Readers get their teeth into digestible news

If you're a frequent customer of street newsstands in big Chinese cities, you may have already noticed an intriguing phenomenon: Daily newspapers are competing for space with tabloid-sized digest publications that collect published articles mostly from print media.

In Beijing, on the shelves of dusty and cramped corner kiosks, readers will find as many digest papers, if not more, displayed alongside dailies. Some stands carry several metropolitan and national newspapers, but stock a dozen digest papers published by newspaper companies across the country. It's reported that general-interest digest papers all have six or seven-figure circulations nationwide, which has attracted more newspapers to venture into the business.

I am a faithful reader of two digest papers. Except on overseas trips, I've not missed a single issue of Reference from Books and Periodicals that is edited in Xi'an in Northwest China, which boasts a distribution network of 168 Chinese cities. The other one is the Beijing-based Writer's Digest that provides a mix of political, cultural and social stories. Both are published twice a week. The owner of the kiosk near my workplace will start digging out the papers every time she sees me approach from across the street. Do I buy Chinese daily newspapers? No, I read them on the Web, when I am prompted by interesting headlines on my smartphone.