Does Journalism Have a Future?

y Nicholas Lemann

在这个信息爆炸的时代，人们想要获取新闻，早已不必坐等晚上的新闻频道或者第二天早上的报纸。新型传播媒介网络、电脑、手机的出现让我们随时随地知晓天下事的同时，也冲击着新闻这个古老的行业。除此之外，新闻业的发展由于广告成本、印刷成本等问题的束缚，加上虚假报道等问题屡见不鲜，可以说是一路坎坷。新闻业能否适应时代的发展？面对内外困境，又该何去何从呢？

People tend to have little sympathy with accounts1. account： 报道，叙述。of crisis in a trade or profession. It comes across as evidence of excessive self-preoccupation, or as a prelude to special pleading before government.2.这种现象被视为过度自我关注的证据，或被当成特别向政府请愿的前奏。come across： 发现，出现；prelude：前奏，序幕；pleading： 请求，恳求。Journalism’s difficulties seem to be drawing this kind of reaction from many people who aren’t journalists. Isn’t the press still a swaggering, even power-abusing actor in politics and society?3. swagger： 大摇大摆，昂首阔步；powerabusing： 滥用职权的。Doesn’t it command4. command： 拥有，掌握。vast attention and resources? Isn’t more news being read by more people than ever before?

Out of Print: Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital AgeShows that something really has changed quite suddenly and dramatically in the press industry.5. Out of Print： Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age：《落后的纸媒：报纸、杂志和数字时代的新闻业》；dramatically： 显著地，引人注目地。George Brock is aveteran newspaperman, and his main concern in this clear-headed,synoptic and never whiny book is with the institutions where he has spent most of his career.6.（本书作者）乔治·布洛克是一名资深报刊人。在这本观点清晰、摘要性的、没有牢骚的书中，他表达了对于自己为之奋斗大半生的报刊业的忧虑之情。synoptic：摘要的，与摘要有关的；whiny： 爱抱怨的，好牢骚的。In the United States, newspaper advertising revenue—the main source of economic support by far—was $63.5 billion in 2000. By 2012 it had fallen to $19 billion.(During the same period, advertising revenue at Google went from zero to $46.5 billion.) Employment in the American newspaper industry fell by 44 per cent between 2001 and 2011. In the European Union, newspaper revenue is falling by more than 10 per cent a year. In the UK, newspaper circulation7. circulation： 发行量。has dropped by more than 25 per cent during the twenty-first century. It would be hard to think of another industry that is going through such a sudden collapse.8. collapse： 崩溃，瓦解。

One reason this view of journalism isn’t more widely accepted is that, as Brock says, it represents only a small, time-limited part of the overall history of the press. Brock’s account begins in the late sixteenth century. As he usefully reminds us, it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that a commercially supported, politically independent, fully staffed, mass-produced press came into being.9. 他还提醒我们很有价值的一点：直到19世纪新闻业才初具规模，实现了商业支持、政治独立、人员完备和规模生产。Before that, the press was a medium for the printed dissemination10. dissemination： 宣传，传播。of free speech and for making public basic information about government and business. The term “journalist”, denoting a full-time livelihood, wasn’t used in Britain until around 1830.11. 在英国，“记者”直到1830年前后才被看成是一份全职的工作。denote： 表示，指示。Interviewing, a socially impertinent12. impertinent： 无礼的，粗鲁的。American invention,became a standard British journalistic technique only in the 1880s.Newspaper journalism as we know it also required the invention of fast rotary printing presses and the growth of cities, and the editorial content that made news into a successful business had a generous complement of crime, sports, human interest and entertainment,along with more elevated material.13. 我们今天所知道的新闻报刊业的形成，得益于快速轮转印刷机的发明，城市发展以及编辑内容。这些内容极大充实了犯罪、运动、兴趣爱好、娱乐等方面的新闻，与严肃新闻一道将新闻行业推向成功。rotary printing press： 轮转印刷机；elevated： 高尚的，严肃的。But successful newspapers were never completely high-minded14. high-minded： 品格高尚的，有思想高度的。. As Brock puts it, “there has never been a mass audience for serious news”. The economically viable15. viable： 切实可行的，能够完成的。material paid for the socially valuable material.

During the second half of the twentieth century, now remembered in the newspaper business as a golden age,the position of newspapers was already weakening,Brock argues, mainly because of the advent16. advent： 到来，出现。of radio and television. In the US, newspaper sales per thousand people fell by 55 per cent from 1950 to 2008. The trouble wasn’t obvious at first,because economies in the developed world were generally growing, populations were rising,advertising revenues were increasing, and the losses in newspaper audience came mostly in the form of the weaker papers going out of business(London had more than fifty daily papers 200 years ago) while the more established17. established： 老牌的，早已建立的。papers grew. By,say, 1975, it had become just about impossible for a new entrant to start a big daily newspaper or a television station, because of prohibitively high costs and regulatory barriers.18. 比如到了1975年，因为过高的成本与制度上的阻碍，一个新手想要开办一份大型日报或者一家电视台已经不可能。entrant： 新成员，新工作者；prohibitively： 过高地，过分地。

