A Difficult Balance Between "Righteousness" And "Benefit"

Shenbao, founded in 1872, is a Chinese newspaper with the longestpublication history (1872 to 1949). In the late Qing dynasty, aiming at thecommercial interests and public demand, Shenbao takes managementmethods, reaches difficult balance between social righteousness andmarket benefit, thus, lays a solid foundation for long-term development.This essay sets out from the relationship of righteousness and benefit, anduses the method of case studies combining with comparison study, toanalyze the following management aspects of Shenbao in the late QingDynasty: publishing goal, market position, business strategy, the contentsof the newspapers and etc.Initially, Shenbao goes straight to announce that it will do newspaperbusiness, which plants the seeds of commercial operation thinking ofmodern Chinese newspapers. Hence, Shenbao takes a variety of measuresjust like marketing, advertising, and other diversified business, and finallyachieves good economic results.Dominated in the profit objective, Shenbao makes the starting pointand value yardstick as satisfying readers needs, employs Chinese scholarto write a lot of argumentations with early reformism thoughts, such as onreforming, resisting against foreign invaders, learning from the West andso on, which will serve the development of Chinese society.However, we should also see that commercial newspaper has thenature of pursuing purely commercial interests, and the early reformerdare not carry the revolution through to the end, which result inimbalance between righteousness and benefit during the management ofShenbao. The lessons drawn from the management of Shenbao in the lateQing dynasty are still worthwhile for us to summarize.