The first task Carlo assigned to Loren was to own a proper newspaper agency.
Whether it meant buying an existing newspaper or starting one from scratch, Carlo only cared about the result.
In order to demonstrate his abilities to Carlo, Loren took this task very seriously.
In just two days, he investigated the existing newspapers in Italy and filtered out those with potential that could be acquired.
Il Sole 24 Ore (The 24 Hours Sun), this was the final name on the list Loren provided.
This was a newspaper founded last year, currently only possessing a certain level of renown in the Milanese business circle.
However, this newspaper managed to survive into later generations and even became one of Italy’s top ten media outlets.
Achieving such results proved that the potential of this newspaper was unquestionable.
This also meant that Loren, who had singled out this newspaper, had a truly unique and excellent eye for business.
After determining the acquisition target, the next task Carlo handed to Loren was to properly acquire this newspaper named The Sun.
This also showed the benefit of having subordinates to order around; at least Carlo didn’t have to personally do certain things despite his noble status as a prince.
The acquisition process went fairly smoothly.
At this point, The Sun was ultimately still a small newspaper, and its founders could not resist the temptation of Carlo’s premium buyout offer.
From proposing the acquisition to holding all the shares of The Sun, Carlo spent less than four days.
Unfortunately, precisely because The Sun was currently a small newspaper, the number of copies it sold daily was only about 1,500.
This sales volume made it very difficult even to sustain the newspaper itself.
However, Carlo’s goal wasn’t to make the newspaper profitable immediately.
The purpose of the newspaper wasn’t to make a small amount of money; Carlo’s goal was to flood the streets of Italy with cheaper and more popular newspapers to increase his grip on Italian public opinion.
Whether he continued to stay in Italy or sought the opportunity to become the King of Spain in the future, experience in the newspaper industry would allow Carlo to lay out his public opinion empire more smoothly.
Once he controlled public opinion, whatever he wanted to do would become much easier.
At the very least, with the support of the public, Carlo would hold the initiative.
Then again, compared to other small and medium-sized private newspapers, the one Carlo controlled had a significant advantage.
At the very least, relying on his identity as an Italian prince, Carlo could publish content that wouldn’t easily pass censorship, such as political news that the public cared about.
This wasn’t the era of later generations where newspapers had absolutely no market.
If there was good news and content, it was very easy for a newspaper to expand its sales channels and achieve profitability.
As Carlo’s only subordinate at the moment, Loren naturally took charge of Il Sole 24 Ore without hesitation and took full responsibility for its expansion.
Carlo set several plans for Loren.
First, within the next two years, the daily sales volume of The Sun should increase from 1,500 copies to at least 7,500 copies.
Considering that The Sun was located in Milan, a prosperous industrial city in northern Italy, and could also radiate its influence to the relatively close cities of Turin and Genoa, this sales requirement was actually not high.
The second requirement was that The Sun must become one of the well-known media outlets in northern Italy and possess a certain degree of credibility among the public.
If the content published in the newspaper couldn’t be believed by the public, then the existence of the newspaper was unnecessary.
After all, the primary goal of manipulating public opinion was to make the public believe it, which was also one of Carlo’s expectations for Loren.
Another goal was to make The Sun profitable within two years and to take control of as many newspapers as possible.
Although Carlo’s original intention was not to make money through newspapers, since the industry was naturally capable of being self-sustaining, Carlo definitely wanted to allocate funds to more important places.
As for founding or acquiring more newspapers, that was naturally to strengthen the power of public opinion in Carlo’s hands.
In Carlo’s layout, The Sun would focus on political news and international events in the future, while smaller newspapers could fill the void for entertainment news and various gossip.
After all, if a newspaper with significant credibility were to report on sensationalist gossip, it would absolutely destroy the paper’s authority.
While Loren was diligently executing Carlo’s tasks, Carlo himself was looking at an existing map of the Kingdom of Italy, deep in thought.
Although the fragmented Apennine Peninsula had basically been unified into the complete Kingdom of Italy, there were still two places that had not returned to Italy’s embrace.
The Venice region in the north was still controlled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Rome, the most important city for Italy, still belonged to the Papal States.
Although the Papal States seemed like a soft target, unfortunately, France stood behind them.
The France of this era was not the surrender-prone nation joked about in World War II, but the French Empire basking in the afterglow of Napoleon.
Because Germany had not yet unified, France at this time could be considered the hegemon of Western Europe and the premier land military power in Europe.
With French support, the Papal States managed to maintain control over Rome, which forced Italy’s capital to be confined to Florence.
However, Carlo was not anxious about this.
Historically, the Kingdom of Sardinia’s process of unifying Italy could be described as an easy ride; they hardly experienced any difficult battles.
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the largest state in southern Italy, was decaying and corrupt, and was easily destroyed by Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand.
And the states in central Italy were completely disproportional in size to the Kingdom of Sardinia, lacking the qualifications to resist the overwhelming trend of unification.
The two truly tough bones to chew were entirely reliant on riding Prussia’s coattails.
In the Austro-Prussian War, they relied on Prussia to attract the Austrian Empire’s attention to recover the Venice region.
In the Franco-Prussian War, they relied on the French having to defend against the Prussian army to smoothly take over Rome.
Two seemingly very tough bones were crushed just like that.
Although it was the Prussian army that crushed them, it was undeniably the Kingdom of Italy that reaped the benefits.
Carlo had a certain understanding of this time period regarding Prussia’s rise.
Coincidentally, this year was exactly 1866, the stage when the Austro-Prussian War broke out.
If things went according to historical trends, the Austro-Prussian War should break out in half a year.
Prussia would accelerate the unification of Germany, and Italy would recover the northern Venice region.
Facing such an important historical node, Carlo naturally couldn’t let the opportunity slip away in vain.
Although he couldn’t directly intervene in the Austro-Prussian War, as a member of Italy, which was a participating party, Carlo altering a tiny bit of the historical process wouldn’t be a problem.
(END CHAPTER)