Satellite and cable television, and then, especially, the internet,have brought the protected position of big news organizations to a sudden end, and made the underlying erosion of the newspaper audience more obvious.19. 随着卫星和有线电视，特别是互联网的出现，大型新闻机构受保护的优势突然间结束了，报刊潜在的读者问题也变得更加明显了。underlying： 潜在的，根本的；erosion： 侵蚀，腐蚀。Much of what news organizations produced was replicative—substantial press packs covered the same stories in roughly the same way—or was merely a repackaging of public information.20. 很多新闻机构的报道都是重复的——实质的内文内容都是一样的故事和基本相似的报道方式——或者仅仅是公共信息的重新包装。replicative： 重复的，复制的。But, operating from their safe perch21. perch： 栖息处，安全处。, journalists could tell themselves that if they produced something, it must have economic and social value. Those comfortable assumptions are now gone. As a business, newspapers have been subjected to devastating competition from new entrants in advertising sales and in information provision.22. subject to： 受……支配，受……影响；devastating： 毁灭性的，破坏性极强的；provision： 供给，提供。As a social activity, they have had to meet a much higher standard of originality and distinctiveness.23. originality： 独创性，别致；distinctiveness： 特殊性，区别性。

The situation in journalism is changing so rapidly that it is difficult to get a sure sense of what is going on. There is a great deal of discussion but it mainly takes place in an endless series of panel debates and blog posts where there are plenty of confident assertions,24. panel： 小组；assertion： 断言，主张。but not much reliable data. Roughly speaking, the discussants divide into two teams: Team Digital, whose members are quick to predict the imminent and not especially tragic death of the familiar news organizations, and Team Mainstream Media, whose members look hopefully at every new development for evidence to support their wish for a restoration of the good old days.25. 粗略来说，参加讨论的人分为两组：数字组，其成员很快预测出即将发生的事情，这不特指他们预测熟悉的新闻机构会以悲剧收场；主流媒体组，其成员心怀希望地看待每一个新发展，以期能从中寻找证据去支持他们回到过去美好时光的愿望。discussant： 讨论参加者，参加讨论的人；imminent： 即将发生的，迫近的；restoration： 恢复，还原。WhenBuzzfeed26. Buzzfeed： 美国的一家新闻聚合网站。raises millions of dollars from venture-capital firms, Team Digital proclaims victory. When theNew York Timesintroduces a reasonably successful online subscription27. subscription： 订阅，订购。system, Team Mainstream Media does.

To work in a traditional city newsroom is to witness every day what is still quite an impressive28. impressive： 令人钦佩的，令人印象深刻的。industrial process. Information flows in from an enormous variety of sources, gets sorted, sifted, processed and translated into a clear, accessible form, moves onto gigantic machines for an instantaneous mass production process, and then gets physically distributed to hundreds of thousands of locations.29. 信息从庞大而繁杂的源头流入，被分类、筛选、加工、翻译成明白可懂的形式，再进入大型的机器中瞬间完成大量生产加工，再由人工将其分发到成百上千个不同地方。sift： 筛选，过虑；gigantic： 巨大的，庞大的；instantaneous： 瞬间的，即时的。On the business side, this now means grappling with30. grapple with： 应付，处理。a new world in which readers have become accustomed to getting their news for free and advertisers have the luxury of paying far lower rates to reach far more highly targeted audiences through websites such as Google, Facebook and, most recently, Twitter.

Brock doesn’t try to solve this problem, but he does take on the project of defining the social value of journalism more precisely than merely asserting, implausibly, that everything journalists do is essential, and he offers a menu of four sub-categories—verification,sense-making, witness and investigation.31. 虽然布洛克并不试图解决这个问题，但他确实承担起责任，更准确地定义了新闻业的社会价值，而不仅仅是不真实地断言记者的每个言行都是至关重要的。布洛克将新闻业的社会价值分为四个类别：查证核实、意义构建、目击证明和调查研究。implausibly： 难以置信地，不真实地；verification： 证实，证明。It still leaves the question how this mission will be supported, if not by readers and advertisers.These are not entirely satisfying solutions to the problem of how to support the socially useful aspects of journalism: state support is out of sync with the current resources and inclinations of the developed world, and support by patrons is a happenstance, not a guarantee.32. sync： 同时，同步；inclination： 倾向，意向；happenstance： 巧合，意外。

There are alternatives, and, towards the end ofOut of Print, Brock notes some American examples of relatively new, online-only news sites that seem to be self-sufficient. One senses that Brock is trying to be optimistic about these, but he is intellectually honest enough to mention that all of them are still small and struggling. It is difficult to say with a straight face, and George Brock does not, that the fabled“new business model” for news—that members of Team Mainstream Media often see just around the corner—has arrived, or will arrive any time soon.33. straight face： 一本正经，不动声色的表情；fabled： 寓言中的，传说中的。The internet might end up returning journalism to a faster, more technologically sophisticated34. sophisticated： 高级的，复杂的。version of what it was before the advent of the commercial newspaper business.