{"id":2353,"date":"2014-07-29T16:35:20","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T16:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=2353"},"modified":"2014-07-29T16:35:20","modified_gmt":"2014-07-29T16:35:20","slug":"terrified-founder-decides-to-shutter-hong-kong-pro-democracy-news-site-house-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/terrified-founder-decides-to-shutter-hong-kong-pro-democracy-news-site-house-news","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Terrified\u2019 Founder Decides to Shutter Hong Kong Pro-Democracy News Site \u2018House News\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px;color: #444444;line-height: 1.7\">Posted 27 July 2014 21:09 GMT<\/span><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2014\/07\/\u87a2\u5e55\u5feb\u7167-2014-07-27-10.06.37-AM-800x445.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-2354\" alt=\"\u87a2\u5e55\u5feb\u7167-2014-07-27-10.06.37-AM-800x445\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2014\/07\/\u87a2\u5e55\u5feb\u7167-2014-07-27-10.06.37-AM-800x445-300x166.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"166\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2014\/07\/\u87a2\u5e55\u5feb\u7167-2014-07-27-10.06.37-AM-800x445-300x166.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2014\/07\/\u87a2\u5e55\u5feb\u7167-2014-07-27-10.06.37-AM-800x445.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nScreen Capture of the House News\u2019 Facebook Page. The site had more than 230 thousand Facebook followers before it shut down.<!--more--><br \/>\nThe House News, a popular pro-democracy news site in Hong Kong modeled after the Huffington Post, was shut down without warning on July 26.<\/p>\n<p>Tony Tsoi, a House News co-founder and key investor, announced the closure in a note posted to the site at 5 p.m. He explained that political pressure against critical voices and a lack of advertisers drove his decision to shutter the site.<\/p>\n<p>Launched in July 2012 as a news curation and blog site, The House News grew to become one of the most popular online media outlets in Hong Kong, ranking 57 in traffic from Hong Kong on Alexa with 300,000 unique visitors per day. Yet over the past two years, the news platform failed to attract enough advertisers to keep afloat.<\/p>\n<p>Tsoi, who supports protest movement Occupy Central&#8217;s plans to peacefully take over central Hong Kong and demand the right to choose candidates for the city&#8217;s next chief executive election, said in the shutdown announcement that he is \u201cterrified\u201d by the political atmosphere:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/globalvoicesonline.org\/2014\/07\/27\/terrified-founder-decides-to-shutter-hong-kong-pro-democracy-news-site-house-news\/\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted 27 July 2014 21:09 GMT Screen Cap &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/terrified-founder-decides-to-shutter-hong-kong-pro-democracy-news-site-house-news\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,370],"tags":[317,90,677,477],"views":1209,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2353"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2356,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions\/2356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}