News reporting is a battlefield and the newspaper is the legion, fighting on one news front after another every day.
The pre-editing meeting is the command and deployment meeting for every battle. At this time, the atmosphere of tension in the Oriental Daily News' pre-editing meeting was extremely tense.
What the editorial board members are arguing about today is the coverage of the Shushan Sword Contest that took place in Sichuan Province. Before each foreseeable news hotspot, the newspaper must select a topic and spend sufficient time planning. The Shushan Sword Contest is such a hot topic, and it will involve a milestone in the future development of China's Internet.
Therefore, the newspaper had been conducting relevant warm-up in advance and coordinating with various departments working on the topic selection, but now a big problem has arisen just before the final report goes online due to the changes in the Shushan Sword Conference.
This change started with the ban order on Guoxin not long ago, which was carried out by Oriental Daily. However, the explosive point in the Shushan Sword Contest at this moment is precisely related to Guoxin, so a huge conflict has arisen in the newspaper.
The executive editor with a deep background now requires that the report, which was originally scheduled to be a special topic and in-depth excavation, be turned into a brief report, reporting only Clinton's attendance, but cutting out the public welfare purpose of Clinton's visit, that is, witnessing the support for China's Internet hardware alliance Hanwu Technology, as well as the exposure of the identity of CQ founder and Chinese Internet partner Cheng Ran, in order to implement the Guoxin ban order issued to the newspaper not long ago.
However, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper disagreed on the decision-making of this place. "Reporting the news truthfully is our general purpose. Comprehensive reporting of the news is a respect for a news event. What is being held now is the Shushan Sword Conference, which is known as the Davos Forum of the Chinese Internet. Clinton is not the focus of today's news. The Chinese Internet Alliance brought by Clinton, the Chinese partner, is the biggest news explosion. And I can guarantee that this is an event that is worthy of time and history to judge. Now you say that you have to cut it off just because of the recent ban on national chips? If you keep doing this, our Oriental Daily will collapse sooner or later!"
Members of the editorial board, including those from the interview center, editing center, and deputy editor-in-chief, were watching this fierce fight between two teams with different backgrounds, and they dared not make a sound.
Not long ago, the executive editor who thoroughly implemented the ban on Guoxin and directly cut off and blocked the report of Cheng Ran's team from the University of Science and Technology of China questioning Guoxin frowned and said, "I am doing this for the good of the newspaper."
The newspaper editor-in-chief said, "I also know that newspapers also have certain survival rules and must adapt. In the past, I turned a blind eye. But now, it's over."
"There are more than 50 newspapers and periodicals participating in the conference, not including online media. Don't they report it? Can they block it? As long as one of them exposes it, our credibility will be criticized. Others will ask why we ignored the most critical point in our report? People will bring up the Guoxin incident last time and talk about it. How will others see us? I am an old newspaper man. I don't want to be stabbed in the back and said that Liang Zihua is a coward. We are all cowards!"
The executive editor whose background came from the Beijing-funded newspaper said, "I don't know whether other newspapers will be affected by the ban, but our newspaper's goal is too big, and I can't afford the risk... I believe... everyone will think that what I'm doing is good for the newspaper." He didn't look at the editor-in-chief Liang Zihua who opposed it, but instead looked around the audience.
The executive editor-in-chief, who obviously represents the energy of the new faction of the newspaper, is indeed very capable and has a keen sense of smell in many fields. This directly shows the background network behind him. He basically controls the overall situation of the newspaper. What is surprising is that the editor-in-chief Liang Zihua, who seemed to be led by the nose in the past, seems to be unusually stubborn in this matter this time, and the new and conservative forces suddenly collide.
So the executive editor now looks to the editorial board, naturally wanting to use the prestige he has established in the editorial board to directly suppress the opinions of the editor-in-chief Liang Zihua.
However, the situation was not right this time. He saw that the editorial board members who had been tamed by him in the past were now more focused on the editor-in-chief, showing that they might not stand on the same side as him.
The pre-editing meeting must race against time because there are only a few hours before the newspaper goes to print and every moment is extremely precious.
The editor-in-chief received the call, picked up the phone, said "um" twice, then nodded and said, "I understand, I will definitely complete the task."
