Newspapers are almost obsolete in later generations. People rarely read newspapers. There are various channels to obtain news information.
But for today's Ming Dynasty, running a newspaper is not an easy task.
There are two difficulties in running a newspaper, one is paper and the other is printing technology.
Paper and printed books are already available in this era, but they are not suitable for large-scale newspapers.
Paper is very expensive in this era, not ordinary. A random stack of paper can cost several hundred pennies. Calculated, a piece of paper the size of a later newspaper would cost several pennies.
In addition to being expensive, most paper is of poor quality, and good-quality paper is even more expensive. Like rice paper, its quality is very good, but if rice paper is used to make a newspaper, Liu Jin will lose money.
Pawn them all.
In addition to the problem of paper, printing technology is also a problem. This printing technology is not only a problem of printing, but also a problem of ink.
The printing technology was based on movable type printing. Liu Jin could still improve it, and it was barely enough. However, the ink was not so easy to solve. The ink used for printing is different from the ink used for writing calligraphy.
, the ink used for writing calligraphy is slowly rubbed out using ink blocks and water.
Naturally, it is impossible to operate this kind of printing. It requires a special printing ink.
"You have to eat one meal at a time, and things have to be solved one by one. Fortunately, I have a golden finger, otherwise I really don't know how to run this newspaper. In the time-travel novel, running a newspaper without a golden finger is definitely a fool's errand.
It’s nonsense, it’s simply impossible.”
Listing the problems he encountered one by one, Liu Jin was also prepared to solve them one by one. With golden fingers, various techniques were not a problem, and Liu Jin himself had trained many skilled craftsmen.
With a certain foundation, it is not difficult to come up with it.
In fact, Liu Jin has almost solved this problem, because when the First Bank of the Ming Dynasty issued banknotes, Liu Jin had already built a paper mill and a printing plant.
The paper factory, under the guidance of Liu Jin, has produced very good quality paper specially used to print banknotes. The paper used to print banknotes is special paper with cotton and lint added in it.
So the quality is good and it will be fine if it comes in contact with water.
Of course, it was impossible for Liu Jin to use such paper to print newspapers. It was too expensive. Making such paper was more expensive than rice paper. But with this foundation, producing some relatively cheap paper was not a problem at all.
Anyway, Liu Jin didn't intend to make money by running a newspaper, as long as he didn't lose too much.
The problem of ink has also been solved. It can be used to print banknotes. It is not a problem to print newspapers. Printing newspapers does not need to be exquisite. For newspapers that have just started, you don’t need pictures or anything, as long as the handwriting is clear.
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If you want to achieve this step, you can easily solve this problem based on the technology of printing banknotes.
Liu Jin also left the paper and printing technology matters to his subordinates, but he began to train the editors and journalists of the Ming Dynasty Morning Post.
Daming Morning News, this is the name Liu Jin thought of for his own newspaper. It is similar to the morning newspapers of later generations. It comes out in the morning so that everyone can read it every morning.
Of course, in this era, it is definitely impossible to publish every day from the beginning. One issue every three days is enough. When the conditions are mature, it will slowly be published every day.
In addition to the technical problems of running a newspaper, there is also a big problem, which is the issue of news materials.
Since it is a newspaper, it reports all kinds of news materials, ranging from national events, local anecdotes, economics, military and other related content.
But these news materials will not fly into your hands by themselves. This requires professional journalists to go to various places in Ming Dynasty to collect news materials, and the collected news materials need to be reviewed by editors.
Which news materials can be published, which news materials cannot be published, which ones are valuable and which ones are worthless, the editor's review is very important.
Without a large team of journalists, if you run a newspaper, let alone publish it every day, you may not be able to publish it every month, because you don't know what to print.
This is the biggest difficulty in running a news newspaper in this era.
Due to inconvenient transportation and communication, information transmission is extremely slow. Except for the official eight-hundred-mile express, other information transmission is very slow and can often only be spread within a small area.
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Without news materials, a newspaper cannot be run at all.
Liu Jin placed the headquarters of the Ming Dynasty Morning News in the capital, and directly spent a large sum of money to purchase a large courtyard with three entrances as the office location of the Ming Dynasty Morning News.
At this time, in a courtyard at the headquarters of the Ming Dynasty Morning Post, Liu Jin looked at the hundreds of people in the courtyard. These people were the first batch of editors and reporters of the Ming Dynasty Morning Post.
Most of these people were recruited from Liu Jin's industries, and all of them can already read and write, and can also write some things, with a certain foundation.
