Spatial configuration in institutional change

This paper examines the institutional changes in China's journalism reforms. These reforms involve the introduction of market forces into news operations without a fundamental change in the communist political system. Situated in this macro environment, journalists, as entrepreneurial actors, transform the internal tensions in the existing journalism institution into resources for carrying out their improvised and innovative practices. By doing so, they reconfigure the institutional space of the party-press system and create a unique dynamic of center versus periphery and front versus back regions in China's party press. Although the paper is based on an observational field study in China, it is written to present a more general argument on the institutional significance of journalistic practices.