The news business
新闻产业

Tossed by a gale
狂风过后

May 14th 2009
From The Economist print edition

It isn’t just newspapers: much of the established news industry is being blown away. Yet news is thriving
不仅仅是报纸，如今新闻界的大部分产业都处在下坡路，但新闻本身，依然兴旺发达



PERHAPS the surest sign that newspapers are doomed is that politicians, so often their targets, are beginning to feel sorry for them. On May 9th Barack Obama ended an otherwise comic speech with an earnest defence of an embattled business. House and Senate committees have held hearings in the past month. John Kerry, the junior senator from Massachusetts, called the newspaper “an endangered species”.
报纸业还是在劫难逃，其中最明显的标志就是：过去一贯为他们所评论的政客们，如今却为其感到惋惜。5月9号，巴拉克奥巴马总统发表了一次不同寻常的充满幽默的演讲，面对如今岌岌可危的局势，奥巴马总统表示会认真做好防御措施。上个月，众议院委员会，参议院委员会分别举行了听证会。约翰克里，一名来自马塞诸塞州的初级参议员，称报业为“一个岌岌可危的行业”。

Indeed it is. According to the American Society of News Editors, employment in the country’s newsrooms has fallen by 15% in the past two years. Paul Zwillenberg of OC&C, a firm of consultants, reckons that almost 70 British local newspapers have shut since the beginning of 2008. The Independent and the London Evening Standard depend on the largesse of foreign investors. The strain is not confined to English-speaking countries: French newspapers have avoided the same fate only by securing an increase in their already hefty government subsidies.
事实也确实如此。根据美国新闻编辑协会数据显示，过去两年里，美国各地新闻工作室的就业率下降了15%。保罗•兹韦伦勃格，现工作于一家咨询公司OC&C,估计从2008年初起，有近70家英国当地报纸倒闭。而独立报和英国标准晚报则依靠国外投资者的慷慨解囊勉强维持。这股飓风不仅波及到以英语作为母语的国家：法国报纸只有在通过争取获得更多政府补助（之前，他们已经获得了高额的政府补助）来为现状。

Broadcast television news is struggling too. Audiences have split and eroded: the share of Americans who watch the early evening news on the old “big three” broadcast networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) has fallen from about 30% in the early 1990s to about 16%. Local-news outfits are ailing as car dealers and shops trim their advertising. ITV, Britain’s biggest commercial broadcaster, is pleading to be excused from its obligation to produce local news.
广播电视业如今也面临同样的困境。观众被其他产业瓜分走了：对比于上世纪九十年代，有30%的美国人通过ABC，CBS及NBC三大传统广播电视公司收看晚间新闻，如今的比例下降到了16%左右。由于汽车制造商及商铺对其广告宣传的删减，当地新闻业也不景气。英国最大一家商业广播电视台—ITV，如今正申请免除其报道当地新闻的职责。

All this has provoked much hand-wringing. Yet the plight of the news business does not presage the end of news. As large branches of the industry wither, new shoots are rising. The result is a business that is smaller and less profitable, but also more efficient and innovative.
所有这一切，让人不禁扼腕。但新闻产业如今面临的困境并不预示着新闻的终结。随着新闻业一些较大分支的衰落，一种更小巧，薄利但同时更快捷，新颖的产业也同时开始兴起。

The clearest picture of how news consumption is changing comes from surveys by the Pew Research Centre. Since 1994 the share of Americans saying they had listened to a radio news broadcast the previous day has fallen from 47% to 35%. The share reading a newspaper has dropped from 58% to 34%. Meanwhile cable and internet audiences have grown. In 2008, for the first time, more people said they got their national and international news from the internet than from newspapers (see chart 1).
皮佑研究中心的调查对新闻消费构架的改变给出了最明晰的描述。自从1994年起至今，在美国用广播收听前一天新闻的人的比例从47%降到35%，读报的人的比例从58%降至34%。与此同时，有线及网络消费人群则在不断上升。根据人们的自述，2008年间，通过网络获取国内国际新闻的人数第一次超过了以报纸作为新闻媒介的人数。

