The Future of News back to the Coffee House

新聞產(chǎn)業(yè)的未來(lái)，重回咖啡屋時(shí)代

The internet is taking the news industry back to the conversational culture of the era before mass media

互聯(lián)網(wǎng)正在將新聞產(chǎn)業(yè)帶回到大眾傳媒出現(xiàn)前的時(shí)代。

　　Three hundred years ago news travelled by word of mouth or letter, and circulated in taverns and coffee houses in the form of pamphlets, newsletters and broadsides. “The Coffee houses particularly are very commodious for a free Conversation, and for reading at an easier Rate all manner of printed News,” noted one observer. Everything changed in 1833 when the first mass-audience newspaper, the New York Sun, pioneered the use of advertising to reduce the cost of news, thus giving advertisers access to a wider audience. At the time of the launch America’s bestselling paper sold just 4,500 copies a day; the Sun, with its steam press, soon reached 15,000. The penny press, followed by radio and television, turned news from a two-way conversation into a one-way broadcast, with a relatively small number of firms controlling the media.

　　三百年前，新聞以口頭或書面形式傳播，并且以小冊(cè)子、簡(jiǎn)報(bào)的形式在小餐館或咖啡屋中流傳。據(jù)一名觀察員說，咖啡屋是進(jìn)行自由交談的不二選擇，并且也是休閑閱讀的理想場(chǎng)所。但是事情在1883年發(fā)生重大轉(zhuǎn)變，第一個(gè)面向大眾的報(bào)紙，紐約《太陽(yáng)報(bào)》誕生，并且首次引入廣告來(lái)降低新聞成本，一舉兩得地為贊助商尋到更多的觀眾。當(dāng)紐約報(bào)紙面世時(shí)，美國(guó)銷量最好的雜志每天可以賣4500份;但是《太陽(yáng)報(bào)》卻很快達(dá)到15000的銷量。報(bào)紙以及隨后而來(lái)的廣播、電視將新聞傳播方式從兩方面的交流變?yōu)橐环矫娴挠缮贁?shù)公司控制的傳播。

　　Now, as our special report explains, the news industry is returning to something closer to the coffee house. The internet is making news more participatory, social, diverse and partisan, reviving the discursive ethos of the era before mass media. That will have profound effects on society and politics.

　　現(xiàn)在，正如我們的特別報(bào)道所言，新聞產(chǎn)業(yè)正在向之前咖啡屋相近轉(zhuǎn)變�；ヂ�(lián)網(wǎng)使新聞變得更易參與，更具有社會(huì)性，更容易聽到不同的聲音，讓新聞從大眾傳媒時(shí)代重回百家爭(zhēng)鳴的盛況。這對(duì)社會(huì)及政治將產(chǎn)生重大影響。

　　In much of the world, the mass media are flourishing. Newspaper circulation rose globally by 6% between 2005 and 2009, helped by particularly strong demand in places like India, where 110m papers are now sold daily. But those global figures mask a sharp decline in readership in rich countries.

　　在世界大部分地區(qū)，大眾傳媒都在蓬勃發(fā)展。世界范圍內(nèi)的報(bào)紙銷量從2005年到2009年增長(zhǎng)了6%，特別是有巨大需求的印度地區(qū)，每天就有1億1千萬(wàn)的銷量。但在富裕國(guó)家讀者人數(shù)卻大幅下降。

　　Over the past decade, throughout the Western world, people have been giving up newspapers and TV news and keeping up with events in profoundly different ways. Most strikingly, ordinary people are increasingly involved in compiling, sharing, filtering, discussing and distributing news. Twitter lets people anywhere report what they are seeing. Classified documents are published in their thousands online. Mobile-phone footage of Arab uprisings and American tornadoes is posted on social-networking sites and shown on television newscasts. An amateur video taken during the Japanese earthquake has been watched 15m times on YouTube. “Crowdsourcing” projects bring readers and journalists together to sift through troves of documents, from the expense claims of British politicians to Sarah Palin’s e-mails. Social-networking sites help people find, discuss and share news with their friends.

