After thinking about it for three or five days, Zuo Si finally decided to stay, and he was indeed attracted by the novelty of the newspaper proposed by the prince. Especially the article of Zhang Mu on behalf of the people, it has a fatal attraction to him, Zuo Si has lost confidence in the court and the powerful, but his heart to ask for the people's life has not been completely cooled!

In the end, after Zuo Si reported to the imperial court, he was personally instructed by Sima Shu, and finally ran the first private newspaper in the Jin Dynasty. In order to make a newspaper sell all over the world, the most important thing is to reduce the cost per newspaper, otherwise the newspaper will eventually close its doors!

For this point, Sima Shu has long been prepared, and everyone guessed correctly, that is, movable type printing. Movable type printing is of course much more efficient than block printing, and at the same time, the final cost is much lower.

But first of all, a large number of fonts need to be made, so the initial cost is much higher than that of engraving printing, and the technical difficulty is much greater. There were only a few large-scale movable type prints of Chinese history, and all of them were officially organized. Folk movable type printing has always been limited to small-scale, simple and low-level printing applications. It is rarely used for printing.

In fact, since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, in the economically prosperous Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, the use of copper movable type printing gradually appeared and became popular, among which the most famous are the Hua family and the An family in Wuxi, the Sun family in Suzhou and the Zhang family in Nanjing, etc., they use copper movable type to print and sell a lot of books, and the printing effect is also very good.

However, there are not many copper mines in China itself, and copper is the raw material of circulating currency, and the copper type mold is too expensive, and the average person cannot afford to use it, so the copper movable type in later generations cannot be applied on a large scale, and generally only the royal family can afford to use it.

In fact, iron molds and lead molds can actually replace copper molds, but because ancient China mainly used water-soluble ink with smoke ink as pigment. It can be expressed well in wooden engraving, but it is easy to become ink beads in metal movable type. In addition, it is not possible to transfer the printing by simple stamping like woodblock printing.

Rubbing is also a very slow process, in order to ensure that it can be effectively printed, it is necessary to use highly absorbent paper, the result is that there will be ink on the back of the paper, which cannot be printed on both sides, and virtually increases the cost of printing. This is not as good as wooden type.

Of course, wooden movable type also has its weaknesses: if you use wooden movable type printing, about 2oo parts are printed, and the strokes of the character mold are swollen and blurred because of the absorption of moisture in the smoke ink. But on the whole, the weaknesses of wooden type are much less than those of clay type and metal type. Therefore, until the Qing Dynasty, movable type printing in China was still woodcut movable type. But even wooden movable type, whether in the Ming Dynasty or in the Qing Dynasty, did not eliminate engraving printing. Engraving printing finally withdrew from the Chinese printing industry, and had to wait until the eve of the fall of the Qing Dynasty.

The biggest reason for this situation is that ancient China did not use ink, and in the middle of the fifteenth century, the German Johannes Gutenberg created the Western movable type printing technology with lead, antimony, tin alloy molds and ink as raw materials, so that Europe surpassed China in printing technology in one fell swoop.

Because it was the early Renaissance in Europe, Gutenberg's printing technology appeared, which greatly reduced the cost of printed matter, but improved the clarity a lot, thus facilitating the dissemination of scientific and cultural knowledge.

Many scholars in later generations believed that Europe would be able to achieve flying in the 16th and 17th centuries, shorten the gap with China, and even surpass China in the 18th and 19th centuries. The emergence of Gutenberg's printing press is also one of the important reasons.

Moreover, Gutenberg's movable type printing technology is not difficult, in fact, China's printing technology is very mature, as long as the lead, antimony, tin alloy typemold and ink are made, even if there is no Gutenberg printing press, the efficiency will not be bad there.

The lead-antimony tin alloy mold is very easy to do, in fact, it is mainly lead, adding a certain proportion of antimony and tin. These two minerals were developed in China in large quantities in this era, but at this time, antimony and tin were often mixed together and used as tin ore.

Of course, there are also a series of details in casting: the lead characters must be the same size, and the base parts must be perfectly compatible with each other so that they can be arranged neatly in the typesetting.

This requires special process equipment to ensure that there are special character repairers to grind and so on, even in Europe, the full set of casting technology is from the fifteenth century, gradually improved and perfected, until the eighteenth century later, to reach a very high level.

The ink that Gutenberg printed was the most important was not a secret in later generations, in fact, it was made with linseed oil, and until Sima Shu crossed, linseed oil was also used to prepare oil paints. Gutenberg boiled linseed oil, cooled it to a dark black color, and mixed turpentine with a small amount of distilled pine resin with carbon black, and then placed it for a period of time to become ink.

In this era, there was no shortage of raw materials such as flax and pine, and with the ink technology mastered by Sima Shu, it was soon possible to produce the ink needed for printing. In order to prepare for the opening of the newspaper, Sima Shu asked people to make ink while also asking people to start casting molds.

