About Dazhong Net

Dazhong Net

Dazhong Net, published at dzwww.com and known in Chinese as Dazhong Wang, is the provincial key news website and portal of Shandong province in eastern China. Operated in Jinan, the provincial capital, by the Dazhong Daily newspaper group — the Dazhong Press Group — it is the online arm of one of China's oldest and largest provincial newspaper organisations, whose flagship Dazhong Daily dates to 1 January 1939. Dazhong Net carries Shandong and national news to web and mobile readers, gives the group's many newspapers a common digital home, and operates the group's Poster News mobile live-broadcasting work. In 2010 it was named, as Dazhong Network, among the ten government-owned news websites selected nationally for A-share listing reform.

Roots in Dazhong Daily, founded in 1939

To understand Dazhong Net, start with the newspaper whose name it carries. An English-language Shandong page published on dzwww.com itself states that Dazhong Daily, launched on 1 January 1939, is a newspaper with the longest history and widest influence in the province, with a daily circulation of over 400,000, and that it also publishes Qilu Evening News, Rural Dazhong, Life Daily and other papers. The same page notes that Shandong set up sites on the net such as Dazhong Net, at www.dzwww.com, providing a fast and convenient means for the entire world to learn about the province.

That self-description captures the portal's founding logic. A provincial party newspaper with roots in 1939, published in Jinan, extended its authority to the internet so that Shandong's news could be read far beyond the province's print distribution. Dazhong Net is therefore not a standalone start-up brand. It is the digital continuation of the Dazhong name, and its credibility with readers and officials rests on the newspaper group behind it.

The Dazhong Press Group and its titles

The group around Dazhong Net is a substantial publishing organisation. Reporting on a major press order in 2009 described the Dazhong Daily as one of China's most popular provincial newspapers, published in Jinan, which celebrated its 70th anniversary in early January of that year — consistent with its 1939 launch. The group's ten other daily titles at that time included Qilu Evening News, with a circulation of 1.05 million copies, and Peninsula City, with 900,000 copies, both ranked among the world's 100 highest-circulation newspaper titles. The group also published five magazine titles and had an active online presence.

An earlier press-industry report, from 2006, listed the group's titles in more detail: alongside the flagship Dazhong Daily, described as the mouthpiece for the Shandong Provincial Party, the group published Qilu Evening News, Rural Dazhong Daily, Life Daily, Mid Shandong Morning News, Peninsular City News, Economic Herald, City Sun, The Youth Journalist and Pioneer. A group spokesman explained at the time that the group had concentrated on developing its strength through smaller newspapers covering all areas of reader interest, which had enabled it to become one of the leaders among provincial party newspapers nationwide. Dazhong Net sits on top of that structure, publishing and linking the journalism of a group whose print titles, in their prime, reached well over a million readers a day in Shandong.

Qilu Evening News: the group's popular title

The best-known of the group's popular papers is Qilu Evening News, whose content has long been a major part of the group's appeal online. Qilu Evening News was founded on 1 January 1988 and is based in Jinan. Its masthead was written in Chinese calligraphy by former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, a distinction the paper still carries. It is published by the Dazhong Press Group, which as of 2011 published eleven other Chinese newspapers.

The relationship between the flagship and the evening paper explains much of Dazhong Net's content mix. Dazhong Daily supplies the authoritative provincial record: party and government news, policy and official announcements. Qilu Evening News supplies the popular, city-facing journalism that evening papers in China built their circulations on. A provincial portal that carries both can serve officials checking the authoritative line and general readers following everyday Shandong life — and Dazhong Net's role has been to hold those two registers together in one Shandong gateway.

A provincial key news website

Dazhong Net's formal status is that of Shandong's provincial key news website. In China's media system that designation matters. Provincial key news websites are the official online news gateways of their provinces: licensed, state-owned operations expected to publish authoritative news, to guide online discussion in their province, and to present the province to the rest of China and the world — exactly the function the site's own English Shandong page describes.

