Daming Town Haiwang

Chapter 396, Daming Morning News

Newspapers have almost become obsolete in later generations. People seldom read newspapers, and there are various channels to obtain news information.

But for Daming now, it is not easy to run a newspaper.

There are two problems in running a newspaper, one is paper and the other is printing technology.

Both paper and printed books are available in this era, but neither is suitable for large-scale newspapers.

Paper is very expensive in this era, not so expensive. A random stack of paper costs hundreds of pennies, and it costs a few pennies for paper the size of newspapers in later generations.

In addition to the high price, most of the paper is not good in quality, and the price of good quality paper is even more expensive. Like rice paper, its quality is very good, but if you use rice paper to run newspapers, Liu Jin will lose his pants 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.

Liu Jin can improve the printing technology on the basis of movable type printing, and it is barely enough, but the ink is not so easy to solve. The ink used for printing is different from the ink used for writing calligraphy. , The ink for writing brush characters is slowly ground out by adding water to the ink block.

It is naturally impossible for this printing to operate in this way, it must produce a special printing ink.

"Meals have to be eaten at one bite, and things have to be resolved one by one. Fortunately, I have a cheat, otherwise I really don't know how to run this newspaper. In the time travel novels, there is no cheat to run a newspaper. You must be blind It's nonsense, it's impossible."

List out the problems he encountered one by one, and Liu Jin is also ready to solve them one by one. With golden fingers, all kinds of skills are not a problem, and Liu Jin himself has raised a lot of skilled craftsmen. With a certain foundation, it is not difficult to figure it out.

In fact, Liu Jin has almost solved this problem, because when the First Bank of Ming Dynasty issued bank notes, Liu Jin had already specially built a paper mill and a printing factory.

Under the guidance of Liu Jin, the paper mill produced quite good quality paper specially used for printing banknotes. The paper used to print banknotes is special paper with cotton and lint added inside. Therefore, the quality is good, and there will be no problem with water.

Of course, it is impossible for Liu Jin to use this kind of paper to print newspapers, it is too expensive, making such paper is more expensive than rice paper, but with this basis, it is not a problem at all to produce some relatively cheap paper.

Anyway, Liu Jin is not going to make money by running a newspaper, as long as he doesn't lose too much money.

The problem of ink has also been solved. Printing banknotes is fine, and it is not a problem to print newspapers. Printing newspapers does not need to be exquisite, and newspapers that have just started don’t need pictures, as long as the writing is clear. .

If you want to do this, you can easily solve this problem based on the technology of printing bank notes.

Liu Jin also handed over the paper and printing technology to his servants, but he himself started to train the editors and journalists of the Ming Morning Post,

Daming Morning Post, this is the name Liu Jin thought of for his own newspaper. It is similar to the morning newspapers of later generations. It is published in the morning, so that everyone can read it every morning.

Of course, in this era, it is definitely impossible to release every day from the beginning, and it is almost enough to release one issue every three days. When the conditions are ripe, it will be released every day slowly.

In addition to technical problems in running a newspaper, there is another big problem, that is, the problem of news materials.

Since it is a newspaper, it reports a variety of news materials, ranging from major national events, anecdotes and strange events in various places, economics, military affairs, etc. to related content, etc., which can be published.

But these news materials will not fly into your hands by themselves, which requires professional journalists to collect news materials from various places in Ming Dynasty, and the collected news materials need to be reviewed by editors.

Those news materials can be distributed, those news materials cannot be distributed, those are valuable, and those are not, the editor's review is very important.

Without a huge team of journalists, once your newspaper is established, let alone a daily report, you may not be able to report once a month, because you don’t even know what to print.

This is the biggest difficulty in running a newspaper in this era.

Because of the inconvenient transportation and communication, the transmission of information is extremely slow. Except for the [-]-mile acceleration speed that the official side created, the transmission of other information is very slow, and often it can only be spread in a small area. .

Without news materials, newspapers cannot run at all.

Liu Jin placed the headquarters of Daming Morning Post in the capital, and directly bought Sanjin's large courtyard at a high price as the office location of Daming Morning Post.

At this time, in a courtyard of the Daming Morning Post's headquarters, Liu Jin looked at the hundreds of people in the courtyard. These people were the first batch of editors and journalists of the Daming Morning Post.

Most of these people were drawn by Liu Jin from the industries under his command, and all of them were able to read and write, and they had a certain foundation.

