Zuo Fang, a Founder of China’s Southern Weekly, is Dead

Zuo Fang, a trailblazing journalist who helped start China’s most influential reform-era newspaper and edited it with the conviction that the press should inform, enlighten and entertain rather than parrot Communist Party propaganda, died on Nov. 3 in Guangzhou, China. He was 86. His death, in a hospital, was announced by the newspaper he co-founded, Southern Weekly. Southern Weekly — the paper prefers that English name over another common translation, Southern Weekend — was started in 1984 as the sister publication of Nanfang Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist…