Tags: 媒体
【Party 4 】继续业务探讨时间
JOANNE: And a lot of the products that you’re talking about come as a result of focus grouping, and you’ve talked a lot about how you’ve done a lot of focus groups, and readers tell you they want short stories, and they want graphics, and they want big pictures. I find it curious that you are embracing focus groups because…and maybe this word has been tarnished now, butyou’ve always been a maverick. Right? I mean, if you ran your business according to how focus groups told you you should run your business, you wouldn’t be up here today.
JOANNE:你刚谈到的产品大多是来自于焦点座谈会的结果，而且你也提到你们做了一系列的焦点座谈会，读者告诉你们他们想要短小的故事、图表和更大幅的图片。我发现很有意思的一点是，你们正在拥抱焦点座谈会……也许这个单词现在已经过时了，但是你们一直都是这么特立独行，对不对？我的意思是，如果你只是根据焦点座谈所反馈的信息来经营报纸，那么今天你就不会来到这里。
SAM: Yeah, but the answer is you are acting like a journalist—okay?—because you grabbed the word focus group and, in effect, turned it from one element that’s relevant in a hundred elements to somehow or another we’re going to take one focus group and implement everything that they said, which is silly. One of the benefits of focus groups is you get a chance to listen to your customer. And all I’m saying is that there isn’t a successful business out there that doesn’t listen to their customer.
Sam：是的，但答案是你正在以新闻从业人员的身份行事——好不好？——因为你抓住了焦点座谈会上蹦出的词汇，有效地将它这一个元素从一百个相关的元素中抽离出来。我们举行一个焦点座谈会，并执行他们所提的每一个意见，那才是愚蠢。焦点座谈会的一个好处是，你有机会得以直接聆听你客户的心声。我想要说的全部就是，世界上没有哪一个成功的生意是完全不听取顾客意见的。
JOANNE: And the kind of journalism that…as you know, you’ve become a popular topic of conversation among journalists.
JOANNE: 这种新闻事业….正如你所知，你们已经成为了新闻业界的一个热门话题。
SAM: Really? No shit.
Sam：真的？别开我玩笑呢。
JOANNE: Maybe you read some of the blogs about yourself.
JOANNE: 或许你也读过一些关于你自己的博客？
SAM: No, never.
Sam：没，我还从没读过。
JOANNE: But I think the question really is, journalists believe that there is a reader service and a public service, that there’s a public good…
JOANNE: 但我认为真正的问题是，新闻人认为新闻业同时存在读者服务和公共服务职能，存在一种对公众有益的….
SAM: And journalists are more than willing to tell you what they think you need to know. And to some extent, that’s a valid position, but I certainly don’t think it is the answer. And to the extent that you have journalists who are unwilling to listen and only want to talk, they really should give up journalism and become college professors.
Sam:而且，新闻人更想要告诉你一些他们认为你需要知道的事情。在某种程度上，这是一种很正当的想法，但是我不认为应该如此。就这个范畴来说，还存在一种新闻人并不想去倾听而只想着不停地说，他们真不应该做新闻人而该去大学当教授。
JOANNE: It takes a lot of resources to pour into investigative reporting…and this is not just “How much did Sarah Palin spend on her wardrobe?” but serious investigative reporting that takes…could take months at a time that could take you down some dark alleyways that are not going to pay off. Is there a place for that? Is there a way to fund that, or are newspapers not the place for funding that any longer?
JOANNE: 调查性报道需要投入大量的人力物力资源…..这不是指像“莎拉·佩林花了多少钱置装？”这类的调查报道，而是指那些严肃类调查性报道，有时候它让你花上好几个月时间最后却走进了一条黑胡同，所获了了。这些报道是否还有空间？有没有一种方式来资助这类报道，或者报纸不再适合于承载它？
SAM: Well, you know, you were just talking to me a minute ago about the precipitous decline in advertising revenue. So the answer is that every piece of a newspaper has to be economically evaluated, because, in the end, we’re not an eleemosynary institution, even though most of the newspapers have been run as one. I mean, how would I not challenge every cost, every decision, and basically look at the cost benefit, just like our government is supposed to do when it raises our taxes? I got to look at the cost benefit and say, “What’s the benefit? What’s the cost? Does this make sense?”
Sam：要知道，一分钟前你还在跟我讨论报纸广告下滑的问题。报纸的每一个版面都必须接受经济评估，尽管所有的报纸一直以来都尽量如此运作，但最终我们毕竟不是慈善机构。换言之，就跟在政府提高我们税收的时候一样，叫我如何不去计较每一项花销、每一个决策，并将每一项活动都从根本上着眼于成本收益呢？我不得不去考虑成本收益，并且问自己，“收益是什么？支出是什么？这样做有没有意义？”
JOANNE: So at the L.A. Times, for example, which under a previous editor before you owned it won quite a few Pulitzer Prizes and really put a lot of effort into pieces that may or may not pay off, does that no longer make sense in the business model that we’re talking about?
