“分期”表示一个历史过程，充满着各种不同的事件，但在报刊史中，“时期”成为事件的定性，有什么“时期”，就必然有什么报纸及其作用；报纸按照“时期”的要求亦步亦趋发挥作用，因而也就没有自身的“时间”，也不是历史“时期”的成就者。本文指出，报刊史研究者的根本误区，在于其“时期”的划分和改变，不是从具体报刊的作为入手，而是当成了一种纯粹逻辑的推演，既无问题意识，亦无理论视角，报刊史的“时间”也就因空洞而失去本该有的力量。文章最后建议，可以考虑从“报刊事件性时间”着眼，使“分期”时间和报刊的“时间”——其时其刻的所作所为相互交织和贯通，从而创造出新的报刊史时间及其体例。

“Periodization” refers to a historical process that contains events and their trajectories. However, in the study of newspaper history, “periods” have been employed as a priori frameworks to qualitatively define events: The existence of a “period” inevitably dictates the nature and role of newspapers in it. Newspapers function passively according to the demands of their “period”, losing their own “time” and their role to shape historical “periods”. This paper argues that newspaper history researchers often fall into a fundamental misunderstanding when dividing or re-defining “periods”. Instead of attending to actual practices and fluctuations of particular newspapers, they treat periodization as mechanical intellectual exercises on a pre-drawn map of newspaper history, with neither problematics nor theoretical perspectives. Relying solely on pre-conceived logic for deduction, the “time” of newspaper history loses its inherent generative power. To conclude, the paper suggests that researchers set out from the “event-based time of newspapers”, allowing the “time of periodization” to intertwine and connect with the “time of newspapers”—i.e., their concrete actions in specific “now time”—thereby creating new periodization and methodologies for newspaper history studies.