Volume 1: Birth! Seven time travelers Chapter 119: Helping You Get on the Horse and Sending You on Your Way (I)
"Well, the quality of the paper used in this newspaper is good, better than ours. But how much does such good paper cost?"
On March 11, Donglin Daily was launched. The Jinyiwei of Wuxi, who had been keeping an eye on the Donglin Academy for a long time, bought ten copies of the newspaper as soon as it came out and delivered them to Zhu Youdong's desk that afternoon.
Then Zhu Youdong gathered Cao Huachun, Zhang Yicheng, Wang Chengen, Zhang Shize, Li Chunzhong, Tian Ergeng and others to watch the first issue of Donglin Daily together.
This newspaper currently only has two pages and eight editions. It can be seen that Gu Xiancheng and others are still relatively cautious: they would rather have fewer pages, but they must make the content solid.
Specifically, the distribution of the eight editions is:
The first edition is about domestic affairs, and also includes some trivial matters in Wuxi County. The second edition is about the life of Confucian saints. The first issue published the story of Duke Zhou. The third edition is about essays, mainly the comments of the bigwigs of Donglin Academy on the government. The fourth edition is about cultural relics and some interesting stories in history. The fifth and sixth editions are novels. This issue contains something similar to strange stories based on the life of Qiu Ran Ke in the Tang Dynasty. The seventh and eighth editions are special editions of poetry and songs.
"Your Highness." After flipping through the Donglin Daily several times, Zhang Shize looked up and said, "This newspaper has no advertisements. How for to make a profit?"
Zhang Shize was already over ten years old this year. In addition to continuing to study with Zhang Yicheng, Xu Guangqi and others, his main focus was to assist Zhang Yicheng in running a newspaper. Therefore, although he was young, he was already very experienced in newspaper management.
"Sir, my colleagues in Wuxi reported that the price of three copies of Donglin's newspaper is one copper coin."
"Ah? Wouldn't that mean they would lose a lot? Even if they get the support of many gentry in Jiangnan, how long can they last if they continue to lose money like this?"
The support from the Jiangnan gentry is not a joke. In this inaugural issue, Donglin Academy clearly stated: The editor-in-chief of this newspaper is Gao Panlong, and the responsible editors are Qian Yiben and other Donglin gentlemen. In the inaugural statement, nearly half of the page was used just to thank the gentry who contributed funds and sponsorship, and to list them one by one. Compared with the inaugural issue of Jinling Daily, which did not thank the sponsors at all, their supporters are not ordinary.
"Well, there are only three possibilities for Donglin to continue like this." Zhu Youdong smiled slightly: "First, the newspaper is well run, and the gentry in Jiangnan think that they can gain a good reputation with the newspaper, so they are willing to continue to invest money to support it. Second, the support of the gentry cannot last long, and finally Donglin starts to advertise in its own newspaper. You see, the inaugural statement does not say that this newspaper will never advertise, right? Third, it can't continue, and it is too embarrassed to advertise. Or the sales are too poor, even ordinary businessmen are unwilling to advertise in Donglin. Finally, it has to go bankrupt..."
"Then which one do you think is more likely?"
"Well, I don't know. After all, we have just started."
"Your Highness."
"What's the matter, Mr. Zhang?"
"Have you seen the seventh edition? Donglin is challenging us."
"Hmm? There is such a thing. Let me take a look."
On the seventh edition of Donglin, the editor-in-chief Xue Fujiao said in his speech that this edition welcomes contributions from talented people or beautiful women, regardless of the type of poetry or song. Once the article is accepted for publication, it will be paid two cents of silver.
There's nothing wrong with this speech, but there's something unpleasant at the end.
Xue Fujiao mentioned in the second half of his speech that, in addition to him, a bookworm who called himself a "book collector", as the editor-in-charge, the editors who assisted him were all talented young men who had passed the imperial examination before the age of 15. Their thinking was extremely agile and their future was extremely bright - this was an allusion to the fact that the ordinary editors of Jinling Daily were all poor students who had not passed the imperial examination or even the Tongzi examination at the age of 15.
If this is just a veiled attack, then Xue Fujiao went on to say: Literary works should learn from each other. It is best to publish works with the same theme in a certain issue or several issues of the newspaper. Don't be like the so-called "literary edition" of Jinling Daily, which has no fixed theme in each issue. As a result, on the same day's newspaper, there are poems about plum blossoms, lotus flowers, flowers, and chrysanthemums, all mixed together. There is no way to compare and learn from each other. We at Donglin Daily will not make such a low-level mistake... Recently, winter has passed and spring has arrived. If you want to submit your works, you can write about flowers, birds, insects, fish, scenery, and people, but the theme must be spring.