JOANNE: 譬如我们拿洛杉矶时报来说，在你收购之前他们曾获得为数不少的普利策新闻奖，而且有些新闻的努力真是付诸东流，或者是根本没有获得相应的回报，而在我们刚刚所谈到的新商业模式下，这些是否还有价值？
SAM: I haven’t figured out how to cash in a Pulitzer Prize. There was a day when a newspaper put “Winner of Pulitzer Prize” on the front page, and people flocked to read the Pulitzer Prize story. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that that’s the case today But I also think that there are scale issues. In other words, I think that if the goal is a Pulitzer, it’s in the wrong place. In other words, we’re not in the business of, in effect, underwriting writers for the future. We’re a business that, in effect, has a bottom line. So as far as we’re concerned, I think Pulitzers are terrific, but Pulitzers should be the cream on the top of the coffee. They shouldn’t be the grounds. And I think there are a lot of scenarios in the newspaper industry where the entire focus is on Pulitzers. The entire focus is on becoming an international correspondent. I mean, I know that because our newspaper sent somebody to Kabul to cover the “Afghan Idol Show.” Now, I know Idol is the No. 1 TV program in the world, but do my readers really want a firsthand report on what this broad looked like who won the “Afghan Idol” Show”? Is that news?
Sam：我到现在还没有弄明白如何去衡量普利策奖的价值。某天，一家报纸把“普利策奖得主名单”放在头版，然后一大群人聚集过来读普利策奖获奖新闻。不幸的是，我不确定今天的情况是否仍然如此，但我也承认确实存在一定的衡量标准。换言之，我认为如果报纸的目标就是为了得普利策奖，那就是摆错了位置。也就是说，实际上，我们不是在给作者承诺未来。事实上，我们是在做一桩买卖，是有底线的。就目前我们所讨论的，我认为普利策奖真可怕，但它应该是一杯咖啡之上的那团奶油，而不是一切的基础。恐怕报业内部有不少人是在把全部的精力都投在普利策奖上，一心想要做成一个国际化的通讯机构。我知道因为我们的报纸派了记者去喀布尔报道“阿富汗偶像秀”（Afghan Idol Show），现在，我知道了它是世界第一号的电视节目，但是我们的读者真的想要诸如“阿富汗偶像秀”等这么宽泛的第一手报道吗？这是新闻吗？
JOANNE: The “Afghan Idol Show”…I’d like to know what the broad looked like.
JOANNE: 阿富汗偶像秀…..我倒是想看看这个报道宽泛到什么样。
SAM: I’ll send you a picture, okay? I mean, really, it’s not a problem.
Sam：稍后我给你发张照片好了。我的意思是，真的，这不是问题所在。
JOANNE: But you’re talking about two different things here, though.
JOANNE: 但是，你在谈论两件全然不同的事情。
SAM: Why am I talking about two different…?
Sam：为什么我实在谈论两件不同的…..?
JOANNE: Because I think the essential question, what the Pulitzers get at, would be that…the way that newspapers had seen themselves, and I spent many years on a newspaper, was as a public trust. And, you’re right, their finances were not put first. So I guess you’re saying that that age is over and we need to be…
JOANNE: 因为我认为最实质性的问题，普利策奖带来的将是…..报纸评判自己的方式，我在报纸工作了多年，我认为最重要的是公众信任。对，你是对的，商业没有放在报纸的第一位。所以我猜你要说的是这样的时代要终结了，我们需要成为……
SAM: My question is real simple. As of last night, the entire market cap of the New York Times [Co.] was $1.2 billion. And my question to Arthur, who I think is out here someplace, is if you want to be a charitable trust, be a charitable trust. If you
don’t want to be a charitable trust, then you’ve got to focus on producing a return for investors’ capital, and it’s just that simple. It worked in the old days because you could be a public trust and you could do well for your shareholders because you had a monopoly, and monopolies are wonderful. I mean, I think competition is terrific, particularly for all those guys out there. Me? I like monopolies. I’m just sorry I waited 60 years to get into the newspaper industry because the 40 I missed were great.