Deeper but not broader
更深但没有更广

It is not only a matter of people switching from one medium to another. Nearly everybody who obtains news from the internet also commonly watches it on television or reads a newspaper. Only 5% of Americans regularly get their news from the internet alone. Technology has enabled well-informed people to become even better informed but has not broadened the audience for news. The Pew Centre’s most alarming finding, for anybody who works in the trade, is that the share of 18- to 24-year-olds who got no news at all the previous day has risen from 25% to 34% in the past ten years.
这不单纯是人们从一种媒介跳到另一种媒介的问题。几乎每一个上网看新闻的人一般也会通过电视或报纸看新闻。只有5%的美国人只从网络上了解新闻。科技使博识的人更加通晓天下事，但并没有使关注新闻的人群范围有所扩大。而皮佑中心的一项研究发现，过去十年间，18岁到24岁的人群中，从来不关注新闻的人的比例从25%上涨到了34%。这对每一个新闻行业的人来说，都是亟须注意的。

Those who do seek news obtain it in a different way. Rather than plodding through a morning paper and an evening broadcast, they increasingly seek the kind of information they want, when they want. Few pay. Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, says many have come to view online news as “an all-you-can-eat buffet for which you pay a cable company the only charge.”
那些关注新闻的人通过其他不同的途径获取新闻。摒弃了单调无趣的早报或晚间新闻，通过更便捷更廉价的方式，人们开始越来越多的有针对性的获取新闻内容。罗伯特汤马斯，《华尔街日报》的主编，说道，有些人将网络新闻评价为“一种只需向有限电视公司交费，就能享受无限的自助餐式新闻”。

The main victim of this trend is not so much the newspaper (although it is certainly declining) as the conventional news package. Open almost any leading metropolitan newspaper, or look at its website, and you will find the same things. There will be a mixture of local, national, international, business and sports news. There will be weather forecasts. There will be display and classified advertisements. There will be leaders, letters from readers, and probably a crossword.
当今趋势下的主要牺牲者，并不是提供传统打包新闻的报纸行业（尽管它销量确实在下降）。翻开任何一份主流都市报纸，或进它们的网页观看，你都会有相同的发现—当地的，国内的，国际的，商务的，体育的，各种新闻混杂在一起；还有天气预报，各种展出及分类广告；当然也少不了序言，读者来信，甚至十字填词一类。

This package, which was emulated first by broadcasters and then by internet pioneers such as AOL.com and MSN.com, works rather like an old-fashioned department store. It provides a fair selection of useful information of dependable quality in a single place. And the fate of the news package is similar to that of the department store. Some customers have been lured away by discount chains; others have been drawn to boutiques.
无论是过去的广播电台，还是后来的网络开拓者如：AOL和MSN，其实都在效仿这种捆绑式新闻。这种新闻就像是个老式的百货商场，每家店面都提供了一系列高质量，有保证的服务。而如今，捆绑式新闻所处的命运也正如这种老式的百货商场：部分顾客被折扣店所吸引，而另外一些顾客则转向了精品店。

The Wal-Marts of the news world are online portals like Yahoo! and Google News, which collect tens of thousands of stories. Some are licensed from wire services like Reuters and the Associated Press. But most consist simply of a headline, a sentence and a link to a newspaper or television website where the full story can be read. The aggregators make money by funnelling readers past advertisements, which may be tailored to their presumed interests. They are cheap to run: Google News does not even employ an editor.
雅虎和谷歌这样的门户网站属于超市型新闻网，涵盖了数以万记的新闻材料。有些是从如《路透社》，《美联社》等有线服务网站中许可链接的，但大部分都仅仅只包括一个标题和一句话，还有一个链接，点进去到报纸或电视网站上可以阅读全文。搜索网站通过跳过那些可能会削减他们预计利润的广告，直接向读者提供信息来赚钱，运作起来非常方便，谷歌新闻甚至不需要雇一个编辑。

