China's Media Startups Fight Censorship Crackdown

Will Cai is a pedigreed insider in China where he clerked on the nation's highest court and went on to become a high-profile M&A lawyer. That hasn't made it any easier to run a news website at a time of the country's worst media repression in years.

His site, Initium Media, debuted in early August and the next week an explosion hit the northern city of Tianjin. His editor-in-chief Zhang Jieping quickly dispatched three journalists to the scene, where toxic chemicals stored in a warehouse had erupted in a fireball that spewed debris and poisons over nearby apartments. The reporters slipped past security cordons to write about the disaster that claimed more than 150 lives and then reported on the connections of the warehouse owner. Within days, Initium's website was blocked in the mainland.