Evaluation And Analysis Of The Editorial Thought On The Magazine "Saturday"

In the publishing history of modern China, "Saturday" is an urban literature & art weekly that has far-reaching influence. It was born in Shanghai in the early years of the Republic of China. It altogether published 200 issues. The first one hundred issues started from June 6th, 1914, and ended at the 100th issue on April 29, 1916; It resumed publication on March 19th, 1921, and ended at the 200th issue on February 10th, 1923. "Saturday" was very popular in the early years of the Republic of China. It had a very wide influence and its sales reached 20,000. This is closely related to the concept of recreation and rest. For a long time, the magazine is reproached by people because of such "backward factors" as its emphasis on playing games and interest, etc., and the study of it is mainly around the criticism of its content. But to be objective, its unique value explains why the magazine "Saturday" can become a representative of urban recreation periodicals in the early days of the Republic of China. Especially some innovative editorial thoughts of it are useful reference for today's magazines of the similar type. "Saturday" was born in the burgeoning commercialized city---Shanghai. The rise of the citizen stratum and the transition of scholars' psychological state offered the essential conditions for birth and development of the magazine. This thesis mainly discusses the editing mode of "Saturday" on the following four points: accurate positioning of target audience, thought-provoking publication name, content close to the common people, and carefully designed layout. To be more concrete, first, the positioning of "Saturday " readers is the stratum of citizens who have stable income, a high education level, a colorful cultural life, and abundant leisure time; Second, the name of "Saturday" not only suggests its publication time and cycle, but also implies its theme of recreation and rest; Third, the magazine not only pursues a tone of interest, but also has a function of "alerting the people"; Fourth, in the respect of its form and layout, the front cover, the copperplate photos, the columns of multiple styles all shows that the magazine editors' object is to "seek after changes and novelty". The study of the editing mode of "Saturday" has a positive referential value to today's culture & life periodicals. First, the publication needs a strong editing & compiling team, which is a basic condition for a good publication; Second, pay attention to studying readers' psychology of accepting. This is a way of success fro the publication; Third, rely on tactful commercial operation. This is an important method of running a publication well. Of course, the enlightenment that the magazine of "Saturday" gives to us is double-fold. Its ignorance of the broader social environment, and its catering to the citizens shows some features of being "light " and " vulgar", and this is exactly the reason why "Saturday" was belittled. Observed and examined from the historical angle, as a representative publication of the "Mandarin Duck & Butterfly Genre", "Saturday" has many innovations in editing, publishing and issuing etc., providing a lot of valuable experience and lessons to the present editing, business running and development of our editorials.