Although they are convenient, these news warehouses can feel impersonal. So another kind of aggregator has emerged, which offers a selection of news and commentary. Some are eclectic, like the Daily Beast and the Drudge Report—the grandfather of the boutique aggregators. Others are more specific, like Perlentaucher, a German cultural website. The most successful of the lot, and the template for many newly unemployed journalists who have tried to launch websites of their own, is the Huffington Post.
尽管他们看上去非常便捷，但这些新闻批发市场却让人感到很机械。随即，另一种搜索网站诞生了，它具有选择性提供新闻及评论的功能。其中包括一些很中立的如：每日野兽，及像德拉吉这样的精品搜索网站开创者。其他还包括一些如德国人创办的非常具体的文化交流网站—Perlentaucher。这些网站中，最成功的同时也是那些最近想尝试自己创立网站的失业记者们的范例的网站，当属《哈分特邮报》。

HuffPo, as it is broadly known, employs just four reporters among a total staff of about 60. Much of its news is second-hand. But it boasts an unpaid army of some 3,000 mostly left-wing bloggers. The website feels like a cross between a university common room and a Beverly Hills restaurant (your attitude to HuffPo will depend largely on whether you find this prospect appealing). Arianna Huffington, who runs it, calls it a “community around news”. It now has 4.2m unique monthly visitors, according to comScore, an internet market-research company—almost twice as many as the New York Post.
正如大家所了解到的，《哈分特邮报》只有四个记者，总共职员也只有60人。那里大部分的新闻都属于再加工的，但它以拥有一大批免费注册的左翼博友（近3000人）感到自豪（人们对《哈分特邮报》的看法，很大程度上决定于他们是否认同此观点）。Arianna Huffington，《哈分特邮报》的运营商，称其为“新闻社区”。根据国际市场研究公司—comScore的结果显示：如今，它的月点击量超过了4200万人次，几乎是《纽约邮报》的两倍。

Old-fashioned news folk increasingly complain that aggregators are “parasites” that profit from their work. They are, in a sense; but parasites can be useful. As the quality of journalism becomes more erratic, the job of sifting stories is increasingly vital. And aggregators drive readers, hence advertising, to original-news websites. Hitwise, another market-research firm, estimates that in March 22% of referrals to news sites came from search engines like Google, whereas 21% came from other news sites. “Reporters send us their stories all the time,” notes Tina Brown, a magazine veteran who runs the Daily Beast.
最近不断听到新闻工作者的抱怨，他们称搜索网站为“寄生虫”，靠他们的劳动赚钱。某种意义上来说，他们是，但寄生虫也可以带来好处。由于现在新闻工作的质量得不到保证，所以对于新闻材料的选择变得尤为重要。而搜索网站可以带领读者，从广告直接跳到了拥有第一手新闻资料的网站。Hitwise，另一家市场研究公司，估计，三月份中，22%对新闻网站的访问来自于像谷歌这样的搜索引擎，而只有21%来自于其他新闻站点。《每日野兽》杂志的老编，蒂娜布朗说道：“我们每时每刻都在接受新的新闻材料。”

The rise of the aggregators reveals an uncomfortable fact about the news business. The standard system of reporting, in which a journalist files a story that is broadcast or printed once and then put on a single proprietary website, is inefficient. The marginal cost of distributing the story more widely is close to nil, but the marginal benefit can be considerable. Interest in a story about Iraq in, say, the Los Angeles Times extends far beyond that city. Before the aggregators appeared, a reader in Seville or even San Francisco probably would not have known it existed.
搜索网站—这一新型产业带来了令人苦恼的事实。从前，新闻记者们遵循着一套新闻系统的标准：即撰写一篇新闻稿后，先发表在广播或报刊上，然后再刊登到一个私营网站上。如今，这套标准因搜索网站的兴起变成一纸空文。散布新闻到世界各地的成本可能接近于零，但从中产生的微薄的利润确实相当可观的。比方说：洛杉矶时报上一篇关于伊拉克的报道，可能在千里之外，也会使人们产生兴趣。而搜索网站产生之前，位于Seville甚至旧金山的人们或许都不知道有这么回事。