In order to prevent leakage, he specially instructed Xiao Dengzi to find a group of small yellow doors to be responsible, first to cast a hundred character molds, and told him the ratio of lead, antimony and tin, and repeatedly emphasized that he must cast characters according to this ratio, and then wait for his own trial.

After solving the printing press, Sima Shu focused on newspapers, and this time in addition to the private newspapers in charge of Zuo Si, the imperial court will also open two newspaper offices, ready to act as the throat of the imperial court.

This is a struggle for the right of public opinion, in the Jin Dynasty the power of public opinion is basically in the hands of the family, after Sima Shu took measures on the family's economy, population, cultural knowledge, and other aspects, he aimed at the family's hands of the right to public opinion.

Sima Shu had been thinking about the newspaper for a long time, and after repeated discussions with Zuo Si, the two decided to run the newspaper as a weekly magazine, with two issues published every ten days and one issue every seven days. As for the name of the newspaper, Sima Shu had a fierce quarrel with Zuo Si.

"Your Highness, what does this so-called Luoyang Weekly mean?" Zuo Si was very dissatisfied with Sima Shu's name, which had no cultural connotation at all.

"It's not interesting, it's just a name, how good it is to be easy to understand! How many people can understand the sour things you have in the ground? You must know that our newspaper mainly serves the middle and lower classes, and if you want them to agree, you have to be close to their lives. ”

Don't look at Sima Shu's high-sounding words, in fact, it is just a little bad taste in his heart, just like asking the crown princess to call him husband, he just wants to remind himself that he is from the 21st century through this kind of little trick.

"Well, since His Highness insists, let's use this name!" Zuo Si didn't see that the registration was good, and in his heart he always thought that his name was the best!

"By the way, Your Highness, how much does this newspaper need to sell?"

"Five cents a piece."

"This ...... Isn't that a bit high? ”

"Lonely, the editor-in-chief of Zuo, this price is indeed not too low, but do you have to understand that the people who can afford the newspaper will be ordinary people? It is conceivable that unless the economy of the Jin Dynasty developed greatly, newspapers would be a luxury for ordinary people. ”

"Your Highness, since the common people can't afford to buy newspapers, how can Your Highness let the common people accept newspapers?"

"It's up to the restaurants and teahouses that are all over the place, and there are a lot of storytellers in these places, and you can sell the newspaper to them and let them act as newspaper commentators every day. In this way, even if ordinary people don't know how to read or can't afford to buy newspapers, it doesn't affect their liking for newspapers! ”

After discussing the price, Zuo Si discussed the issue of newspaper layout with Sima Shu, because the consumer groups targeted by Luoyang Weekly were poor scholars, merchants, handicraftsmen, self-employed people, rich peasants, etc. Therefore, the whole page contains very rich content, and Luoyang Weekly is divided into four pages and eight pages.

According to the results agreed by the two, the first page is the headline news, the whole newspaper is introduced, and the second, third and fourth pages are current affairs news; The fifth and sixth editions are columns and topics; The seventh edition is an advertisement, and the eighth edition is flexible. Do this for a few issues first, and then slowly increase the layout.

"Your Highness, this ...... The paid advertisement ...... "Zuo Si is most reluctant to let the mundane defile the sacred cause of the newspaper."

"Hehe, if the editor-in-chief Zuo has no money, how should your newspaper continue to operate? You don't think you can pay for yourself by selling newspapers, do you? Advertising will be the most important source of income for newspapers in the future, and with this income, your newspaper will be self-sufficient. Only by completely not relying on others can your newspaper look at all kinds of problems from an objective and fair perspective! ”

Judging from the experience of later generations, the first few issues are the most important for news publications, and although there are no competitors in this era, the effect and influence of the first few issues cannot be ignored.

In order to create a sensational effect, Sima Shu was going to report on the big farm plan promoted by the imperial court as a key news, and during this time, Zuo Si happened to go below to collect materials, and then write a few articles against the family, it is best to expose the ugly side of the family, and point out how they obstructed the implementation of the imperial court policy for their own selfishness.

At present, only Zuo Si is in charge of Luoyang Newspaper, and it is estimated that he can cope with it at first, but I am afraid that it will not work after a long time. Sima Shu thought about it again and again, and felt that Zuo Si's sister Zuo Fen should be a good special author, her own talent was good, and it was really a waste for her to stay in the palace.

"Taichong, you see if this will work, in the future, I plan to use your sister Zuo Fen as a special writer for your newspaper, you can leave a special page for her, publish some articles and poems written by Zuo Fen in each issue, and let her comment on some facts."

"This ...... Isn't that good? Zuo Siyan was moved when he heard this, but he was still a little worried that others would oppose it.

"Hehe, don't worry, this matter is wrapped up in Lonely!"