Chen Tong's departure from Sina: the end of an online media veteran

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WeChat public account: techread

"When Chen Tong first really walked out of the door of the Ideal International Building, no one knew what was going on in his heart" - this Márquez-like opening will probably be frequently adopted by a large number of media features in the next few months.

Chen Tongqi is indeed a silhouette that can be written into the history of Chinese online journalism.

An inspirational legend of an editor

From the moderator of the sports salon of Sitong Lifang, to the first editor of sina portal, and then to become the editor-in-chief two years after Sina's listing until today, after a span of seventeen years, behind this long and widely recited smooth road, there are huge waves of the times.

Around 2004, Chen Tong wrote a book called "The Way of Sina", subtitled "Operation of Portal News Channels", an introductory manual compiled by various young networks in the early days of the Internet. The production of this book is not because Chen Tonggu is famous or Sina has external propaganda needs, but only based on the expansion of Chen Tong's thesis "Research on the Operation Strategy of Sina News Channel" written by Chen Tong to obtain a master's degree in journalism from Chinese Min University.

Gao Gang, then dean of the School of Journalism at Chinese Min University, personally wrote the foreword to The Way of Sina, quoting a quote from Engels — "The greatest honor of journalists is that they can witness how history is formed" — and said predictably: "The honor of China's internet journalists in this era is far more than this, they not only witness the historical changes that are taking place in China, but also inject their own creations into these changes, and in between these creations, they also write their own new history." ”

Looking back ten years later, it's still just right.

Chen Tong repeatedly mentioned to the media that when he joined Sina, he was to subsidize his own Internet costs, dial-up Internet access is not low for a student, go to Sina part-time to engage in a job with a high degree of freedom, not only will not delay his studies, but also have money to take every month, which makes Chen Tong "very satisfied." Former Sina CTO Li Songbo - Chen Tongfa in the Weibo thank-you letter, especially thanked him - was the developer of the Sitong Lifang Forum at that time, and most engineers, proficient in products, but not good at operation, as a software company, Sitong Lifang did not reserve operating talents, so Li Songbo flipped the card on the forum, and then looked at the activist Chen Tong, the two met in Zhongguancun to have a meal, a hit.

It is no exaggeration to say that forums, portals, blogs, the three generations of media forms of china's Internet, Chen Tong is one of the leaders at every stage, and Sina has always been a benchmark in the same industry, without any controversy. Of course, the excessive leadership of the media industry has also made Sina miss the opportunity of commercial transformation such as games and e-commerce, and it is inferior to Sohu and NetEase in terms of profitability, which is the after-the-fact evaluation of "Sai Weng lost the horse".

So far, there are still many young people in the north who regard Chen Tong's life trajectory as an ideal for hard work, and although the media industry is declining, it is still not to the extent of youth and yellow, on the other hand, they do need this upward spur force - or the "success study" around them - to convince themselves of the value and space of the media industry.

The initiator of online media hardship

Chen Tong's parents are both soldiers, he grew up in the military academy, insisting on his own opinions, advocating discipline, broad vision, is the common character of the descendants of this kind of red family, within Sina's editorial department, the name of the reward and punishment system is also a strong military color of "first class, second class, third class" and "first class, second class, third class".

Shortly after the success of the sports channel because of "Dalian Jinzhou Does Not Believe in Tears", Chen Tong officially joined Sina and advocated the establishment of the Current Politics News Channel, "Sina is the formulator of the intake habits of Chinese netizens", Chen Tong later commented on his work achievements, in order to achieve his expected goals, Sina's batch of editors proved what is called "one will achieve a thousand bones".

Under the guidance of Chen Tong' saying that there is no difference, Sina has created a "24-hour uninterrupted rolling update" network news model, Sina's editorial department is in a state of readiness around the clock, Chen Tong's advocacy of "fast, massive, accurate", and then become the industry standard, competitors are forced to follow up under pressure, almost no resistance to make online media into a labor-intensive industry.

When Sina's manpower scale is still limited, as long as Chen Tong appears in the office, the entire editorial department must enter a silent state, no one dares to communicate with each other at work, Chen Tong can even call out the name of each intern editor, and directly split his head and cover his face when he finds an error. Sina editors, who have a reporting relationship with Chen Tong, have developed the habit of putting several layers of plastic wrap on their mobile phones and bringing them into the bathroom when they take a bath at home at night, because if Chen Tong calls and no one answers, he will be fined or fired. Sina's veteran editor once shared a story: Chen Tong would take a glass ruler and compare it to a computer to measure whether the spacing of each piece of news was consistent (there was no front-end design at that time).

Sina's treatment has no advantage in the industry, until Ali invested in Sina Weibo, sina portal employees can be "dipped", maintaining an average of 200 yuan a month for ten years to make up for 400 yuan, causing employees to rush to tell each other, cry with joy, and the face of the Sina editor, which was also a scenery in Zhongguancun. Correspondingly, the reason why Sina has always been able to attract young editors is because this kind of tempering is really effective, compared with other portals, the growth rate of Sina editors is the fastest, coupled with Chen Tong's strict standards in news production, sina is difficult to affect the foundation because of the loss of personnel, "iron camp, flowing soldiers", is its best embodiment.