The inherent benefit of spreading stories around helps explain why some established news outfits are coming to resemble aggregators. The Associated Press has a popular iPhone application which combines national stories with local ones from 1,100 partner news outlets. News Corporation set up a website, Fox Nation, which mixes news stories with right-wing commentary. It is intended to become a conservative Huffington Post. Indeed, one of the great successes in both British and American news publishing is the Week, in effect an aggregator that is printed on paper.
传播新闻产生的潜在利润，使一些已有的新闻工作网开始效仿搜索网站的做法。美联社在iphone手机（苹果自主生产的一种手机）上开发的一个非常热门功能：即通过其1100个新闻合作站点，使当地新闻与国内新闻结合在一起。新闻公司同时开设了一个名为—Fox Nation的网站，在新闻中参杂一些右派人士的评论性文章，意在打造一个“保守版”的《哈分特邮报》。事实上，《Week》是美英两国中最成功的新闻公司之一，它就相当于把搜索引擎搬到了报纸上。

Up go the walls
层层计费

General news is likely to remain free on the internet. The crush of similar stories is too great, the temptation of piracy is too strong and the aggregators are too good at sniffing out decent free reports. Yet it has become clear that online advertising alone cannot support good original journalism.
目前看来，在网上依然可以免费观看大众新闻。因为，新闻故事重复的太多了，人们对挖掘隐私的愿望太过强烈，且搜索网站轻易就可以挖掘到免费的新闻材料。显而易见，仅仅在网上做广告宣传已经不能是新闻界重现往日辉煌了。

Until recently many print news executives believed that advertising revenues would follow their readers from print to the web. Between 2004 and 2007 online advertising revenues doubled from $1.5 billion to $3.2 billion, according to the Newspaper Association of America. But in the second quarter of 2008 they began to fall, just as the loss of print and classified advertisements accelerated (see chart 2). Worryingly, this cannot be blamed entirely on the recession. Online advertising money has moved to search—ie, Google—and excess supply has depressed prices of display advertisements. As a result, executives are looking hungrily at the few online outfits that dare ask readers for money.
直到前一阵，依然有一些新闻报刊的主管认为广告收入会随着他们的观众群的转移，而从报刊转向网络。根据美国报业学会数据显示：2004年至2007年，网络广告的收入从15亿美元激增到32亿美元，翻了一倍还多。但从2008年二季度开始，与报刊界出现同样问题的是，网络广告收入开始下降，与此同时，分类广告增加了。虽然如此，我们也不能将全部归咎于经济的不景气。一些网络广告收入被搜索网站，如：IE和谷歌，划分的同时，过剩的新闻资源也使降低了广告本身的价值。这直接导致各位主观们虎视眈眈的将目光投向了少数网站—他们依然不惧向读者们收费。

One is the Financial Times (part-owner of The Economist) which demands registration of anybody wishing to view more than three articles per month and payment from anybody wanting to see more than ten. About 1m people are registered, of whom 109,000 pay. By going easy on casual readers, the Financial Times keeps a foot in what John Ridding, the company’s chief executive, calls the “giant wave machines” of the internet, such as Google and Yahoo!, which drive traffic to the site. Registered readers are served targeted advertisements, which are more lucrative. It is an attempt to fuse a subscription model with one supported by advertising.
其中一个就有《金融时报》（《经济学家》的一半股份的所有者），其规定：每月阅读三篇以上，需要注册；阅读十篇以上需要缴费。如今有100万人注册，其中有10.9万人缴了费。因其在普通读者中有很高的威望，《金融时报》将在网络中，如谷歌和雅虎，这样《金融时报》的高级主管John Ridding所谓的，“旗舰网站”中占有一席之地。针对不同类的会员有不同的广告宣传，这样利润空间更大。针对不同的广告采用不同的订阅模式也是一种新的尝试。

The Wall Street Journal takes a shrewd route to a similar destination. Rather than charging certain types of user, it charges for certain types of news. Earlier this week, it offered for nothing a story about swine flu, a review of the new “Star Trek” film and a report on looming cuts at car dealerships. It charged for pieces on Cigna Corporation’s pension plan, Lockheed Martin’s quarterly lobbying expenditures and a lawsuit against a bottling company which alleges that a board meeting was held improperly. In short, the fun articles are free. The dry, obscure stuff costs money.
《华尔街日报》与其有异曲同工之妙。与从特定类型读者群收费的方式不同的是，《华尔街日报》采用从特定类型新闻内容收费的方式。这个星期初，关于猪流感的新闻，对新电影—《Star Trek》的点评及关于放松对汽车销售商的限制的报道都是免费获取的。但有些报道是要收费的，比如说：关于Cigna公司的养老金计划，Lockheed Martin的分季度游说演讲花销和对一灌装公司的诉讼案，称其董事会不作为的相关报道。简而言之，轻松的话题都是免费的，无聊，晦涩的新闻需要花钱才能看。

