The History of Occupational Mentality of Chinese Journalism Practitioners (1912–1949)

The History of Occupational Mentality of Chinese Journalism Practitioners (1912–1949), written by Fan Yaping, a professor from the School of Journalism and Communication at Lanzhou University, focuses on the occupational consciousness, occupational philosophy and pursuit, and inner world of journalism practitioners from 1912 to 1949.

It reveals the special temperament and orientation that are shared among these practitioners such as patriotism and dedication to national salvation and adopting newspapers as weapons. Based on such a temperament and orientation, they were inclined to the CPC and agreed on the Party’s journalism philosophy with different paths and methods amid revolutionary development and profound social and historical changes. Thus, it is a historical necessity that the occupational steps of modern journalism practitioners gradually kept pace with each other.

Five groups of journalism practitioners in the Republic of China—professional journalists, newspaper entrepreneurs, literati commenting on politics, Kuomintang journalism practitioners, and CPC journalism practitioners—are respectively selected to analyze their intention, motives, emotion, psychology, thought, spirit, identity, and philosophy in the engagement in journalism. In the end, the author summarizes the general appearance, characteristics, and trend of the occupational mentality of journalism practitioners in this period, and analyzes the political, social, and personal factors that affect this mentality, revealing the historical trend of changes in occupational footsteps and mentality of all kinds of journalism practitioners.

In terms of innovation, the book is an extension of the research period and renewal of research perspectives based on research on the occupational consciousness and inner world of practitioners in the history of journalism initiated by the author in his Research on the Occupational Identity of Chinese Journalism Practitioners (1815–1912), which was published ten years ago. In contrast, although this book still concentrates on the inner world of practitioners in the history of journalism, it goes straight to the inner world of individuals instead of using the concept of “occupational identity” and its theoretical framework adopted in the previous book. This abandonment of fixed frames and theoretical models makes the inner world of journalism practitioners more vivid, multi-dimensional, and more dynamic, avoiding stereotypes in academic research.

Research on the ten journalism practitioners selected in this book has been innovative. For example, the understanding of the occupational consciousness, philosophy, emotion, and psychology of Huang Yuansheng, Zhang Jiluan, Xu Zhucheng, and Fan Changjiang updated existing research. Research on Xiao Tongzi, Ma Xingye, and Cheng Shewo is also devoted to compensating for the shortcomings of existing research.

Wang Tiangen is a professor from the School of Journalism and Communication at Anhui University.