Guangzhou's outspoken Southern Weekly has regained some of its editorial autonomy, according to a censor at the newspaper.
Zeng Li, writing in his blog, said authorities had agreed that assignment ideas and drafts would no longer require approval from the provincial propaganda department before publication.
"The newspaper's editorial board is drafting a report to claim back the authority in making editorial decisions and make the publishing process more systematic, and the request has won support from senior cadres of Nanfang Media Group [which owns the weekly]," he wrote in the first open comment from an insider at the paper since the end of the row between editorial staff and propaganda officials this month.
Editorial staff refused to talk about the deal yesterday, but some showed their support for Zeng's article on the internet.
Zeng, who was hired by the newspaper as an in-house censor after retiring from the group, also gave some rare details of how media control was tightened until it reached breaking point early this month over the paper's New Year edition.
Partly defending the internal censorship, Zeng said he was assigned to help the paper dodge political risks, rather than to "strangle freedom of speech".