The thinking is that broadly appealing articles draw readers to the website, where they can be tempted by advertisers and by the Journal’s more selective wares. Most people do not care about pensions in a Philadelphia health-insurance company. But those who are interested in such information are very interested, so much so that they will probably pay a monthly subscription for it. Just over 1m do—even though the specialised articles can be read for nothing via Google. And those who cross the main pay wall may be persuaded to purchase more premium content. The paper is also exploring a “micro-payments” model for individual articles.
总而言之，题材丰富而又吸引人的文章可以吸引读者进站浏览，这样网站就可以通过广告或者《华尔街日报》中更多的可供选择的新闻故事来吸引读者。大部分的人都对费城一家人寿保险公司的养老金问题不感兴趣。但那些少数对此非常感兴趣的人，就有可能订阅这月的报纸。尽管那则专题新闻可以免费通过谷歌阅览，但还是有100万人订阅了这份报纸。而那些订阅网上新闻报的人们，可能又会被说服继续花钱看更有价值的新闻文章。对于个别一些文章，纸质报纸行业也同时推出了一种“微型付费”的模式。

Financial news is not the only kind for which people appear prepared to pay. ESPN, a cable sports channel, has erected several pay walls on its website. They protect information that only the most rabid fan would want to know, adhering to the Wall Street Journal’s dictum that people’s willingness to pay for a story is inversely correlated with the size of its potential audience. The number of profitable news niches may grow as rivals close bureaus or go out of business altogether.
不仅只有金融类的新闻，人们才愿意付费阅览。ESPN，一个有线体育频道，在其官网上也建立了几道收费关卡。他们为新闻信息建立起篱笆，只有最热衷的粉丝才想去了解，正如《华尔街日报》所说：读者愿意付费阅览比例与这篇文章相关的潜在读者群大小成反比关系。

Newspapers and magazines are more likely to be rescued by a careful combination of free and paid-for content than by new technology. Portable news readers such as the Kindle DX, which some have hailed as potential saviours, will help only to the extent that they lure readers from the web, where news is mostly free. At the moment they seem to be doing something else. Ken Doctor of Outsell, a research firm, reckons that the Kindle appeals to baby-boomers who would otherwise read a paper magazine or newspaper. The young prefer their iPhones and their aggregators. Indeed, the top four magazines on Kindle, according to Amazon’s website, are the New Yorker, Newsweek, Time and Reader’s Digest. Not much of a youth market there.
相对于新科技而言，免费和付费阅读方式的有机结合或许是报刊杂志更好的出路。而对于被誉为“未来战士”的掌上新闻浏览器—Kindle DX，也只能取悦于在网上阅读新闻（几乎是完全免费的阅读）的读者群。如今，他们决定要另辟蹊径。Outsell研究公司的肯博士认为Kindle对那些习惯于看纸质报刊杂志，在婴儿潮时期出生的人来说，较有吸引力。年轻一代更偏爱用iPhones和搜索网站获取新闻信息。事实上，根据亚马逊网站的调查显示，Kindle上点击率最高的四个网站分别是：《纽约客》，《新闻周刊》，《时代》及《读者文摘》。而这些网站的年轻一代的市场份额并不多。

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On cable television, a different kind of niche product is cleaning up. The right-wing Fox News Channel has become by far the most popular specialist provider of news. This is not surprising. The channel’s newscasts and opinion shows are well-produced, and the crumbling of the Republican Party has left conservatives seeking a voice. Rather more surprising is that the left-wing MSNBC now draws more prime-time viewers aged 25 to 54 than the much more established CNN.
如今的有线电视产业，一种与过去风格所不同的一些电视台正大把捞钱。支持右派的福克斯新闻频道，如今在新闻专访方面是最受欢迎的电视台。这并不奇怪，该电台的新闻节目和舆论节目质量都非常之高，而共和党派的解散使得保守党派开始站出来说话。更令人吃惊的是，在黄金时段，支持左派的MSNBC网站吸引的年龄在25—54岁之间的观众，竟超过了新闻巨头—CNN。