　　過去十年整個(gè)西方世界中，人們逐漸放棄報(bào)紙和電視，而是通過其它的方式與時(shí)俱進(jìn)。更引人著目的是更多的普通民眾參與到新聞的收集、分享、篩選和討論中。推特使人們可以隨時(shí)隨地將他們的所見所聞相互分享。各種各樣的文件被無(wú)數(shù)在線用戶上傳。手機(jī)拍客們拍攝的阿拉伯暴亂以及美國(guó)龍卷風(fēng)的視頻和照片在社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)中廣泛傳播并且為電視報(bào)道所引用。YouTube上一部攝于日本地震期間的相關(guān)視頻被瀏覽一千五百萬(wàn)次�！氨姲�”將讀者與記者緊密聯(lián)系在了一起，共同處理各種新聞文件，從英國(guó)政客的消費(fèi)聲明到Sarah Palin的郵件。社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)為人們與好友之間尋找、討論和分享新聞提供了平臺(tái)。

　　And it is not just readers who are challenging the media elite. Technology firms including Google, Facebook and Twitter have become important (some say too important) conduits of news. Celebrities and world leaders, including Barack Obama and Hugo Chávez, publish updates directly via social networks; many countries now make raw data available through “open government” initiatives. The internet lets people read newspapers or watch television channels from around the world: The Guardian, a British newspaper, now has more online readers abroad than at home. The web has allowed new providers of news, from individual bloggers to sites such as the Huffington Post, to rise to prominence in a very short space of time. And it has made possible entirely new approaches to journalism, such as that practised by WikiLeaks, which provides an anonymous way for whistleblowers to publish documents. The news agenda is no longer controlled by a few press barons and state outlets, like the BBC.

　　不僅僅是讀者在向傳統(tǒng)傳媒發(fā)起挑戰(zhàn)。包括谷歌、臉譜、推特在內(nèi)的科技公司也逐漸成為新聞傳播的重要渠道。包括奧巴馬在內(nèi)的許多名流和政要通過社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)公布他們的實(shí)時(shí)動(dòng)態(tài)�；ヂ�(lián)網(wǎng)打破了人們閱讀報(bào)紙及收看電視頻道的地域限制：《衛(wèi)報(bào)》，一份英國(guó)報(bào)紙，現(xiàn)在較其本土讀者有更多的網(wǎng)上讀者。從博客到類似Huffington Post的網(wǎng)站，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)使更多人成為新聞的可能提供者，在很短時(shí)間內(nèi)就獲得大量關(guān)注�；ヂ�(lián)網(wǎng)也為新聞的發(fā)布提供了一種全新的可能，正如維基解密所做的那樣，為揭密者提供匿名發(fā)布信息的平臺(tái)。新聞媒體再也不會(huì)為少數(shù)傳媒巨頭或部分政府部門所控制，就像BBC。

　　In principle, every liberal should celebrate this. A more participatory and social news environment, with a remarkable diversity and range of news sources, is a good thing. A Texan who once had to rely on the Houston Chronicle to interpret the world can now collect information from myriad different sources. Authoritarian rulers everywhere have more to fear. So what, many will say, if journalists have less stable careers? All the same, two areas of concern stand out.

　　原則上來(lái)說，每個(gè)自由主義人士都應(yīng)該為此慶祝。一個(gè)更具有參與性與社會(huì)性的新聞環(huán)境，一個(gè)更加集思廣益、百家爭(zhēng)鳴的新聞環(huán)境是值得慶祝的。德克薩斯人曾經(jīng)必須依靠Houston Chronicle來(lái)與外界保持聯(lián)系，但現(xiàn)在卻可以通過無(wú)數(shù)的渠道得到他們想要的消息。專治統(tǒng)治者憂心忡忡。但也有很多人發(fā)問，這會(huì)不會(huì)對(duì)記者這個(gè)職業(yè)產(chǎn)生沖擊呢?同樣引起關(guān)注的還有兩點(diǎn)。

　　The first worry is the loss of “accountability journalism”, which holds the powerful to account. Shrinking revenues have reduced the amount and quality of investigative and local political reporting in the print press.