Sam :我的问题非常简单。到昨晚为止，纽约时报公司的整个市值大约是12亿美元。我想问亚瑟的是——我想他今天不在这里啊——如果你想成为一个公益信托，那就索性做一个公益信托好了。如果你不想成为公益信托，那么最好是致力于让投资人有所回报，就这么简单。在过去这很管用，你既可以做公益信托，同时还可以很好地对股东负责，因为那时候你占据了垄断位置，垄断是个好东西。我是指，我认为竞争很可怕，特别是所有人都参与竞争的时候。我？我喜欢垄断。我只是感到非常遗憾，我等了60年才进入报业，因为我错过的前40年非常美妙。
JOANNE: I think the audience is going to have some good ones for you. Just broadly, if you could speak to the industry as a whole…first of all, are we in a recession or are we in a depression?
JOANNE: 我想，受众将会给你带来一些好消息的。就大行业而言，首先，你认为目前这个行业是处在衰退期还是萧条期？
SAM: I think we’re in a recession. I think that government action, both past and future, will more than likely make it a recession and nothing worse. In my opinion, the comparables to the ’30s are not comparable. It’s just almost 180 degrees different. I mean, we had a recession in 1930 that government policy turned into a depression. I don’t think we’re going to see that happen at this point.
Sam：我认为是衰退。我想政府在过去和未来的一些举措，都将把它推往衰退，再也没有比这更糟糕的了。在我看来，这和上个世纪30年代的大萧条没有可比性，这是一个180度的大转弯。在1930年代我们也面临着衰退，但是政府把它扭转成为了一次大萧条。但是我想这次历史不会重演了。
JOANNE: So…and the second question would be in terms of advertising, the advertising industry. We’ve seen it fall off a cliff, as you said. When does it bottom out, and where do you think it bottoms out? Would it be in…next year, 2009, or is it going to go beyond 2009?
JOANNE: 那么….第二个问题是关于广的。正如你所说，我们已经看到了广告掉下了悬崖，什么时候见底？你认为底在哪里？会是……明年，2009年，或者在2009年以后？
SAM: I’d answer your question by saying that I think advertising will return as the economy returns. I think the question for the media industry really revolves around are we in the middle of a, quote, economic reduction in advertising, or are we seeing structural change? Are we seeing advertisers challenging the assumptions as to what works for them and what doesn’t work for them. So I think to some extent part of the advertising reduction is very much connected to the advertisers trying to see if there’s a different blueprint that produces higher bang for the buck.
Sam：我的回答是，我认为随着经济的恢复，广告也会相应地回升。我认为对传媒业来说，问题在于我们是身处因广告下滑而带来的经济缩水期，还是我们正在经历结构性变化？所以，我认为从某种程度上说，广告的缩减与广告主试图寻找另一种不同的直击目标人群的广告投放蓝图。
JOANNE: So are you betting on secular versus cyclical changes?
JOANNE:所以，你在赌这一长期而又相对周期性的变革？
SAM: Well, I mean, the question is what’s the percentage? In other words, there’s no question in my mind that there’s been a secular change. The question is what’s the percentage, and what can we as media companies and newspapers, in particular, do to respond to it and to find different avenues? Our high-school newspaper is a perfect example of finding a different methodology to, in effect, attract advertising dollars and serve the public at the same time.
Sam：呃，我指的是，问题在于这个百分比会是多少？换言之，在我看来长期的变化是必然的。问题在于，作为媒体公司和报纸，我们能占到的百分比是多少？特别是我们如何去对这一变化做出回应，并开辟出不一样的道路来？事实上，在寻找不同方法来获得广告收入同时还服务公众方面，我们的中学报就是一个很好的例子。
JOANNE: But a year from now when the Tribune earnings come out, will we still be seeing declining numbers in advertising revenue, or will those numbers start to shift?
JOANNE:但是，一年后Tribune公司的收入出来后，我们将看到的是广告收入的下降还是上升呢？
SAM: I, of course, don’t know, but if I were guessing, I would think that we will start coming out of the current recession in the third quarter of next year.
Sam：这个问题我也不知道，但我推测明年第三季度开始，我们将从当前的颓势中走出来。
JOANNE: All right.
JOANNE: 嗯，好。
SAM: And I think it will be a slow recovery, much more an “L” than a “V.” The No. 1 issue for everybody is going to be inflation, because you can’t stimulate at the level of which we’ve stimulated and not have that risk. And so, in effect, it’s going to be a redo of where Greenspan was in 2001 and 2002. Bernanke is going to have to deal with the question of “When do I take the punch bowl away?”
SAM: 我认为这是一个缓慢的恢复过程，更像是一个L型而不是V型。每个人都必须经历的第一个问题是通胀，因为你不可能在原来激励的水平上受到激励，不会再冒一次险。所以，接下来是格林斯潘在2001-2002年所做的那些提振经济的举措再重来一遍，伯南克将要处理“何时将盛满的酒杯拿开”的问题。
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