New Century Reading Newspaper Knowledge Overview

Author: Zhang Xinhua, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2002-03-01
Features: This book collects over three thousand entries that people frequently encounter when reading newspapers, magazines, and other media, as well as more cutting-edge knowledge. The entries cover a wide range of disciplines and fields. The main entries are organized by knowledge domain and sorted by stroke count within the same category. Entries starting with Latin letters are placed at the beginning of their respective categories. In addition to the main text, the book includes twelve appendices related to newspaper reading, forming an important part of the entire work. These appendices are arranged according to conventional time, regional, and alphabetical orders. This Compendium has the following features:
1. Comprehensiveness and Foundational Nature. The entries in this Compendium have a broad scope, covering all major areas that readers might encounter in popular reading. In terms of perspective, it balances a focus on the present and future while highlighting historical depth; it considers both international environments and developments while remaining rooted in domestic realities, providing knowledge backgrounds at both macro and micro levels. As a result, the content of the book reflects a wide and comprehensive nature. While ensuring the structural rationality and completeness of the knowledge system, the Compendium emphasizes the foundational and general applicability of the content. It selects concepts, knowledge, and backgrounds relevant to general knowledge in popular reading and mass communication from a wide range of concepts and foundational knowledge, thereby greatly enhancing the book’s relevance and guidance. We understand that this may sacrifice some disciplinary systematicity and completeness, and there may be gaps that could be filled, but everything is done for practicality and to meet the special needs of comprehensive popular reading. We believe readers will understand and support this editorial approach.
2. Knowledge and Readability. The Compendium breaks away from the conventional model of professional reference books. Based on a thorough understanding of a large amount of related content and drawing on numerous reference books and professional materials, it recombines knowledge from the perspective of general, non-professional readers to provide as much valuable content as possible while minimizing redundancy. While improving relevance and logic, it selectively expands and supplements related content or extends the connotations of concepts to maximize the reasonable and necessary knowledge volume, enhancing the inherent appeal and charm of knowledge and background. In terms of content selection and writing style, readability is prioritized. As the philosopher Emerson once said, a good dictionary can be read as a book, and this is one of the core goals of compiling this Compendium. Our goal is that it must first be readable, then searchable. Therefore, the treatment of entries goes beyond definitions and explanations, focusing instead on providing relevant and useful knowledge. This is one of the greatest features of this Compendium.
3. Reference and Objectivity. We believe that a good Compendium should not only provide appropriate and useful knowledge but also allow users to easily understand and absorb it. It must also have some reference value, helping to resolve doubts and clarify misunderstandings within a certain scope and range. To achieve this, the Compendium places great emphasis on scientific accuracy and rigor. All entries are carefully compared, verified, and cross-referenced based on available reference materials. To ensure that the content of the entries has the widest possible objective application and suits the broadest temporal and spatial contexts, we focus on relevant objective facts and core content, avoiding subjective value judgments, dogmatic labels, and ideological conformity. As a result, many entries in the Compendium provide valuable references for researchers and various individuals, making it also a comprehensive reference book.
4. Forward-Looking and Innovative Nature. Throughout the compilation process, we remained committed to the advanced nature of this Compendium, striving to break free from conventional practices. It was neither a copy of professional dictionaries and disciplinary classics nor a disorganized urban manual. What we needed was a serious and useful compilation of knowledge. We resisted the temptation to include anecdotes and legends in some popular reading materials and tools, constantly preventing the Compendium from becoming a mere record of past events. Instead, we focused on foundational knowledge and background that could be generalized and applied broadly. This approach highlights its forward-looking nature, reflecting the latest content, covering cutting-edge disciplines, fields, and developments, with some entries even staying synchronized with current realities. Even when dealing with traditional foundational knowledge and historical backgrounds, we always tried to decide on content selection and expansion based on foreseeable application perspectives. In essence, this Compendium is future-oriented and represents an attempt to broaden horizons and explore new possibilities.
Although we have made positive efforts and done our best to achieve the above goals, it must be admitted that due to the dynamic and multifaceted nature of various knowledge fields, as well as the limitations of the compilers’ knowledge and the inevitable inconsistencies in multiple contributors, this Compendium will undoubtedly have shortcomings and omissions. We sincerely apologize and welcome corrections from readers.
Finally, let us briefly explain the title of this book. “Reading newspapers” refers to all reading and reception activities related to mass media, including electronic media, although reading newspapers is still considered the primary activity. “Compendium” is chosen for its comprehensive, general, foundational, and richly encompassing meaning, and it attempts to convey the purpose of reading and reference. We hope readers will recognize its implications and benefit from it in different ways.