Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>For most readers, international summits arrive already assembled by domestic newsrooms. The usual expectation is simple: when the summit comes nearer, local desks should author more of that assembly themselves. This article follows that expectation into a single coastal metropolitan press ecology across China’s three APEC hostings—Shanghai (2001), Beijing (2014), and Shenzhen (2026; N = 1,343; host-window n = 781). The path is not a climb toward local authorship. Staff share falls to 35.7% around capital hosting, beneath the ecology’s routine baseline of 41.9%, then rebounds to 63.1% when the summit is next door—though that rebound overlaps secular staffing growth. Staff copy carries domestic–industrial stakes; wire and mixed compilation concentrate ceremonial summit and leader inventories. “Near” is not one condition. The pattern fits heterogeneous host-linked mechanisms and, equally, shifting newsroom staffing and wire-dependence regimes; the design cannot fully separate the two. Domestication is selective. The source line evidences how desks decide what kind of nearness—and what kind of assembly—to produce.</p>