[2009.02.12]High wires 新闻专线：在钢丝上独自起舞

News agencies
新闻机构

High wires 新闻专线：在钢丝上独自起舞

Feb 12th 2009
From The Economist print edition

 

With newspapers in crisis, newswires may learn to live without them
眼见报业岌岌可危，新闻专线或将另起炉灶。

WHERE does news come from? The answer, much of the time, is from newswires. Many of the stories in newspapers, on television, radio and online are based on dispatches filed by the big news agencies. The biggest international newswires, Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, date back to the expansion of the telegraph in the mid-19th century, when rapid newsgathering first became possible. The agencies have usually been wholesalers of news; newspapers, broadcasters and websites act as retailers, repackaging and selling news to consumers alongside material generated in-house.
新闻从哪儿来？新闻从新闻专线来（少数情况除外）。大型新闻机构的快讯被编辑加以描绘，登上报纸网页，放进电视电台，就成了林林总总的新闻故事。十九世纪中叶，随着电报业的迅速发展，人们首次具有了迅速搜集新闻材料的能力, 如今最具规模的国际新闻专线美联社和路透社就在那时侯应运而生。将新闻一股脑儿打包出售是惯常做法，报纸网站和广播则如同零售商，把店面设在总部周围，兜售重新组合后的各式新闻。

Some, such as AP (a co-operative owned by its subscribers) and the state-backed French News Agency (AFP), have stuck to that model. But Reuters, like the Dow Jones newswire (which grew out of the Wall Street Journal), has developed a huge business providing information to financial-services firms, for which rapid, accurate news is highly valuable. A more recent arrival, Bloomberg, started out as a provider of such information but has turned into a news agency as well, creating a worldwide network of bureaus and syndicating stories to newspapers.
长久以来，这种“批发加零售”的运营模式一直为某些机构沿袭至今，例如美联社（订购者享有的合作公司）和法新社（政府新闻机构），但路透社和道琼斯新闻专线却已另起炉灶，开发了一笔大买卖——为金融服务公司提供第一手的准确消息。彭博社也是最近以这种“信息供应商”的身份入行、随后发展成新闻机构的例子。如今，彭博社的分支机构遍布世界各地，统一把快讯卖给报社。

The financial crisis is taking a terrible toll on both financial-services firms and newspapers, so you might expect the news agencies that serve them to be in trouble too. Not so. Christoph Pleitgen, a senior Reuters executive, says the big newswires have been staffing up in the past year. The Journal’s owner, News Corp, announced job cuts at the newspaper earlier this month, but said that the Dow Jones newswire was adding journalists at its bureaus, especially in India. Likewise, Bloomberg’s recent announcement of around 190 job cuts at a foreign-language television venture got more attention than its promise to create 1,000 jobs elsewhere, including in its news bureaus. And CNN, a television-news network, plans to set up a new international agency to rival AP and Reuters.
你可能会觉得，既然报业和金融服务公司一样，在这次金融危机中受伤惨重，那么为报纸提供素材的新闻机构也该举步维艰才是。其实不然。路透社高级执行主管克里斯托夫•普雷根称，各大新闻专线去年一直在增添人手。本月早些时候，美国新闻集团（华尔街日报所在公司）公布了旗下报纸裁员的消息，但也透露道琼斯新闻专线正招募记者，尤其是驻印记者。近日，彭博社也宣布某外语频道的岗位将削减190个。消息一出，人们的注意力都被吸引到裁员上，没怎么注意到她还承诺要在别处——包括往新设的新闻机构新增1000份工作。还有美国有线新闻网，计划成立一家国际新闻机构来与法新社和路透社抗衡。

A few struggling newspaper groups have stopped subscribing to newswires. Many others, having cut their own newsrooms, have become more dependent than ever on regurgitating agency copy. The proliferation of news websites, hungry for content, but lacking staff to produce it themselves, has also boosted the agencies. Last year printed newspapers contributed only 25% of AP’s revenues, says its boss, Tom Curley, down from 55% in 1985. Mr Pleitgen says that in developing regions, such as the Gulf, new television stations, websites and even newspapers are springing up, compensating for the newswires’ loss of customers elsewhere.
在当前的大环境下，一些新闻集团难以为继，便中断了新闻专线的服务，但更多的则比以往任何时候都需要原封不动的专线快讯，因为这些集团已经削掉了编辑室，无从加工。另外，新闻机构能在逆境中蓬勃发展，还得益于铺天盖地的网站——既急需板面，又不能杜撰，只好大量购买快讯。美联社总裁汤姆•克里称，去年美联社纸质报纸的销量仅占总额的25%，较1985年下降30%。普雷根先生也说，在波斯湾这样的发展中区域，新电视台、网站、乃至报业大楼竞相拔地而起，足以弥补他们在别处的损失。

But if newswires are thriving and newspapers are making ever more use of wire copy, why don’t the wire services supply news direct to the consumer? The risk that newspapers will be disintermediated is noted in a new report by, of all people, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. In some ways, it is already happening. Reuters and Bloomberg offer their top stories direct to consumers on advertising-financed websites.
但是，如果报纸里原封不动的快讯越来越多，新闻专线也蒸蒸日上，何不把快讯直接出售给读者？人们对此议论纷纷。其中，牛津大学路透新闻学研究所的报告提出了报纸被架空的可能。从某种程度上，这正变为现实。通过登陆某些靠广告盈利的网站，读者已经可以直接浏览路透社和彭博社的头条新闻。

And as more people consume news via smart-phones and other mobile devices, the newswires are providing it there, too. Norman Pearlstine, a senior Bloomberg executive, says the firm’s application for the Apple iPhone has been downloaded over a million times. Its service is free “for now”. AP, which is owned by its main subscribers, is treading carefully: it has struck deals with 1,200 American newspapers to create mobile websites, for which AP provides national and international news and they provide local news.
注意到越来越多的小灵通和其他移动设备正被用来阅读新闻，新闻专线也把触角伸向了那里。彭博社的高级执行主管诺曼•佩尔斯坦称，为阅读他们的新闻而下载苹果iPhone手机应用程序的人数已超过一百万次，且手机报是“暂时”免费的。美联社这一步则迈得比较谨慎，因为她的客户都是付费用户：在与1200家美国报社的协议下，双方将成立移动网站，美联社负责国内外新闻，报社提供当地消息。

Nobody yet knows which business model, if any, will work for mobile news. Mr Pearlstine notes that mobile users happily pay for a new ringtone, so why not for news? It is unclear how good news agencies will be at marketing direct to consumers. But as they continue building their worldwide news bureaus and providing more comprehensive coverage, they may be more likely to survive in the long term than those newspapers which, through constant rounds of cuts, risk becoming ever less distinctive.
不过，移动新闻这个商业模式究竟该怎么走，走不走得通，眼下还不甚明朗。佩尔斯坦先生指出，既然付费铃声能让移动用户买得心甘情愿，为什么新闻不能？即便我们不知道新闻机构的这种“直销”方式能创下多大业绩，但只要继续扩张世界各地的新闻网点、提供更加全面的报道，从长远看来，新闻机构就有可能挺过一波又一波的裁员之痛存活下来。至于那些报社，则可能慢慢淡出人们的视线，消失殆尽。

 

译者：hunt.lee1987    http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=17219&extra=page%3D1