Fox and MSNBC provide a mixture of news, interviews and occasionally furious commentary. Phil Griffin, the chief executive of MSNBC, calls it “news-plus”. The aim is to complement and give meaning to the mass of disconnected information that viewers pick up during the day. Viewers know what they are getting; indeed, they rate cable shows as more reliable than newspapers. Against the common charge of partisanship, Mr Griffin offers what could be the slogan of the cable news industry: “We’re not trying to be all things to all pee.”
福克斯及MSNBC公司提供了各种混杂的新闻，专访，及偶尔的热烈讨论。Phil Griffin，MSNBC的董事长，称之为“新闻大烩菜”，其目的在于使读者平日里获取的各种各样杂乱的信息变得完善并有意义。读者知道他们需要什么；事实上，他们评价说有线电视节目比报纸更可靠。摒弃了党派之间的相互指责，格里芬先生道出了这个有线电视新闻产业共同的标语：“我们目的不是为了迎合所有人。”

Hot talk may be popular at the moment because Americans are politically polarised. The calmer CNN won the battle for cable viewers on election night and may well do so again in 2012. Yet, as in so much of the news business, a return to normal is improbable. The market for news is likely to remain unstable, favouring different providers at different points in political, economic and even sporting cycles.
如今美国政局正处在两局分化的状态，这样的话题一定备受关注。大选之夜，默默无闻的CNN赢得了最高收视率，并说不定在2012年再次成为赢家。尽管现在如此，以后也很难说。新闻市场现在依然很不稳定，对于政治，经济，甚至于体育运动等，不同的领域的“收视之冠”也不尽相同。

Take Real Clear Politics, an American political website, which aggregates news, commentary and opinion polls. It became essential reading during last year’s presidential race. At its peak, shortly before the election, it attracted 1.4m unique visitors a month, according to comScore. Since then its popularity has plunged by 75%. Rivals like Fivethirtyeight.com and Talking Points Memo have lost many readers too. For newspapers, magazines and television programmes, with their high fixed costs, such fluctuations would be ruinous.
就比如说美国一政治新闻网—Real Clear Politics，集合了各种新闻，评论以及民意调查。在去年总统选举中，它成为了重要的新闻发布站点。根据comScore公司的数据显示：最高时候，即在大选结果出来前一个月，它的访问量达到了140万人次。大选过后，它的访问量一下子下跌了75%，而它的竞争对手们如：Fivethirtyeight.com及Talking Points Memo也有同样遭遇。这样的起伏波动，对于像报纸，杂志及电视这样高成本的媒介来说，是致命的。

Not so long ago, news was a highly profitable business. Regional newspapers cultivated cosy monopolies and routinely enjoyed annual profit margins of more than 20%. In America local television stations sometimes had margins approaching 50%. Yet news does not always have to be profitable in order to survive.
不久以前，新闻行业曾经是块沃土。地方报纸独霸一方，独享每年超过20%的盈利。而一些美国地方电视台的盈利甚至可以达到50%。然而为了生存，新闻不能总处于高赢利状态。

Even in their diminished state, large newspapers attract rich men who seek political or business clout, or who believe that there is money to be made after all. Tony O’Reilly, who ran Independent News & Media until this year, used to describe the Independent newspaper as a calling card. He tolerated its losses, although the company’s shareholders have been less patient. Rupert Murdoch’s fondness for printer’s ink has sometimes baffled Wall Street analysts. Still, last month David Geffen, a media mogul, reportedly tried to buy a stake in the parent company of the New York Times.
即使是在利润下降的地方，主流的报纸依然可以吸引到那些寻求政治或经济影响力的富人们，以及那些总有办法赚到钱的人。独立新闻传媒的掌门人—托尼奥锐利，曾形容独立新闻传媒为一个金字招牌。在公司亏损严重，股东们已失去信心的时候，他依然抱有希望。鲁伯特梅铎对油印墨迹的喜爱常常令华尔街分析师们感到不解。传媒界的权威—大卫格芬，宣布说他准备购买其母公司《纽约时报》的一部分股份。

