I'm in the county town, and you say I'm a big shot?

Chapter 629 Appealing to Emotion and Reason

Fang Qingye looked relaxed and said:
"Actually, we don't necessarily have to sit here racking our brains for solutions. We can try another approach."

"What road?" Zhang Yi asked.

“Go talk to the person in charge of the Huacheng Daily and settle out of court.”

Hearing this, Zhang Yi smiled bitterly and said, "We also thought of your method, and we even contacted their president and editor-in-chief, Chen Zhiyuan. But he was very firm. Either we agree to their conditions, or we'll see each other in court. There's no way to negotiate."

"Why not try a different approach, such as signing a content purchase agreement with them?"

Content acquisition?

Everyone was stunned for a moment. Wang Yu was the first to react and said, "This method can indeed avoid infringement. We do buy the content, but it will generate huge expenses! You have to know that our content on Toutiao is not just from Huacheng Daily, but from so many other media outlets! We probably can't afford the expenses that will result."

“Wang Yu, we can’t calculate the price using their method; we have to use my method.” Fang Qingye smiled slightly.

“We are not a traditional media reprint. This is an era where traffic is king. The value generated by traffic has long exceeded the value generated by content. Chen Zhiyuan must be aware of this. So I plan to go to Huacheng to meet Chen Zhiyuan and talk to him in person!”

Fang Qingye concluded.

After the high-level meeting, Fang Qingye did not stay in Yanjing to preside over the shareholders' meeting, leaving it to Zhang Yimin. Instead, she had Yue Kai book three plane tickets to Huacheng, with Wang Yu traveling with her.

The plane weaves through the clouds.

Fang Qingye was sitting in first class, looking at a document compiled by Wang Yu about Chen Zhiyuan.

After graduating from the Chinese Department of Sun Yat-sen University in 1983, he was assigned to the Huacheng Daily newspaper. He started as an ordinary editor, then became a responsible editor, editor-in-chief, deputy editor-in-chief, and finally the president and editor-in-chief. Throughout his career, he has never left the Huacheng Daily compound.

He has won the Guangdong Provincial Outstanding Editor Award and the Taofen Journalism Award, and is a veteran on the editing front.

Fang Qingye looked at it carefully and fell into deep thought.

After arriving in Guangzhou, Fang Qingye and her two companions checked into the Westin Hotel.

"Chairman Fang, I've already arranged a meeting with President Chen of the Huacheng Daily at the hotel tomorrow morning at nine o'clock," Wang Yu said.

“Okay, let’s eat first. When we get back, Wang Yu, could you help me look up some information?” Fang Qingye pointed to Chen Zhiyuan’s award-winning resume in the documents and said, “Could you help me find the article about him that won the Taofen Journalism Award?”

“Okay.” Wang Yu didn’t understand why Fang Qingye wanted to investigate so thoroughly, but he still agreed.

The next morning, Fang Qingye and Wang Yu arrived at a small conference room in the temporarily rented hotel. At nine o'clock sharp, a group from the Huacheng Newspaper arrived at the conference room, led by the newspaper's president, Chen Zhiyuan.

Chen Zhiyuan is fifty-five years old this year. He is wearing a smart suit, tie, and gold-rimmed glasses. Fang Qingye finds it hard to associate the image of the editor in front of her with the stereotypical, old-fashioned image she usually has on TV.

After introducing themselves, everyone took their seats.

"Chairman Fang, I heard that you came to Huacheng from Yanjing specifically to try to reach an out-of-court settlement with us. I wonder what kind of settlement you're planning?" Chen Zhiyuan asked coldly.

Fang Qingye calmly replied, "We do not agree with the accusations made by your newspaper against our company. After all, Toutiao's use of and reposting of articles, including those from your newspaper, is based on web crawlers to obtain publicly available data and the use of neural network NLP models for information summarization and recombination."

Hearing Fang Qingye use these technical terms again, Chen Zhiyuan became impatient and immediately interrupted him.

“Chairman Fang, you should take these things to court and present them to the judge, and see if they will listen.” “If that day really comes, we will definitely present them to the court. The reason I said these things today is that this is internet technology. Even if ByteDance does not adopt this technology, other companies will. It is an inevitable trend.”

"But that doesn't justify your infringement of our copyright!" Chen Zhiyuan said firmly.

"Okay, let's look at this issue from a different angle. According to our investigation, the print version of your newspaper's survey on urban village demolition published yesterday had a circulation of about 57 copies."

"But on Toutiao," Fang Qingye showed her phone, "do you know how many clicks your report generated?"

"How much?" Chen Zhiyuan couldn't help but ask.

He was also curious about how many people were actually reading this news article online.
"1120 million! And it's still growing. According to our model algorithm, we expect it to reach 3000 million clicks."

"What? 3000 million!" Chen Zhiyuan was shocked. He hadn't expected the number of people browsing online to be more than 60 times that of the newspaper.

A sense of relief suddenly rose in my heart. You see, this report was written by two senior reporters from the newspaper after more than a month of on-site investigation and research. It was such a profound and valuable piece of writing.

I'm content with so many people watching.

"President Chen, you are a senior editor, and I have seen your profile before." Fang Qingye suddenly changed the subject: "You have won the Taofen Journalism Award."

"Hehe, that's ancient history, not worth mentioning." Chen Zhiyuan was very modest, but he felt proud in his heart. That was the highlight of his career.

The scene of the award ceremony is still vivid in my mind.

Fang Qingye continued, "Through my research, I found that the article you won an award for reported that 183 households in Huacheng jointly opposed the Enning Road renovation plan proposed by the local authorities. This report caused a great stir in society, and in the end, the relevant local departments adopted the residents' opinions."

"Back then, the daily circulation of your Huacheng Daily was around 98. If we had Toutiao back then, the readership and social influence would have been much greater, wouldn't they?"

"Editor-in-Chief Chen, I'm going to say something you might not like to hear: the golden age of newspapers is long gone, and print media, including newspapers, is dying."

Chen Zhiyuan unusually did not refute.

Although he didn't say it, he had to admit what Fang Qingye had said.

"But the value of reading has not been lost!" Fang Qingye emphasized.

"As the pioneering scholar Li Dazhao once said, 'With iron shoulders bearing the weight of justice, and skillful hands crafting articles,' I believe this statement remains relevant today. Intellectuals should shoulder both social responsibility and professional pursuit. The socially valuable articles you write should be seen by more people, and in this internet age, ByteDance has taken on this responsibility: to let more people see more valuable content, including that from publications like the Huacheng Daily!"

“What you said makes some sense, but we can’t just reprint and publish it for free, can we? After all, it involves the hard work of our authors and editors.”

Chen Zhiyuan still insisted on his point of view, but his tone was much softer than before.

“Therefore, we should cooperate!” Fang Qingye stated her thoughts.

"cooperate?"

"Yes, you could say it's about buying your content."

"Oh, tell me about it?" Chen Zhiyuan immediately became interested.

(End of this chapter)