There are also some talents that Liu Jin hired at a high price, such as the five people sitting in the front, Bao Jiwen, Ou Yangguang, Wu Zhang, Liu Zili, Zhou Zhi, these five people are all talents, or down-and-out talents, and they are all young. Already in his forties, he had no hope of taking the imperial examination, so he could only make a living by teaching and writing.

Of course, no matter how down-and-out he is, he is also a scholar and a scholar, and he is very arrogant. Liu Jin also spent a lot of money to recruit him. One person pays 10 taels of silver a month, plus other benefits. These five people were recruited to be editors and editor-in-chief.

It is natural to be more rigorous in running a newspaper. Of course, typos and typos must be carefully reviewed. More importantly, such sentences must be strictly prohibited. There must be no big mistakes, otherwise it will make people laugh.

These people cultivated in their own industries are good at literacy and arithmetic, but after all, they are not systematically educated since childhood, and naturally they are not as good as scholars in this era in many aspects.

And Xiu is the most powerful scholar Liu Jin can invite. As for Juren, don't even think about it. Juren is a person who has really stepped into the privileged class, and will not come here to be an editor or editor-in-chief.

"Everyone, thank you very much for your trust and support, the reason why you joined Daming Morning Post~"

Liu Jin looked at the hundreds of people in front of him, and said with a smile on his face.

Everyone was already familiar with Liu Jin's Daming. At this time, everyone was looking at Liu Jin, carefully looking at the number one scholar, the son of a master.

Especially Bao Jiwen, Ou Yangguang, and Wu Zhang, the five scholars in the front, are more popular than others. The five of them are all very old, and they can't even pass the exam. Liu Jin in front of him, he is young. It's the champion man.

Originally, the five of them didn't want to be editors and editors-in-chief. After all, they were also scholars, and they also wanted to save face. Teaching and educating people is full of peaches and plums. It's not shameful, and they enjoy many reputations. As for writing and selling calligraphy, that's too Forced by life, things about scholars can always find some excuses to beautify and beautify themselves.

What is this editor and editor-in-chief?
And what is this Ming Morning Post?
They don't know it, but the status of a scholar still has to be scruples, and they can't do things that lose their status.

But after hearing that Liu Jin, the number one scholar, was working under his command, and for the sake of 10 silver dollars a month, these five talents were willing to come to Daming Morning Post to work.

"Daming Morning Post, it is mainly used to publicize major national events and report anecdotes and strange events from various places, that's what it is."

Liu Jin showed a newspaper, which was a trial-printed newspaper, about the same size as the newspapers of later generations. typesetting.

Following Liu Jin's speech, someone distributed newspapers to everyone, one copy per person, holding the newspaper in their hands, and everyone was suddenly full of doubts.

"Mr. Zhuangyuan, why doesn't the writing on this newspaper run from right to left?"

Bao Jiwen looked at the newspaper carefully and asked quickly.

"Because it is more conducive to printing, and it is also more convenient for reading and typesetting."

Liu Jin replied with a smile.

"Then what are these symbols on it?"

Ou Yangguang pointed to the commas, periods and other questions above.

"I call these punctuation marks. The function of punctuation marks is to distinguish sentences from paragraphs, facilitate reading and convey meaning more accurately."

Liu Jin picked up the chalk and began to write and draw on the blackboard behind him, and began to introduce the functions and usage rules of punctuation marks to everyone.

There are no punctuation marks in books and articles in this era. There are two factors for this. One is that the number of words in ancient books and articles is very small, and articles are written in classical Chinese. Words express all meanings.

The other is sentence reading. Everyone learns sentence reading from the beginning, that is, punctuation. The effect is similar to that of punctuation marks. You can also clearly know where is the end and where is the beginning.

However, if Liu Jin wants to run a newspaper, Liu Jin will try his best to match the vernacular in terms of language, because in this way, more people can understand it, and it can also convey more accurate information.

If a newspaper is written in classical Chinese, a newspaper with tens of thousands of words can be written in a few hundred words in classical Chinese, and it will also report a lot.

The key is classical Chinese, and only these scholars can interpret it. People with no level of proficiency can't interpret it at all. There are too few words, which is not conducive to the accurate dissemination of information, and it is easy to cause ambiguity.

　A lot of people are complaining about me, saying that I don't know the status of a scholar, and that the writing about a scholar being bullied by a village bully is a failure~ I am also speechless, can a scholar not be bullied?
　　
　
(End of this chapter)