Less glamorous outfits can also attract benefactors. San Diego has a small, scrappy news website that was paid for at first largely by a local businessman. The Voice of San Diego concentrates on nitty-gritty issues such as water, crime and health care—the sort of stories that local newspapers used to cover extensively. Indeed, America long ago proved that radio news can be supplied by non-profit organisations. In the absence of profitable alternatives, it may be that expensive, worthy journalism on subjects like the war in Iraq will increasingly be supported by charity.
尽管现状惨淡，但新闻行业依然有贵人帮助。圣地亚哥的一家小型新闻网一开始大部分的赞助都来自于当地一位富商。《圣地亚哥之声》关注于水资源，犯罪及医疗保健等具体问题，这些问题在当地报纸上也曾是关注焦点。事实上，很早以前，美国曾申明非盈利机构可以做广播新闻。少了盈利性质的竞争对手，或许像伊拉克这样的战争题材的高昂，有意义的新闻会被各种慈善机构越来越多的挖掘出来。

The spread of digital cameras has also enabled ordinary people to file pictures and news reports directly. They are encouraged in this by established news outlets like CNN, which have come to view citizen journalists as a source of both content and page views. Citizens have proved excellent reporters of dramatic, obvious news, such as terrorist attacks and sightings of Britney Spears. Leonard Brody, the head of NowPublic, a large Canadian news-gatherer, believes that amateurs will eventually liberate journalists from the tedious business of reporting, leaving them free to concentrate on analysis. He means it kindly.
数码相机的广泛流传也使普通群众们参与到了新闻图片和报道的制作当中。这样的活动最先是由CNN发起的，他们视群众记者为整合内容及报道视角的一种资源。事实上，在一些话题新闻上，如：恐怖分子袭击及对布兰妮斯皮尔斯的看法，群众们都是非常杰出的新闻工作者。加拿大一家综合新闻公司NowPublic的总裁莱昂纳多布罗迪笑称，他相信总有一天，业余新闻工作者将把记者们从纷杂的报道中解救出来，而专注于新闻分析工作。

Just now journalists have less competition from crowds than from governments. In Britain local authorities have created newsletters that carry advertising. The annual budget for the websites of the (state-owned) BBC was recently raised to £145m ($220m). According to Mr Zwillenberg, the total online spending of the country’s national newspapers is only £100m.
如今对了记者们来说，相比群众，他们更感到了来自政府的压力。在英国，当地政府创办了政府简报，其中也包括了广告。每年，像BBC这样的政府有支撑的网站盈利额达到1.45亿英镑（即2.2亿美元）。根据兹韦伦勃格先生提供数据，英国国家级报纸所有的网上收入，一年也只有1亿英镑。

America’s president has proved an especially prolific citizen journalist. People who let Barack Obama’s campaign team have their e-mail address last year still receive the occasional missive. The White House posts videos on YouTube that are often more polished than those produced by the news networks. In case the intention to bypass the news filter were not clear, during his second press conference on March 24th the president did not take a single question from a leading daily newspaper. Clearly, he knows where the future lies.
现任美国的总统，经证明，也是一位出色的业余记者，那些向奥巴马竞选团队提供邮箱的人们，至今还能收到他们寄的邮件。而白宫在YouTube上面上传的视频的点击率也高于其他一些新闻网站上的视频。除非是想躲开新闻过滤器的骚扰，在三月24号举行的第二次记者招待会上，他没有就一个日报的问题进行回答。显然，他知道未来会怎样。

The decline of once-great newspapers and news programmes is not without cost. It means the end of a certain kind of civic sensibility that was built on broad agreement about what is important and what is not. But it was once difficult to imagine city centres without the unifying presence of department stores. Many of them went, yet people carried on shopping.
昔日曾经辉煌的报纸行业及新闻节目,如今举步维艰。民众在什么才更重要的问题上的广泛的一致，所表现出的社会意识就要结束了。但还是很难想象，城市之中没有百货大厦是怎样的情形，人们还是会去百货大厦，照样逛。

《经济学人》（The Economist ( http://www.economist.com ))
仅同意本网站翻译其杂志内容，并未对上述翻译内容进行任何审阅查对。

ceth: http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=19450