During this process, the executive editor had already seen the caller ID on the editor-in-chief's Nokia phone on the desk. The call surprised the executive editor. He knew who was behind the call, but the key point was that if the other party wanted to call, they should have called him, a "direct descendant" who had relatively closer official relations. Why did they notify Liang Zihua directly
What did the other party say and what did Liang Zihua promise
After hanging up the phone, editor-in-chief Liang Zihua looked at the audience solemnly, "We have received a notice from the higher authorities that former President Clinton's visit to China to attend the Internet Conference, his speech on China-US cooperation, and his public welfare platform are political tasks that must be reported in depth, with substance, foresight, and resonance!
Now divide the work immediately. Group One will organize the draft immediately and use your big writers. Make sure it is in-depth and comprehensive. Group Two will monitor the layout. I want two large pages of the sixteen pages today to be used for special reports! Other departments... We must be fast. We must do what others have not done. We must do what others have done in depth. We must be stronger, deeper, more detailed, and earlier than others! Act quickly!"
Facing the thunderous responses from the conference room, the executive editor-in-chief's facial muscles barely managed to follow suit, but they were obviously pale with anger and shock.
He didn't know what happened, but he knew that the energy behind the ban that had taken effect not long ago and had extinguished all the potential of Guoxin overnight was beginning to burst like a dam facing a flood in the face of this news event.
…
Palo Alto, the center of Silicon Valley, is in a hotel in the early morning. In a fast food restaurant on the roadside, a group of Bluedot Linux people who are on business in the United States are sitting by the window. The Bluedot team's studio in the United States is nearby. This fast food restaurant is frequented by many people, and sometimes even serves as their office. They are having a party with American friends. Liao Miao, who went to the studio to pick up documents, broke in from the door and handed over the newspaper and photocopied text in his hand, "Hurry up and take a look..."
People who knew Liao Miao well knew that he was the most stable person among the group. Normally, there would not be anything that would make him behave like this. Deng Yu and others quickly reached out and took the things in his hands. "What's wrong?"
Several people opened the newspaper handed to them by Liao Miao and the contents photocopied from the website, and saw the news.
The person who read the newspaper remained silent for a long time. Copy after copy was passed around, and then as if they had not read enough, they passed it back to everyone for repeated confirmation.
After a moment, Deng Yu said, "It turns out that it wasn't Mr. Cheng... From the beginning to the end, it was Mr. Cheng. The Chinese partner!"
They have always suspected that the Blue Dot team is actually a peripheral part, a part of the software system built by Fulong Company, and Cheng Ran, the young master of Fulong’s president Cheng, is just operating as an agent on behalf of his father, including investing in Blue Dot and the private placement for the IPO.
Until now, when I see the photo published in the newspaper, the "Seven Heroes of Shushan" gathered together, the young man shaking hands with Clinton, the words "Hardware Alliance", "Hanwu Technology", "Chinese Partner!", all of these words make people's minds flash with electricity and connect a lot of details.
"It's really... awesome!"
Jiang Ling pointed at the newspaper, unable to hide his excitement, almost dancing with joy, "I've always known, I've always known! We are participating in a big plan... Do you think if we were in China at this time... would we also be invited to be a part of the conference? And we are not just one part, that chip is the hardware system... What we are doing and what we need to do is not the other part!"
Everyone was filled with an inexplicable excitement. Although they were far away in America and not at the conference, they felt a sense of honor and mission. They now knew that they were part of the plan, and an extremely important part of the plan, one of the two poles of yin and yang. The domestic hardware alliance was the chip. They were its software system.
An American who was also reading a newspaper nearby asked everyone, "So he is the man you are talking about, our investor, Cheng?"
As everyone nodded, the American read the contents of the newspaper. It was an English-language edition of the Los Angeles Times, which was about Clinton's participation in an Internet summit in China. Clinton's trip to China had rarely been reported by American media before, but this time it was a summit about China's Internet. The Internet wave that was born in that oriental country across the ocean, and its burgeoning development, has always been a concern of the American investment market.
This New York man named Andy is their partner. Their current studio in the United States has merged his laboratory originally named "Danger!". The name originated from the space fantasy TV series "Lost in Space" which was popular in the United States in the 1960s. There was a robot in the play that often issued "Danger!" warnings. Andy has a special liking for robots. His last job was because he built a small robot at Microsoft and its data was hacked by hackers, which led to the Microsoft security team putting him in the cold palace.
As they read the newspaper, on a computer lit up on a nearby table was the logo for the new studio he and the Blue Dot crew were using in Palo Alto... also a robot logo.