Jinan is the natural base for that work. It is the provincial capital, the home of Dazhong Daily since well before the internet era, and the seat of the provincial government whose announcements the portal carries. From Jinan, Dazhong Net publishes Shandong news for a province that is one of China's most populous, with major cities including Qingdao — where the group has also operated a major printing plant, described in 2009 as one of the biggest in northern China — as well as the group's Jinan printing operation.

Named for listing reform in 2010

In May 2010 the Economic Observer reported that ten Chinese government-owned media websites were likely to be listed on the A-share stock market in the next few years. The ten were People's Daily Online, Xinhuanet, CCTV Online, Qianlong Network, Eastday, Enorth, Dazhong Network, Voice of China, Zhejiang Online and Sichuan Online. One or two, the report said, would aim to list before the end of that year.

For Dazhong Net, inclusion in that list is the clearest national marker of its standing. The policy behind it, stated publicly by a Publicity Department official in September 2009 and by the State Council Information Office, was to select important website corporations to pilot reform, accelerate the corporatisation of key news websites, allow them to recruit state-owned strategic investors and list once conditions were ready. Dazhong Net was Shandong's representative in that national first rank of official websites, alongside the central flagships and the provincial portals of Shanghai, Tianjin, Zhejiang and Sichuan.

Poster News and mobile live broadcasting

As reading moved to phones, the Dazhong operation's mobile face became Poster News, working alongside Dazhong Net. A Chinese media-integration account of the Dazhong Newspaper Group's work, translated by Laitimes, describes Dazhong Network and Poster News innovating a model of mobile news live broadcasting described as live broadcast plus news and government services. In addition to the daily press conferences of the State Council Information Office and the Shandong Provincial Government, Dazhong Net and Poster News linked up with the local channels of 16 cities to broadcast important official press conferences across Shandong.

The same account gives the operation's positioning as based on Shandong, the country's first-class and facing the world, and describes it testing live broadcast reporting of foreign hot news events, using video live broadcasting to reach the first scene of events and exploring uninterrupted live broadcasting, interactive short-video and live formats and national linkage live broadcasts. It presents Dazhong Daily in 2021 as taking media integration as its breakthrough point, with its group media — including Dazhong Daily, Qilu Evening News, Peninsula Metropolis Daily and Dazhong Network Poster News — exchanging practice on integrated development. Academic reporting on Chinese digital newspapers likewise lists Dazhong Press Group among the local media groups, alongside People's Daily at national level, that established a central kitchen system for converged news production.

Print strength behind the portal

The scale of the group's print operation explains the resources behind the portal. In 2009 the group signed what its president called the biggest single order for new press equipment in its history, a double-width Commander press line for printing Dazhong Daily in Jinan, joining a second plant in Qingdao. Three years earlier it had ordered a shaftless Goss Universal 75 press to increase capacity and quality at its Dazhong Daily Printing Center, a press that would also print Qilu Evening News, then described as having a circulation of 1.2 million in Shandong province.

Those investments belong to the print era, but they are part of Dazhong Net's story. The portal inherited a newsroom and a brand built by a group that invested heavily in reaching every part of Shandong, every morning, in print. Moving that reach online — first through dzwww.com and later through mobile live broadcasting — was the group's answer to the same distribution question in a new medium.

Dazhong Net today

Dazhong Net remains active at dzwww.com as Shandong's provincial key news website, operated from Jinan by the Dazhong Daily newspaper group. Its profile combines three elements that few provincial sites can match together: a flagship newspaper founded in 1939 with the longest history of any paper in its province, a stable of popular titles headed by Qilu Evening News, and formal recognition in 2010 as one of China's ten official news websites selected for listing reform. For readers researching Shandong, dzwww.com is the province's official online gateway; for researchers of Chinese media, it is a clear example of how a powerful provincial party newspaper group rebuilt itself as a converged, mobile-first news operation without giving up its name, its base or its authoritative role.