Expats in China mourn the sudden demise of the Shanghaiist blog site
Taiwan News
Date 2017/11/03
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Reporter
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Expats in China are mourning demise of Shanghaiist, a
Screenshot of archived version of Shanghaiist from Oct. 6.
popular blog site which often thumbed its nose at official Chinese state-run media news, after it’s owner announced it would be shut down yesterday (Nov. 2).
After a 12-year run, the relatively new owner of Shanghaiist, Joe Ricketts, called it quits a week after writers of it’s affiliated DNAinfo and Gothamist sites announced they would unionize with the Writers Guild of America, East. In shutting down DNAinfo and all eight Gothamist sites around the world, including the Shanghaiist, Ricketts cited the business environment as being the primary factor.
The Shanghaiist is well known among the expat community in China because it was one of the last major foreign blog sites that was able to avoid being blocked by the Great Firewall of China, despite frequently posting articles that were not exactly in lock step with the mouthpieces of the Communist Party of China. The Shanghaiist was also known for its stories about eccentric, old ball occurrences in China, and the caustic comments by some of it’s regular followers such as Fred Fong. [FULL STORY]
