搬家的时候，忍痛摧残了这地儿一把，好些日子都不忍心上来看。

敬告各位，现实搬家和网络搬家劳心劳力程度是一样的！

启用新域名 huangjinping.com，妄想着实现博客、论坛、商城…….臆想。

现在完工的，估计是世界上最简单的博客一坨。

没错，就是在社会主义初级阶段啦。

第三趟，可算是没有因“满场”而被拒，看上了Up（《飞屋环游记》），观后感六——

1.人生太短，幸福太快，白驹过隙间，泼辣豁牙小妹就变成了爬不上山坡的老太婆。

2.即使人生短暂，但走着走着，我们忘记当初梦想的几率仍然很大很大。

3.转身攥着气球去追梦，若不及时出发，充满氢气的气球也就焉了。

4.有时就该放弃一些东西，才能飞起来；有时却需要稳住，才能不被飞起来。

5.再精准的GPS也会不小心飞出去，所以最终比较靠谱的还是自我定位。

6.在一条道上或会出现另外的机缘，那就，顺其自然。

现实照进动画的有四：

科研造假；

爱与死亡；

鳏居老人；

钉子户。

忍不住好奇一下，中国有多少人自杀？自杀和被杀者哪个多？

人民网有专文介绍——

中国较早自杀统计和研究是在1940年～1944年，清华大学国情普查研究所对云南省 呈贡县开展的人口研究工作，根据调查结果推算中国当时自杀率为11.2人/10万” ，属于中度自杀率国家。

新中国成立以后，中国一直缺少自杀方面统计资 料，改革开放后，中国开始在卫生部的《全国卫生统计年报资料》中设立了自杀统计，据卫生部1980年的统计，当年的自杀死亡人数是137693人，自杀率 为11.95人/10万,仍属中度自杀率国家。

十年后的1990年自杀死亡人数上升为21.5万人,比1980年增长了56.1%，自杀死亡率为 18.8%,首次进入高自杀率国家的行列。1991年全国的自杀死亡人数继续攀升，达到了27.6万人, 自杀死亡率高达23.8人/10万，形成了改革 开放以来自杀的高峰期。

此后中国的自杀死亡率稳中有降。2002年自杀死亡率下降至14人/10万，2004年继续下降至9.7人/10万，接近于低自杀率国家。

2004年9月，世界卫生组织精神卫生处顾问费立鹏说——

“国内的自杀人数只是推算，具体的死亡人数还没有。以卫生部公布的资料为基础，按照漏报率而调整，根据我们的推算，每年有28.7万人自杀死亡。至于自杀未遂的数字，卫生部有一个报告，是200万。但按世界卫生组织的推算，自杀未遂的人数起码是自杀死亡人数的十倍，按自杀的人数来推算，应为280万。”

换言之，平均每两分钟就有1人死于自杀，并有8人自杀未遂。

目前可查的卫生部最新统计数据，大致可得出“被杀比自杀少”的结论。 2007年大城市居民年龄别疾病别死亡率(1/10万)(合计)，其中自杀是4.09，被杀是0.88。

注：被杀，不包括交通、跌砸、火灾、触电、溺水、自然灾害等等意外在内。

其实，2007年的统计数据也有些老了，前不久咱们已经一不留神跨入一个“被字句”横行的年代，随之而来的问题是：聪明的，被自杀算哪一种情况呢？

此前卫生部传授有怎样可预防自杀，借一步说话，怎样才能预防被自杀？

最新一期的Business Week封面

McGraw-Hill公司准备卖掉BusinessWeek了。

继Portfolio关门之后又一家告急的商业杂志，而且是和财富、福布斯齐驱并驾“美国三大”啊！

1929-2009，80岁高龄（和这期封面相呼应，退休也是可以纳入计划的了），140个国家和地区每周480万份的发行，而今却成为了公司的赔钱货——据Piper Jaffray说它每年的收入约为1.3亿美元（让很多国内同行汗颜呐！），到头来却要亏1000-2000万美元（这下又偷笑了吧？）。

两个多月前，巴菲特说，“For most newspapers in the United states, we would not buy them at any price,They have the possibility of going to just unending losses.”其实，杂志的情况也差不了太多。

这个过去动辄给最佳商学院、顶级品牌、全球企业、IT百大、最佳雇主、慈善家指指点点排名的家伙，沦落到今天这般田地，估计不少人恨不得立马扑上去咬几口解恨，若是揽入怀中又怕是食之无味弃之可惜啊！人人唯恐自保不及的危机之中，精明的买家有哪一位会挺身而出呢？

雪地赤身跪求财大气粗的温州老大！

然后， 在滴滴答答的秒针声里，百无聊赖地等待下一艘沉船的消息……….

