XX: The girl blogger who cried man
Celebrity blogger Xiaxue posted an entry about her “sex change” operation and it made it to the front page of a Singapore Chinese newspaper, Lianhe Wanbao.
It turned out that the post was an early April Fool’s joke.
Blogger, Motd of motd.escrito.info, asked some interesting questions about the media here.
Wrote Motd,
But did this piece of frictional blog entry deserved to be on the front page of the local newspaper? What happened to the more important news headlines like the revamp of the public bus system?
Are Newspapers running out of worthy news to be published? Do you think this piece of news about Xiaxue sex change deserved to be on the front page?
There are few reasons why XX’s sex operation hit the front page.
First of all, XX is a blog celebrity who has also made use of the mainstream media to increase her celebrity status.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. In this case, the sword is the mainstream media.
As the mainstream media has already reported on her celebrity status, it is only the responsibility of the mainstream media to continue reporting on her as this is expected by their readers.
Hence, any celebrity news is worth covering.
Front page of a print newspaper is its most valuable estate and it is where publishers use it to attract readers to buy it from the news rack.
In this case here, with a title that shouts “Female blogger goes for sex change operation” will attract more attention to the papers.
But this is a short term pull and it devalues the quality of the paper in the long run. Why the editor or even the subs decided to put XX’s news on the front page beats me.
However, local chinese newspapers tend to focus more on the people or even the individual as opposed as the English papers that will put only the most important headlines in front.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the Lianhe Wanbao put XX’s headline in front.
While Motd do not have any problems about creating fictional entries, this whole episode amplifies the need to highlight that a post is fictional, it is important that it should be stated that its fictional earlier if possible. (Read my entry about the Fiction Press blog.)
Even friends of XX thought that the post was true.
XX may think it is funny to put a fictional blog, but given her blog celebrity status and how the mainstream media loves to hound her, she should have thought twice before putting up such a post.
Though the advertising industry knows the number of readers that XX gets on her blog, her use of the f-words have turned away some advertisers who have sworn not to use her. Their greatest fear is that XX would affect their brand if they ever used her.
How will this incident affect her image?
More advertisers will be reluctant as she had pull a fast one on the mainstream media though it was done unintentionally.
It is Lianhe Wanbao, not Lianhe Zaobao. Please correct your post.
Is Lianhe Wanbao (Evening Paper) that feature her in the front page.
I don’t think ZaoBao (Morning Paper) will put XX in the front page.
@Nobody and @hanneng. Thanks for spotting the mistake.
Isn’t Wanbao almost the same as The New Paper? Tabloid News?
In that case, there are more reasons to put XX on the front page.
“XX may think it is funny to put a fictional blog, but given her blog celebrity status and how the mainstream media loves to hound her, she should have thought twice before putting up such a post.”
I think that’s ridiculous. Aren’t newspapers supposed to fact check their sources? So if she puts up a blog post that she flew to the moon on a homemade spaceship, are they gonna just put it on the front page as well?
This is another early April Fool’s joke. As we are always told, our ST is world class, maybe LWB is not there yet.
The editors either know too well it brings in the sales or they really don’t give a damn about quality. Hey, it’s Wanbao, and the readers are “one-of-a-kind” one.