Zuo Fang, a Founder of China’s Southern Weekly, is Dead

Zuo Fang, a trailblazing journalist who helped start China’s most influential reform-era newspaper and edited it with the conviction that the press should inform, enlighten and entertain rather than parrot Communist Party propaganda, died on Nov. 3 in Guangzhou, China. He was 86. His death, in a hospital, was announced by the newspaper he co-founded, Southern Weekly. Southern Weekly — the paper prefers that English name over another common translation, Southern Weekend — was started in 1984 as the sister publication of Nanfang Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist…

In Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai’s Next Digital Says It Has Been Forced to Close

HONG KONG — Next Digital, a Hong Kong media company that has published vehement criticism of the Chinese government for decades, said on Sunday that it would take steps to shut down after an official crackdown had left it with no way to operate. In a statement, the company’s board of directors called for the liquidation of the company and said that they had resigned. “We have concluded that the best interests of shareholders, creditors, employees and other stakeholders will be served by an orderly liquidation,” it said, adding that…