Although this was a blatant provocation, Xue Fujiao seemed not to be satisfied. He made a straightforward statement at the end: When writing spring poems, you need to be lively. Don't use decadent words like "If only life could be like the first time we met" - this season is not suitable!
"Haha, interesting."
After carefully reading Xue Fujiao's declaration of war, Zhu Youdong thought for a moment, then said in a loud voice: "Wang Chengen, please prepare the writing."
After several years of teaching by Zhang Yicheng, Zhu Youdong's calligraphy skills were already very good. He used the wolf hair brush soaked with ink to write on the rice paper very quickly, and soon a seven-character quatrain was completed.
Everyone quickly came forward, and Li Chunzhong simply began to read: Sitting alone in the pond like a tiger, resting under the green shade of the tree. In spring, if I don't speak first, no insect dares to make a sound.
"atmosphere!"
"Your Highness, you are so domineering, you are truly a king!"
"Haha, I'm ashamed, ashamed." The plagiarist Zhu Youdong smiled awkwardly: If none of Chairman Mao's poems are domineering, then there is really no one who is domineering. This poem is Chairman Mao's first seven-character quatrain, but from here we can see that in that era, he was the one with the highest ambition and the greatest mind.
Although this was a work by the Chairman when he was 16 years old, the language was simple and there was almost no allusion in it. But Zhu Youdong firmly believed that this poem alone was enough to beat the so-called geniuses of Donglin.
"Tian Ergeng, I'll leave this matter to you."
"Yes, I will make sure those corrupt scholars in Donglin Academy publish His Royal Highness's masterpiece in their own newspapers."
"When you go to Donglin, you can tell Gu Xiancheng that we at Jinling Daily welcome Donglin Daily to join the newspaper market. If they have difficulties in newspaper sales channels, our Fangshan Grocery Store is already spread across the counties of the four provinces in the south of the Yangtze River. They can use our grocery store channels to sell, collect manuscripts from all over the country, and pay royalties."
"Ah? Your Highness, if you do this, wouldn't that be..."
"Haha, you guys." Zhu Youdong stood up. "In my opinion, the Donglin nerds are just making a fool of themselves by running a newspaper. The simplest thing is that they don't advertise and they set the price so low, which is a complete loss-making business. Such a thing cannot last long. Secondly, after the newspaper is published, what about the sales channels? I don't know how much silver the Jiangnan gentry gave to Donglin, but no matter how much, it will take hundreds of thousands of taels of silver to re-build sales channels throughout Jiangnan and even the whole country. And this thing is not only a matter of silver, but also a huge amount of time. After all, there is no store in the Ming Dynasty that can set up branches in every county like our Fangshan Grocery Store. It can be said that without our help, the Donglin Daily will soon degenerate into a local newspaper in Wuxi. It will even become an internal publication for a group of nerds, just like the small-scale self-entertainment of Donglin Academy now."
"Then why does Your Highness still want to..."
"We have to help them. Competition is a good thing. Besides, if Donglin Daily is expanded to the four provinces of Jiangnan with the help of our network in a short period of time, what if the people in the four provinces prefer our newspaper?"
"Hahahaha~~Your Highness is absolutely right. If you want to hurt someone by dropping him, you have to lift him up first!"
"Li Chunzhong, how can you say that about His Highness? This is called helping him onto the horse and sending him on his way!"
"Hahaha, Zhang Shize, you are the sinister one. Give me a ride? Where?"
After everyone laughed together for a while, Zhu Youdong clapped his hands and said, "So, it is necessary to help Donglin. However, since we have a new competitor, we must do our best next time . Mr. Zhang, my suggestion is that the newspapers in the near future should give more space to The Legend of the Condor Heroes, and we should try our best to end it within seven days."
"Your Highness, if The Legend of the Condor Heroes is finished, what will our newspaper sales be like?"
"Haha, The Legend of the Condor Heroes is already coming to an end. Many people have guessed the final ending. The Legend of the Condor Heroes cannot attract more popularity. We must introduce a new protagonist and a new story."
"A new protagonist?"
"Yes, the protagonist this time is Yang Kang's son."
