章 57: Chapter 57 Newspaper Revision
"Mr. Whitney, we meet again."
"Yes, Your Highness, perhaps this is the best outcome."
After the acquisition of The Independent was finalized, Barron came to Canary Wharf, the office building where The Independent was located.
The last time I came here to meet Whitney, the editor-in-chief of The Independent, it was in a cafe less than 100 meters away from the building. The reason was that through the Viscountess' introduction, Whitney became interested in Barron's novel Downton Abbey.
It was also during that meeting that Barron first proposed the idea of acquiring The Independent.
Now, after Barron has just signed an acquisition agreement for the Independent Newspaper Company with representatives of the INM Group, he has announced that he has achieved his original goal and has taken The Independent into his pocket.
Except for Whitney, the editor-in-chief of The Independent, it can be said that Barron and his team attracted the attention of all employees of the company from the moment they entered the building of Independent Newspapers.
From various related reports before, everyone is no longer unfamiliar with the young duke who is about to acquire The Independent.
And today, when the other party walked into this office building, it also meant that from then on, The Independent had changed its ownership and became the asset of the Devonshire family. Their future prospects in the newspaper would be closely related to the other party.
They are not sure whether The Independent will be able to revive, or remain depressed or even fall into obscurity.
At this time, Barron was not prepared to give any inspiring speech in public - promises that are not based on reality are ultimately empty.
"Mr. Whitney, I hope to have a good talk with you and the newspaper manager about future business operations."
"That's what I hope for, Your Highness."
…
Baron has thought about how The Independent should be run and what changes should be made after he bought it.
In fact, the emergence of various new media, especially the Internet and later smartphones, has had a huge impact on traditional paper newspapers.
But despite such an impact, some newspaper groups still survived and maintained considerable influence.
Then, by reviewing the other party's practices, we can generally find ways to keep The Independent vibrant and revitalize it - after all, these methods were personally verified by those successful newspapers that later became successful.
Amid the complicated looks of The Independent employees, Barron, Amber Sheehan, Wang Wanting, The Independent's manager Bob Mansfield, and editor-in-chief Whitney walked into the conference room one after another.
The door to the conference room was closed, blocking the view of all employees outside. They knew that a meeting that would determine the future of The Independent was about to begin in there.
"Mr. Bob, Mr. Whitney, although it may not be necessary, I will introduce myself first. I, Barron Cavendish, am the new owner of The Independent."
He nodded to the newspaper manager and editor-in-chief sitting in the conference room, then walked to Amber Sheen and continued to introduce:
"This Mr. Amber Sheen previously worked at PwC and is now the manager of the industrial investment department of DS Capital. Well, the Independent Newspaper Company is managed by this department."
"We currently own two newspapers, The Independent and The Sunday Independent, which is a weekly edition of The Independent. Is that right, Mr. Bob?"
Bob Mansfield, the manager of the Independent Newspaper Company, nodded and said,
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Gentlemen, first of all, I want to say that I did not buy The Independent for the sake of making money. Believe me, I would have made more money investing the same amount of money elsewhere, rather than facing the unknown risks of The Independent. I bought this newspaper purely out of my sense of responsibility. I cannot watch a newspaper that was once loved by many readers collapse like this - by the way, I have always been one of these loyal readers."
At this moment, Barron's expression was unusually sincere:
"Mr. Bob, Mr. Editor-in-Chief, I believe both of you hope that The Independent can recover and develop better and better, right?"
Seeing the two of them nod at the same time, Barron smiled and said,
"That means we all have the same goal. I hope you understand that everything I do is for this purpose, so I hope we can continue to cooperate well."
There is no need to explain the implication of Barron's words. If cooperation is impossible, then we have to change people.
Having said that, Barron pulled the whiteboard in the corner of the conference room in front of everyone and wrote two words on it - tradition and change.
"After I take over The Independent, I will still maintain the philosophy of this newspaper - to take a neutral stance, strive for the truth, conduct in-depth and detailed investigations and reports on events, and expose social injustice and corruption. As I said before, my purpose in buying The Independent is to save this newspaper, not to turn it into another The Sun for the sake of profit. However, the philosophy of the newspaper remains unchanged, but the way of operation needs to change..."
After hearing Barron's promise that he would not change the philosophy of the newspaper, both manager Bob and editor-in-chief Whitney breathed a sigh of relief. The Sun that Barron mentioned was exactly what they were worried about. They had to admit that the Sun did make money, but the false, bizarre and vulgar reports in it made them despise it.
The first change Barron planned for The Independent was to add a fiction column and begin publishing the Downton Abbey novel.
Then the entire newspaper was revamped, with more pictures and full-color printing to attract more readers.
Another thing is that the original large-edition newspaper was changed to publishing both large and small editions at the same time.
The original British newspapers, the so-called broadsheets and tabloids, were mainly distinguished by their size.
However, it was proved that small-format newspapers were easier for readers to read, and because less paper was required, they appeared to be more environmentally friendly - there was no way around it, young people nowadays like to flaunt these things.
The subsequent trend was for those traditional British broadsheets to transform into small-format newspapers.
For example, major newspapers such as The Times and The Guardian were later converted into small edition newspapers.
It is timely for The Independent to make such a revamp.
The final change is that with the advent of the Internet, traditional paper media also needs to change accordingly - Barron plans to open an official website for The Independent and then try to publish an electronic version of the newspaper.
Of course, when Barron first took over The Independent, he was not prepared to make all the changes at once.
These plans will be implemented step by step.
The first step was to add a fiction column and publish "Downton Abbey", and then revise the newspaper.
During this period, preparations began for the official website of The Independent and the recruitment of editors for the electronic version.
Newspaper manager Bob and editor-in-chief Whitney mostly accepted the revision plans proposed by Barron, but also put forward their own opinions.
For example, manager Bob proposed:
"Your Highness, I agree to try to publish a small edition of the newspaper, but as you said, adding pictures and printing the entire edition in color will increase the cost of the newspaper. But we already have a plan to reduce the price of the newspaper, so..."
Hearing his words, Barron said without hesitation:
"We don't need to lower the price of our newspapers. We can just keep the current price. The current price of newspapers is completely affordable even for ordinary people. For newspapers now, lowering prices is not a good strategy. We just need to stick to the quality of our reports. People will be happy to pay for high-quality content."
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