互联网时代到来，尤其是近日twitter在伊朗选举、新疆7·5暴力事件中的表现（可参见路透、Beatblogging的分析报道），让很多人重新开始思考未来新闻发展的问题。

今天，克里斯·布朗（Chris Brown）去听了克里斯·安德森（Chris Anderson）在英国Bristol的一场演讲，并写下这一篇Nobody “owns” news – we were never meant to。他写到，

News was never meant to be owned in a democracy. It is about what happens to us and the people around us. And we are free to share it as far and wide as we can.

这位Chris Brown还提到一个让人莞尔的流氓点子，如果媒体不愿意在网上免费公开其内容——

I would in future take their own stories on myself, adding new angles and better balance of the issues, but would have no obligation to credit them as the original source. The fact is though that I will continue to do that anyway, because I feel it is more honest and gives readers the chance to decide for themselves on the validity of what they are being presented.

传播技术成本下降，让更多人能参与到信息传播中来，以往新闻媒体的垄断地位不断遭遇挑战，相应地发行、广告收入也开始缩水，Inland Press最新报告显示，美国报纸的收入近五年来在持续下降。

新闻没可能被垄断，更不能被占有，当然，具体选择从哪里获取新闻，最后的选择权还是在民众——千万不要低估了“免费”的力量！

传统传媒业若没能抓住技术发展带来的转型机会而就此凋敝，也并非不可能的事情，唱片业已经是前车之鉴。

似乎，而今更多的人还在忐忑犹疑和观望之中。

不知安德森啥时候来中国推销他的新书。

Chris Anderson本人显然也看了这文章，并飞快地在博客上做了回应。 回应标题很唬人，Dear Malcolm: Why so threatened? 但不过是虚晃一枪，其实等于是默认了Malcolm Gladwell指出的致命弱点——原材料免费、思想免费、技术免费，但是解决不了发电厂、输电线费用的问题。部分免费带来的结果并不一定就等于免费。

就像是承载Chris Anderson关于免费观点的这本Free: The Future of a Radical Price，在amazon标价$26.99，折后$17.81.

Chris Anderson本人或许可以在其中贯彻免费的原则、伟大到放弃稿费，但是人们要读到它，还是得掏纸张、印刷的钱，或者是买一个阅读设备来读它哪！

所以，您丫也大可不必嘲笑Malcolm Gladwell在纽约客网站上免费放出这篇书评了——人家其实也并没有完全否认免费的趋势啊！

如果思想以及相伴而来的知识产权能够在免费的情况下自由流通，这无疑是人类突飞猛进的一大步，再怎么隆重地庆贺都不为过。喔，今天是中共建党88周年的纪念日，难怪让本人在此顺带着想起了伟大的共产主义社会终将实现的那一天。

当然，我也还没有读到这本书的全文。但被提到的“paying people to get other people to write” 和 paying people to write，对我而言还是很有启发的，甚至很期待看到其中一些论述的全文。

不知道Chris Anderson是否有留意到wikipedia模式——对用户免费，按照基金会模式在运作。不过，如果这逐渐发展为未来主流，这对孜孜以求商业模式赚大钱的人们来说，貌似太悲惨了点。

