bestfiction Chapter 1494: All the money I earned was hard-earned.
Chapter 1494: All the money I earned was hard-earned.
If it were just a sentence or two, or a paragraph or two, that would be fine. Chen Mu could understand; after all, it's normal to create atmosphere.
But this first draft of the newspaper contained far more than just one or two paragraphs; saying it was one or two pages would be an understatement!
Chen Mu counted them; out of the four pages of the newspaper, this nonsense actually took up… a full four pages!
Yes, Chen Mu found only two somewhat useful sentences in the entire text of this strange newspaper.
What made Chen Mu even more nervous was that the only two paragraphs were left for Chen Mu and his two companions to fill in the blanks.
In this city, no one feels cold. Even though it's -0.05°C, a ragged beggar told our interviewer ( )
Hunger doesn't exist; everyone is well-fed. Even the homeless man rummaging through the trash told our interviewer ( )
Yes, Chen Mu read it from beginning to end, and he was quite certain. The entire newspaper, if you really wanted to say it wasn't fluff, only had these two paragraphs.
Moreover, these two sentences only provided the basic outline; the remaining details, such as the temperature, what the beggar said, and what the homeless man said, all had to be filled in by Chen Mu and his team.
This is hardly worthy of being called a newspaper?
Chen Mu could imagine that if he bought such a newspaper, he would probably tear it up on the spot.
Let alone newspapers, which are packed with information. Even long online novels wouldn't dare to be so blatantly padded with filler content.
Imagine a novel with four chapters, only two of which contain useful sentences, and the reader has to fill in the blanks with their imagination.
Seeing this kind of novel, readers probably want to go up the internet cable and chop the author up.
How dare newspapers, which are more information-intensive, go to such extremes?
Chen Mu looked at the editor-in-chief strangely, his eyes filled with incomprehension.
The editor-in-chief, Wei Yi, had clearly anticipated Chen Mu's reaction.
It smiled sheepishly and explained to Chen Mu:
"Mr. Chen, do you think our bizarre newspaper is low-quality?"
"It's more than just padded; it's even padded than online novels," Xiao Ye muttered under his breath. Back when he was a "homebody," he used to watch TV, play games, and read novels, and he was always frustrated by the padded content of online novels.
Even the most superficial online articles are still like sponges that have absorbed plenty of water; you can still squeeze out some substance.
This bizarre newspaper is truly like seawater with microorganisms floating in it—it's nothing but water.
The editor-in-chief, feeling a little embarrassed, quickly said, "Actually, we did this out of necessity."
You two think this way: our newspaper makes money, but actually, it's the money from selling newspapers.
When readers buy our newspaper, what they are actually buying is the content of the newspaper, which is information!
We sell information; we make money from the volume of information we provide.
When the Underworld Post Office was thriving, we had many subscribers, and a single newspaper could be printed and sold in thousands or even tens of thousands of copies.
Back then, a single newspaper would be packed with information, absolutely full of useful information!
However, with the decline of Underworld Post Office, and the decreasing number of subscribers, the number of readers has also decreased.
As I just mentioned to you both, nowadays, once a newspaper is written, it will basically not be printed in several thousand copies, at most two or three copies.
Printing two or three copies would be considered a small hit!
Many newspapers were printed and then burned directly to their respective readers without even needing to be photocopied.
It's essentially a one-on-one, highly customized service.
The remaining readers are all very discerning. They may not like mainstream content and only want to read what they want to see.
But all they paid was the price of a newspaper. And because of the promotion, we even gave them a 50% discount.
In this way, we could have collected money from 1000 or 10000 copies of the same newspaper.
We can only charge 0.5 copies for a newspaper now.
With thousands of times less money, the amount of information in the newspapers naturally decreased exponentially.
We are also helpless in this situation, and our readers can understand.
These remaining readers may only need to know one or two sentences at a time.
So, Mr. Chen, you can think of the interviewer as a one-on-one, private information service specialist. They tailor concise information specifically for that one reader, providing the information they want to know.
However, due to our business model, we are selling newspapers.
Therefore, according to the previous business model, we could only flood the page with padding, using 99.9% of the content to fill the entire newspaper.
The remaining 0.1% is what readers really want to know, and it's what we need to interview people about.
Even under such circumstances, our interviewers' salaries actually decreased by more than 80%.
Because the costs are not shared, a draft written by one editor could previously be used in 10,000 newspapers. Now, it's like editors are writing on a one-to-one basis, and the cost of editing is also rising.
The current Underworld Post Office is essentially a personalized service.
Costs have skyrocketed due to personalized customization. Revenue has been halved, or even drastically reduced.
The money interviewers earn is all hard-earned.
After listening to the editor-in-chief's bizarre explanation, Chen Mu suddenly felt that it actually made a lot of sense.
From this perspective, the "water" in newspapers is merely a superficial phenomenon; what they really sell is the information contained in those one or two sentences.
Xiao Ye sighed, "This is such a low-paying job, and it's still hard-earned money. If online novel writers heard this, they'd be green with envy."
However, Xiaoye also knew that for the Underworld Post Office, it was indeed hard-earned money.
The editor-in-chief couldn't help but feel a little emotional when he said this.
He pointed to the first draft of the newspaper and said to Chen Mu and the other man, "Mr. Chen, this newspaper might be a subscription from a reader who cares about this city."
Based on our experience, this city has always had a good environment and has developed very well.
Therefore, 99.9% of these clichés are copied and pasted from previous templates.
But if it were 100% platitudes, readers wouldn't be fooled and certainly wouldn't believe it.
Fortunately, at our Underworld Post Office, there is a rule: the content of the interviews must be true!
Therefore, when we interview beggars or homeless people, these two sentences are definitely spoken by the beggars or homeless people themselves.
Once we write it down, readers will know at a glance that we did indeed go on an interview.
If even a beggar says so, then the city must be developing quite well.
If the readers are satisfied, we've made our money.
So those two rules are actually the bottom line for our Underworld Post Office to survive.
We absolutely cannot fabricate anything; it must be true, otherwise our interviewers will be punished according to the rules. That's why readers are willing to buy our newspaper and accept such low-quality content.
Because readers know that those one or two sentences that aren't fluff must be true.