An influential liberal Chinese newspaper was expected to publish its weekly edition as usual as officials and journalists neared agreement on a dispute over censorship, reports said on Wednesday.
Supporters of Southern Weekend journalists protesting censorship gathered at the newspaper's offices in the southern city of Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, for a third day on Wednesday.
They were joined by a separate group of protesters opposing the newspaper's liberalism and promoting the ruling Communist Party's Maoist roots, several of them holding banners and portraits of former leader Mao Zedong.
Many journalists walked out after they were angered by the rewriting of a recent editorial in the newspaper, allegedly by a government censor.
But they agreed to return to work following mediation by Hu Chunhua, the new provincial party secretary, who is seen as a rising liberal, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quoted sources as saying.
The newspaper declined to comment on the report and has issued no statement on the dispute.
Several other liberal newspapers have published editorials giving implicit support for Southern Weekend, while other state-run media have run commentaries backing the party's restrictions on media freedom.
Dai Zigeng, a party-appointed publisher of the popular Beijing News, resigned late Tuesday following a "heated argument with propaganda authorities" over the recent debate on censorship, the Hong Kong newspaper said quoting newspaper editors as saying.
"The Southern Weekend incident has caused widespread discussion over freedom of the press, especially on the internet," the Global Times newspaper said in a commentary on Wednesday.
"But freedom of the press must have limits," said the newspaper, which belongs to the party's People's Daily group.
The protests outside Southern Weekend's offices followed two petitions by journalists and scholars.
The New Year's editorial was published in Southern Weekend with the headline "We are now closer to our dream than ever before."
It replaced the original "China's dream, the dream of constitutionalism," according to copies of the original and revised versions posted online.