务实的做法，不要笔仗了，既然你都劝那些死揪住盗版不放的人们不要再纠缠了，不如大家都分头开始寻找新模式吧！

Priced to Sell
Is free the future?
by Malcolm Gladwell

有价而沽——免费是未来？

这是《纽约客》的一篇书评，原文这里。

At a hearing on Capitol Hill in May, James Moroney, the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, told Congress aboutnegotiations he’d just had with the online retailer Amazon. The idea was to license his newspaper’s content to the Kindle,Amazon’s new electronic reader. “They want seventy per cent of the subscription revenue,” Moroney testified. “I get thirty per cent, they get seventy per cent. On top of that, they have said we get the right to republish your intellectual property to any portable device.” The idea was that if a Kindle subscription to the Dallas Morning News cost ten dollars a month, seven dollars of that belonged to Amazon, the provider of the gadget on which the news was read, and just three dollars belonged to the newspaper, the provider of an expensive and ever-changing variety of editorial content. The people at Amazon valued the newspaper’s contribution so little, in fact, that they felt they ought then to be able to license it to anyone else they wanted. Another witness at the hearing, Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, said that she thought the Kindle could provide a business model to save the beleaguered newspaper industry. Moroney disagreed. “I get thirty percent and they get the right to license my content to any portable device—not just ones made by Amazon?” He was incredulous.“That, to me, is not a model.”

5月，在国会山的一次听证会上，《达拉斯晨报》(Dallas Morning News)出版人詹姆斯·莫罗尼(James Moroney)向国会讲述了他和在线零售商亚马逊之间的谈判，即授权给亚马逊的电子阅读器kindle刊载该报内容。“他们想要收取订阅收入的 70%”，莫罗尼说，“我三他七。另外，他们还要获权在其他便携设备上出版这些知识产权归我们的内容。”也就是说，如果在kindle上订阅《达拉斯晨 报》的费用是10美元每月，其中的7美元要给新闻阅读设备提供商亚马逊，而报纸作为花费不菲、花样翻番的内容提供者，只能拿到其中的3元。亚马逊能给报纸 收入带来的增量实在有限，事实上，他们觉得自己能够拿到所有他们想要的内容刊载许可。听证会上的另一位证人，来自新闻和观察类博客Huffington Post的Arianna Huffington则认为，kindle能够提供一种商业模式来拯救四面受敌的报业。莫罗尼并不认同。“在任何便携设备上——不仅仅是亚马逊制造的—— 授权刊载我的内容，我三他七？”他对比深表怀疑，“对我而言，这绝不是什么商业模式。”

Had James Moroney read Chris Anderson’s new book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” (Hyperion; $26.99), Amazon’s offer might not have seemed quite so surprising. Anderson is the editor of Wired and the author of the 2006 best-seller “The Long Tail,” and “Free” is essentially an extended elaboration of Stewart Brand’s famous declaration that “information wants to be free.” The digital age, Anderson argues, is exerting an inexorable downward pressure on the prices of all things “made of ideas.” Anderson does not consider this a passing trend. Rather, he seems to think of it as an iron law: “In the digital realm you can try to keep Free at bay with laws and locks, but eventually the force of economic gravity will win.”To musicians who believe that their music is being pirated, Anderson is blunt. They should stop complaining, and capitalize on the added exposure that piracy provides by making money through touring, merchandise sales, and “yes, the sale of some of [their] music to people who still want CDs or prefer to buy their music online.” To the Dallas Morning News, he would say the same thing. Newspapers need to accept that content is never again going to be worth what they want it to be worth, and reinvent their business. “Out of the bloodbath will come a new role for professional journalists,” he predicts, and he goeson:
There may be more of them, not fewer, as the ability to participate in journalism extends beyond the credentialed halls of traditional media. But they may be paid far less, and for many it won’t be a full time job at all. Journalism as a profession will share the stage with journalism as an avocation. Meanwhile, others may use their skills to teach and organize amateurs to do a better job covering their own communities, becoming more editor/coach than writer. If so, leveraging the Free—paying people to get other people to write for non-monetary rewards—may not be the enemy of professional journalists. Instead, it may be their salvation.