There are also some talents that Liu Jin hired at high prices. For example, the five people sitting in the front are Bao Jiwen, Ou Yangguang, Wu Zhang, Liu Zili, and Zhou Zhi. These five people are all talents, but they are also down-and-out talents, and they are all aged.
Already in his forties, he has no hope of passing the imperial examination and can only make a living by teaching and writing.
Of course, no matter how down-and-out he is, he is still a scholar and a scholar, and he is very arrogant. Liu Jin also spent a lot of money to recruit him, with a salary of 10 taels of silver a month for each person, plus other benefits.
Recruited these five people to serve as editors and chief editors.
Of course, running a newspaper must be more rigorous. Typos and typos must be carefully reviewed. More importantly, sentences and the like must be strictly prohibited. Big mistakes cannot be made, otherwise they will make people laugh.
These people trained in their own industry are capable of reading, writing, arithmetic, etc., but after all, they are not systematically educated since childhood, so they are naturally not as good as the scholars of this era in many aspects.
And Xiucai is the most powerful scholar Liu Jin can hire. As for Juren, don't even think about it. Juren are people who have truly entered the privileged class and will not come to be editors or chief editors.
"Everyone, thank you very much for your trust and support in me, and why you joined the Mingming Morning Post~"
Liu Jin looked at the hundreds of people in front of him and said with a smile on his face.
Naturally, everyone has been familiar with Liu Jin's Ming Dynasty for a long time. At this time, everyone looked at Liu Jin and carefully looked at this champion, this high-ranking disciple.
Especially the five talents at the front, Bao Jiwen, Ou Yangguang, and Wu Zhang, are so popular that they are so popular. The five of them are already very old and cannot even pass the examination. But Liu Jin in front of him is so young.
He is the champion.
Originally, the five of us didn’t want to be editors or editors-in-chief. After all, they were also scholars, and they also wanted to save face. Teaching and educating people would bring success all over the world. It was not a shame, and they also enjoyed many good reputations. As for writing and selling words, that was also the case.
Being forced by life, as a scholar, you can always find some excuses to beautify and beautify yourself.
What are these editors and chief editors?
And what is this Tomorrow Morning Post?
They don't know it, but the identity of a scholar still needs to be taken into consideration, and he cannot do anything that would undermine his identity.
However, after hearing that they were working under Liu Jin, the number one scholar, and for the sake of being paid 10 silver dollars a month, these five talents were willing to come and work here at the Ming Dynasty Morning Post.
"The Ming Ming Morning Post is mainly a newspaper used to publicize national events and report strange things from various places. That's what it is."
Liu Jin showed a newspaper. This was a trial-printed newspaper. It was about the same size as newspapers of later generations. The layout was from top to bottom instead of the most popular right-to-left layout in this era.
typesetting.
As Liu Jin spoke, someone also handed out newspapers to everyone, one for each person. Holding the newspapers in their hands, everyone's minds were suddenly filled with doubts.
"Master Zhuangyuan, why are the words on this newspaper not from right to left?"
Bao Jiwen read the newspaper carefully and asked quickly.
"Because this is more conducive to printing, and easier to read and typeset."
Liu Jin smiled and replied.
"Then what are these symbols above?"
Ouyang Yang pointed at the commas, periods and the like and asked.
"I call these punctuation marks. The function of punctuation marks is to distinguish sentences and paragraphs, facilitate reading and convey meaning more accurately."
Liu Jin picked up the chalk and started writing and drawing on the blackboard behind him, and began to introduce the functions and usage rules of punctuation marks to everyone.
Books and articles of this era do not have punctuation marks. There are two factors for this. One is that ancient books have very few words in their articles. Articles are written in classical Chinese and should be as concise as possible. I wish I could use a
Words express all meanings.
The other is sentence reading. Everyone learns sentence reading from the beginning, that is, sentence segmentation. The effect is similar to punctuation marks. You can also clearly know where the end is and where the beginning is.
But if Liu Jin wants to run a newspaper, Liu Jin will try his best to follow the vernacular in terms of language, because this can be understood by more people and convey more accurate information.
If a newspaper were written in classical Chinese, a newspaper that might have tens of thousands of words could be written in just a few hundred words in classical Chinese and still report on everything.
The key is that only these scholars can interpret classical Chinese. People with no skills can't interpret it at all. There are too few words, which is not conducive to the accurate dissemination of information, and it can easily cause ambiguity.