06.12.08
Turmoil at Beijing’s Expat Magazines
The Times of London reports that Time Out Beijing is being shut down for the Olympics:
The June issue of Time Out Beijing has been banned from distribution by China’s censors, The Times has learnt. But the decision seems to have been taken not because of any racy or politically incorrect content. Time Out Beijing has fallen victim to the accelerating imposition of restrictions on any aspect of life in the capital deemed to pose a potential threat to a smooth Olympics. . . .
The ostensible reason given by the General Administration of Press and Publications for pulping the June issue was that the magazine lacked a proper licence. But Time Out Beijing has published ever since its launch without completing the proper paperwork and this had never raised eyebrows among the censors who were well aware of one of the most prominent of the tiny number of English-language publications in the capital.
The English edition was at first distributed effectively as an insert to the Chinese-language magazine — which does possess the proper licence. Gaining a publishing licence in a country where all publications are carefully monitored by cultural commissars is a long and tortuous process. For a foreign title, the procedures are doubly difficult and involve publication under the title of a usually defunct local magazine.
Meanwhile, the latest chapter in the That’s Beijing/ The Beijinger saga hints that the current editors of TBJ, which has long been the best of Beijing’s expat magazines, are leaving over an ownership dispute and starting a TBJ clone:
Our publisher, who controls the official publishing license of “that’s,” has abruptly ended our long-term cooperation mid-negotiation and behind our back hired someone else to produce “that’s Beijing” magazine from now on.
Our company, however, will be soldiering on with a magazine you’ll find to be quite similar to that’s Beijing — a magazine to be called “the Beijinger” which will make its debut with the July 2008 issue.
It features the same layout, the same content, the same distribution, and most importantly, the same team that has brought you that’s Beijing since we created its debut issue in October 2001.
There is chatter about the move on the TBJ website, which used to be at thatsbj.com but has mostly been moved to thebeijinger.com, surely in anticipation of the most recent split. (thatsbeijing.com redirects to the spam kings at asiaxpat.com).
No word on any changes to City Weekend (yet).