At the same time, Chen Tong also has a typical paternalistic style, in short, he has always been ruthless with employees, but once the outside world questions Sina employees, Chen Tong has never been sloppy in protecting the calves. In 2011, Sina Technology was suspected of plagiarizing a translation of Gu Ao (a Google enthusiast blog), Gu Ao's readership criticized Sina on Twitter, and at the same time confronted an editor of Sina Technology, Zheng Jun, on Weibo, and the matter finally got into trouble with Chen Tong, Chen Tong sent a Weibo, saying "My colleagues, or employees of other departments of Sina accidentally had some situations, this is normal, young people who can not make mistakes, but if you endlessly want to blame us and then quickly even insult Sina company, Then I had to say sorry not to serve you who loves who quickly flashed it and did not send! ”

In addition, compared with the reconstruction of news by other cutting-edge online media, Sina's position is generally conservative and orthodox, and Sina's editors will be fined if they are found to be interested in attracting traffic through the headline party.

Regarding Chen Tong's view of the media that Chen Tong gave to Sina, it can be quoted from his passage to understand: "Editors and journalists must consider the social impact of the manuscripts he handles, and cannot be judged only by whether they have caused social sensations and whether they have brought huge circulation and traffic. Journalists must have a heavy sense of social responsibility and a peaceful and calm mentality; they cannot elevate an isolated incident to the level of national honor and disgrace and relations between the two countries by their own nature. Everything cannot be understood from the perspective of a negative criticism, and it is normal for an official to meet customers at a golf course, and it cannot always be an angry attitude. ”

Chen Tong's two mistakes

In the entire history of Sina, Chen Tong has only had one resignation rumor, that is, in 2008, Cao Guowei, who had just sat in the CEO position for less than two years, shuffled the Sina structure, and Cao Guowei nominated his own concubine, Du Hong, who was promoted to vice president with Chen Tong in 2007, as COO, leading to media reports that Chen Tong was dissatisfied with the arrangement of "forcing the palace" Cao Guowei.

Moving forward a year, 2007 was a watershed year for Chen Tong in his career on Sina Portal, when he was promoted to executive vice president of Sina (executive vice president is the highest rank among sina vice presidents) at the beginning of that year, becoming a member of a five-member management team including Cao Guowei, and in preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Chen Tong, who was in a position of power, was full of energy and publicly stated that he wanted to "teach competitors how to report the Olympic Games." However, since March 2007, the traffic of Sina Blog has surpassed that of news channels to jump to the first place among various channels, which announces the full arrival of the trend of Web 2.0, although the blog business is also the main focus of Chen Tong, but this also means that the military centralized management model that Chen Tong is good at has begun to become ineffective, and the style of Sina Blog has also deviated from Sina News, and Chen Tong's brand is no longer distinct.

Worse for Chen Tong, two years later, Sina Weibo was born.

Sina Weibo rose flat, and for a long time it was still the people who used the Sina portal. From relying on portal blood transfusions to splitting up to go public in the United States, the rise of Sina Weibo has made those Sina employees who choose to stay on the portal somewhat psychologically unbalanced, and Chen Tong's status has become somewhat embarrassing.

On the one hand, this is a move by Sina CEO Cao Guowei to decentralize power, on the other hand, Sina Weibo is separated from Sina's independent listing, reminiscent of Sohu's split route - Changyou, Sogou, video - and finally makes the Sohu portal an empty shell, which seems to indicate that the portal business is no longer part of the company's strategy.

Chen Tong had been too successful in the portal, his prestige was unshakable, but it had also bound all the imagination space about his ability, which was the fatal reason for his dilemma.

Traditional media transformation often uses a word called "media productization", that is, the competitiveness of the media is no longer the content operation, but whether the content can be packaged into a product. Chen Tong, who was left behind in the portal, is not without opportunities, the news client is surging and is forming a new entrance to the mobile Internet, only this time, Chen Tong and Sina are no longer the leaders, but the countdown.

It's hard to argue that the Sina News client is doing worse than its competitors, it's just that the Matthew effect determines that the later players enter the market, the harder it is to shake the foundation that early layoutrs have painstakingly laid. In the case of homogenization, if the Sina news client wants to grab users, it seems that there is no opportunity to find another way except for heavy money to the channel and pre-installation. The most humiliating thing is that after a year of struggling with the Sina news client, Sina Weibo invested in today's headlines, sitting idly by its brothers and vigorously supporting potential competitors outside, which is undoubtedly a slap in the face to Chen Tong.

The news that Chen Tong was about to leave Sina for Xiaomi came out of the investment circle as early as last weekend, when few believers believed that it was empty (according to the Modern Chinese Dictionary, page 742 of the 6th edition, the original semantics were supplemented with its opposite meaning, which was used to refer to the unfounded news and legends). Unexpectedly, the rumors have been confirmed halfway, and the latter half seems to have considerable credibility, and it is not impossible for Xiaomi to get involved in the media industry after having already acquired more experiences. (However, Xiaomi PR Xu Jieyun said "pure nonsense" on Zhihu)

and......

Ten years ago, Chen Tong said in an interview with the media that his biggest goal in life is the editor-in-chief of Sina, and he is very proud of it, and "the editor-in-chief of the media can be a long time, and the editor-in-chief of the New York Times has been doing it for twenty or thirty years, and I am very envious."

However, the development of events is always less elaborate than presupposed, the view of the mounds and peaks is very different, and after seeing the sea of clouds, you are no longer obsessed with the roof.

Liu Chun, the former editor-in-chief of Sohu, stayed in iQiyi for half a year after leaving his job, and then left again, which also shows that the road is not good, and it is good and cherished.

After Chen Tong left, the editorial departments of Sina channels can no longer worry about Chen Tong's correction of mistakes - this is the primary task of the editor in the Sina portal, the so-called "so-and-so accident, Sina missed this topic, no problem, as long as Chen Tong does not know" - is this a good thing or a bad thing?