty of the school were attracted to the auditorium at the school's Guanghua Tower.

Launched on November 23, 2009, the People's Daily campus tour series has covered nine universities, including Peking University, Tsinghua University and Wuhan University.

People's Daily Online, operator of the website for the People's Daily, will be listed today at the Shanghai Stock Exchange with an issuance of 69.1 million shares, aiming to raise 1.34 billion yuan, marking the first Chinese State-owned media to be listed on the capital market.