Volume 1: Birth! Seven time travelers Chapter 110 Jinling Daily is founded
"Newspapers for sale! Newspapers for sale! The first issue of Jinling Daily, eight pages in total, for only one copper coin!"
"Selling newspapers, selling newspapers, important court events, Qinhuai romance, rural affairs, poetry and novels, all in Jinling Daily!"
"Sell newspapers, sell newspapers. The editorial department of Jinling Daily has issued an announcement, welcoming all talented people to submit articles to this newspaper. Once accepted, the payment will be generous!"
On October 1, 1607, dozens of children in their teens, wearing the same uniform and carrying the same shoulder bags, suddenly appeared in the streets and alleys of Nanjing...
The newspaper that Zhu Youdong had been planning for a long time, named "Jinling Daily", finally came out.
The top scholar Zhang Yicheng is of course the editor-in-chief, but at this time this editor-in-chief is more of a figurehead. The person who actually runs the show behind the scenes must be Zhu Youdong, a time traveler who has never eaten pork but has seen many pigs run.
Due to the limitations of printing and paper production technology of the time, each issue of Jinling Daily at that time was only two sheets of A2 paper in size, with a total of eight pages in quadrilateral.
According to the experience of later generations, the first and second pages are of course the court affairs and local political news. For Zhu Youdong, the grandson of the emperor, this source of information is simply too convenient. Any information that comes out of his fingers is enough to satisfy the interest of ordinary people in politics.
The third edition is a fixed concise history , and of course Zhu Youdong has added a lot of his own ideas. For example, when talking about the Hundred Schools of Thought in the Spring and Autumn Period, he will naturally use obscure writing to guide readers or listeners to think. In short, he quietly elevates the Mohist and Legalist schools, and at the same time reinterprets the words of Confucius and Mencius: repaying grievances with virtue is definitely the top priority. The words that the people can be made to follow will definitely be reinterpreted.
Of course, this is the inaugural issue, so today's edition mainly talks about Pangu creating the world - at least for now, it will not arouse the disgust of the gentry and Taoist scholars.
The fourth edition introduces world geography and history.
The Ming Dynasty had many faults, but it was much better than the Qing Dynasty in later generations: whether officials, gentry, or ordinary people, their thoughts might be conservative, but they were definitely not closed. So Zhu Youdong directly posted the world map of later generations on the fourth page of the first issue! Of course, in this version of the world map, in addition to the Ming Dynasty still being in the center of the world, the territory of the Ming Dynasty was also different from that of later generations: all the Xuanwei Divisions and so on were considered the territory of the Ming Dynasty - in this way, the territory of the Ming Dynasty in the northeast directly extended beyond the Greater Khingan Range, and the territory in the southwest even extended to the east coast of the Indian Ocean.
The first four pages were still a bit high-end. Those who were interested in these four pages were usually wealthy, idle, and educated people. However, such people would not exceed 10% in the current Ming Dynasty. As a person who was determined to control the public opinion of the entire Ming Dynasty through newspapers, Zhu Youdong had to make ordinary people interested in this newspaper - as long as you were interested, I could convey my values to you.
Therefore, the fifth edition is a novel. The first edition is the first few chapters of The Legend of the Condor Heroes published by the plagiarist Zhu Youdong under the name of "Wang Dong" - in fact, let alone the fact that he has traveled through time for so many years, even before he traveled through time, he could not memorize The Legend of the Condor Heroes. In fact, he could only provide the general story, and then Zhang Yicheng led a group of scholars from Fangshan School to polish it.
In short, in the context of the upcoming war against the Jian Nu, The Legend of the Condor Heroes is the most appropriate. As for The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, which advocates national reconciliation, it can be published after the Jian Nu is conquered.
However, the novel is still not vulgar enough! So in the sixth edition, the shameless Zhu Youdong directly put it on the special edition of "Qinhuai Fengyue". It introduces all the top stars in the Qinlou and Chuguan in Yingtian Prefecture and its surrounding areas - the top scholar who is good at calligraphy and painting was half-induced and half-coerced by the Crown Prince to paint pictures of ladies...