　　首先就是擔(dān)心負(fù)責(zé)任的媒體會(huì)越來(lái)越少，這些媒體會(huì)對(duì)他們報(bào)道的內(nèi)容負(fù)責(zé)。經(jīng)費(fèi)的減少降低了調(diào)查研究和本地政治報(bào)道的數(shù)量和質(zhì)量。

　　But old-style journalism was never quite as morally upstanding as journalists like to think. Indeed, the News of the World, a British newspaper which has been caught hacking into people’s mobile phones, is a very traditional sort of scandal sheet. Meantime, the internet is spawning new forms of accountability. A growing band of non-profit outfits such as ProPublica, the Sunlight Foundation and WikiLeaks are helping to fill the gap left by the decline of watchdog media. This is still a work in progress, but the degree of activity and experimentation provides cause for optimism.

　　但傳統(tǒng)傳媒卻并不總是像記者所想像的一樣高尚。世界新聞報(bào)，一份英國(guó)報(bào)紙，被指證竊聽人們的手機(jī)，這是非常普遍的丑聞之一。同時(shí)，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)正在傳播一種新的責(zé)任形式。一些個(gè)還在增加的非盈利組織，像Propublica、Sunlight Foundation以及wikiLeaks，正在幫助減小由于“看門狗”媒體下降帶來(lái)的斷帶。這是一項(xiàng)仍未完成的任務(wù)，但是活動(dòng)和實(shí)驗(yàn)的程度為樂觀主義者提供了信心。

　　The second concern has to do with partisanship. In the mass-media era local monopolies often had to be relatively impartial to maximise their appeal to readers and advertisers. In a more competitive world the money seems to be in creating an echo chamber for people’s prejudices: thus Fox News, a conservative American cable-news channel, makes more profits than its less strident rivals, CNN and MSNBC, combined.

　　第二個(gè)值得關(guān)注的就是黨派性。在大眾傳媒時(shí)代，地方寡頭必須保持相對(duì)的公正性以吸引讀者和贊助商。在一個(gè)更具有競(jìng)爭(zhēng)性的世界中，金錢似乎正在為偏見提供肥沃的土壤：就像Fox News，一家美國(guó)保守派有線新聞電視臺(tái)，比沒有它言語(yǔ)犀利的兩家CNN和MSNBC合起來(lái)賺得還要多。

　　In one way the increasing availability of partisan news is to be welcomed. In the past many people – especially right-wing Americans, since most American television was left-leaning – had nothing to watch that reflected their views. But as news is becoming more opinionated, both politics and the facts are suffering: witness some American conservatives’ insistence that Barack Obama was born outside America, and others’ refusal to accept that taxes must rise.

　　在某種情況下，大量政黨新聞的涌入是會(huì)被歡迎的。在過去，許多人——特別是右翼人士，因?yàn)榇蠖鄶?shù)美國(guó)電視是左傾的——在電視上找不到反應(yīng)他們政治立場(chǎng)的節(jié)目。政治與事實(shí)都在忍受固執(zhí)己見的新聞的打擊：有人堅(jiān)稱奧巴馬是在國(guó)外出生的，也有人拒絕接受稅收必須上調(diào)。

　　What is to be done? At a societal level, not much. The transformation of the news business is unstoppable, and attempts to reverse it are doomed to failure. But there are steps individuals can take to mitigate these worries. As producers of new journalism, they can be scrupulous with facts and transparent with their sources. As consumers, they can be catholic in their tastes and demanding in their standards. And although this transformation does raise concerns, there is much to celebrate in the noisy, diverse, vociferous, argumentative and stridently alive environment of the news business in the age of the internet. The coffee house is back. Enjoy it.

　　有什么需要做的呢?在社會(huì)層面需要我們做的并不多。新聞產(chǎn)業(yè)的轉(zhuǎn)型勢(shì)不可擋，任何意圖阻止轉(zhuǎn)型的行為都注定失敗。但個(gè)人確實(shí)可以采取有效措施來(lái)減輕前面提到的幾種擔(dān)心。大眾作為新式傳媒的締造者，可以自己對(duì)所謂事實(shí)的真實(shí)性把關(guān)并公開信息來(lái)源。而作為新聞受眾的時(shí)候，大眾可以接觸更多領(lǐng)域的信息并且降低需求的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。雖然轉(zhuǎn)型確實(shí)帶來(lái)了一些麻煩，但更值得慶祝的是在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)時(shí)代有這樣一個(gè)集思廣益、百家爭(zhēng)鳴的新聞平臺(tái)�？Х任輹r(shí)代即將回歸。與它共舞吧!

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