Innovation of Membership-based Journalism in China: A News Ethnography Study

In the digital age, the global news industry faces many uncertainties. Crisis discourses such as declining profits and loss of readers are prevalent in the news industry. Membership journalism, as a news innovation, has been seen as a panacea for solving audience trust and income problems in recent years. This study takes guancha.cn, a private news website in China, as a case study to analyze how the website innovates through membership plans, what impact these innovations have on production concepts and production processes, and explores how this model promotes the establishment of a reciprocal relationship between journalists and members from the perspective of reciprocal journalism. The study found that guancha.cn tried transparent content production under the membership model and formed a new production concept - the super newsroom, where journalists, columnists and members jointly produce news. In addition, the establishment of a member community allows members to participate in content production and discussions on public issues, prompting journalists and members to form an equal and reciprocal relationship. This study helps to understand the possibility of the membership journalism model in promoting the establishment of a continuous reciprocal relationship between journalists and members in the context of non-Western societies.