The seventh edition is the poetry and storytelling edition. This edition uses plain language to explain: This edition is for making friends through writing. Everyone is welcome to submit manuscripts! Once the manuscript is selected, in addition to publishing the author's name and place of origin in detail, a certain amount of money will be given. No matter how long the poem is, two cents per poem. If the storytelling novel is selected, two cents per thousand words will be given.
In this edition of the first issue, in addition to publishing the poems of the top scholar and some teachers of Fangshan School, Zhu Youdong once again played his advantage as a plagiarist in order to intimidate other literati and directly published a poem "If Life Could Only Be Like First Meeting".
Come on! I don't believe that you literati won't get your blood boiling when you see this page.
Page 8, Advertisements.
The first edition of the magazine featured a full-page advertisement for the glasses produced by Fangshan Optical Laboratory . The time traveler, who had been educated many times by the copywriters of many advertisers in later generations, personally wrote the advertising slogan for Fangshan brand glasses: With it, I can see all the true images again!
Then in the blank part of this page, Zhu Youdong also very considerately listed the publication fees for this page: a single full-page advertisement, 500 taels of silver per issue, and 1,000 taels for three consecutive issues. Then there are half-page, quarter-page, and even tofu blocks. The prices are all listed in detail.
Of course, for the literati of the Ming Dynasty, these eight pages were certainly shocking enough. But what shocked them the most was that Zhu Youdong put a note on the front page of this issue. This note introduced the punctuation marks commonly used in modern society!
For the entire first issue, Zhu Youdong asked Zhang Yicheng to arrange people to print 100,000 copies!
"Your Highness, isn't printing 100,000 copies a bit too much at once? You must know that these newsboys come to us to get newspapers for free. In other words, apart from future advertising income, we will lose as much as we print. Your Highness will spend a lot of money in the future. If we lose too much on this matter, I..."
"Haha, Mr. Zhang, don't worry. Let me ask you, how much money have you spent since we started this newspaper in the first half of this year ?"
"Recruiting workers, preparing ink, paper, plates, and venues... As of today, a total of 17,000 taels have been spent."
"Hahahaha, how much is it after deducting the venue, housing, equipment, and workers' resettlement expenses?"
"Over twelve thousand taels."
"Well, what if we also cross out the portion allocated to the Royal Guards and the Yangtze River Navy?"
"This, it seems that there are less than five thousand taels."
"What if we remove the subsidies we received from recruiting the scholars from Fangshan School to help? What if we remove the clothes and bags customized for these newsboys? What if we remove the cost of the millions of sheets of special newspaper paper we prepared in advance?"
"So if you calculate it this way, I'm still losing about 200 taels of silver every day, which is 6,000 taels a month."
"That's not a problem. Didn't I allocate 100,000 taels of silver to you in the first issue? I firmly believe that before the 100,000 taels are spent, the Jinling Daily will not lose money anymore. On the contrary, it will make some money."
"Your Highness is so sure?"
How could he not be sure? Relying on the righteous reputation of the Crown Prince in guarding Nanjing, Zhu Youdong could directly issue an order to have a newspaper stand at the entrance of all government offices in the southern provinces. Otherwise, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince would come to your office in person to inspect your work!
Thanks to the Jinyiwei, all catering and entertainment venues in the four provinces of Jiangnan must have the Jinling Daily. Otherwise, the Jinyiwei would come to smash and rob. Er, no, they would inspect related work involving national security.
With the help of the Yangtze River Navy, the spread of this newspaper will become extremely fast. In addition to the four provinces in the south of the Yangtze River, the Grand Canal and even Sichuan in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River will be affected.
By controlling the open space outside the government office, the legitimacy and credibility can be relied upon. By controlling the entertainment venues, the population that each newspaper can influence will increase exponentially. By controlling the logistics channels, the scope of newspaper dissemination will only become larger and larger...
How could a shrewd businessman fail to see the huge business opportunities here? How could he think that the price of an advertisement edition worth five hundred taels of silver was too high?
Therefore, once this newspaper is published, in addition to gradually gaining a position in public opinion, it will not only not lose money, but will also make some money.
