This article analyzes the journalism ideas of the Chinese newspapers in the 19th century based on the research of the early foreign newspapers. The study suggests that there are two different kinds of journalism ideas: "Yiwen" and "Fengwen" formed by missionaries' press and foreign commercial press due to the different understanding of the news. The former aims at “conveying truth”, trying to use the news to do missionary work, and thus pay attention to explain the truth, with special emphasis on the authenticity and ethics of news. The latter aims at “spreading messages”, intended to make a living and spread messages, and thus do not attach importance to the truth, advocating everything is expected to be reported. In the late of 19th century, these two journalism ideas in?uenced by each other and gradually merged together, but difference still existed in the core of “conveying truth” and “spreading messages”, which together constitutes the source of the idea of "news" in modern newspapers published by Chinese.