如果詹姆斯·莫罗尼(James Moroney)此前有读过克里斯·安德森（Chris Anderson）的新书《免费：一种激进价格的未来》，那么他也许就不会对亚马逊的出价表现得如此惊愕。安德森是连线杂志的编辑，同时也是2006年度 畅销书《长尾》的作者，“免费”实质上是斯图尔特·布兰德（Stewart Brand）著名论断“信息想要免费”的延伸。安德森认为，数字时代正在无情地压低所有“由思想构成”的东西的价格。安德森并不认为这是一个暂时的趋势， 而更愿意把它看做是一条铁律：“在数字领域，你可以尽量用法律和其他枷锁来避免免费，但最终获胜的将是经济万有引力。”对于那些抱怨自己的音乐被侵权的音 乐家，安德森更是直言不讳。他们应该停止抱怨，并很好地把盗版带来的额外曝光度知名度作为资本加以利用，通过巡演、商品销售、以及“向那些仍然愿意购买 CD或者更倾向于在线购买音乐的人们”出售自己的音乐来赚钱。对《达拉斯晨报》，他也会做出同样的建议。报纸得接受这样的现实：内容再也不会值他们此前所 预期的价钱，必须要改变他们的商业模式。他指出，“在大屠杀之后，将会诞生一种全新的专业新闻记者角色”，他进一步解释说：随着他们已经参与新闻报道能力 远超出传统媒体所能介入的程度，专业新闻记者们的数量会越来越多，而不会减少。但是他们的收入会减少，因为对大部分人来说这根本就不是一份全职工作。将会 有更多的人把新闻业作为一种业余爱好而参与进来。同时，还有一些人或许将用他们的技能来教授并组织业余爱好者做好社区新闻报道，他们更多地是扮演了编辑/ 指导员的角色，而不是写手。因此，撬动免费——给那些发动其他人不计报酬地写作的人付钱——或许不会与专业新闻记者冲突。相反，这可能是他们的救赎。

Anderson is very good at paragraphs like this—with its reassuring arc from “bloodbath” to “salvation.” His advice is pithy, his tone uncompromising, and his subject matter perfectly timed for a moment when old-line content providers are desperate for answers. That said, it is not entirely clear what distinction is being marked between “paying people to get other people to write” and paying people to write. If you can afford to pay someone to get other people to write, why can’t you pay people to write? It would be nice to know, as well, just how a business goes about reorganizing itself around getting people to work for “non-monetary rewards.” Does he mean that the New York Times should be staffed by volunteers, like Meals on Wheels? Anderson’s reference to people who “prefer to buy their music online” carries the faint suggestion that refraining from theft should be considered a mere preference. And then there is his insistence that the relentless downward pressure on prices represents an iron law of the digital economy. Why is it a law? Free is just another price, and prices are set by individual actors, in accordance with the aggregated particulars of marketplace power. “Information wants to be free,” Anderson tells us, “in the same way that life wants to spread and water wants to run downhill.” But information can’t actually want anything, can it? Amazon wants the information in the Dallas paper to be free, because that way Amazon makes more money. Why are the self-interested motives of powerful companies being elevated to a philosophical principle? But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

从“大屠杀”到“救赎”——安德森非常擅长写这样的段落。他的建议精辟，他的语调坚定，他的主题正好卡在老生产线上的内容提供者正急切地寻找答案的 时间点上。也就是说，在“付酬给发动人写作的人”和付酬给写作者的界限还不甚明晰。如果你能够给发动人写作的人付酬的时候，为什么你不能给写作者付酬呢？ 还有，如何重组整编这一行业，让人们在没有薪金激励的情况下工作呢？这是否意味着纽约时报应该由志愿者组成，就像流动供餐车一样？【laohuang 注：Meals  on Wheels，一个志愿者项目，一家教堂组织人们募捐来资金，每天在教堂内准备热餐，再由志愿者分送到因为年纪太大而不能做饭和购物的老人家中，让他们一 天能吃上一顿热饭。】安德森提及“更愿意在线购买音乐”的人们，认为优先考虑制止盗版不过是一个无力的建议。他坚持认为在数字经济中，价格下降是无情的铁 律。为什么是铁律呢？免费是另一种价格，由演员本人和市场各方主体共同设置的价格。“信息想要免费”，安德森告诉我们，“这跟生命想要延续，水想要往下流 是同样的道理。”但是，信息最终不可能想要获得每一样东西，不是么？亚马逊想要免费获得达拉斯晨报的内容，因为这会让它赚更多的钱。为什么这些强势公司的 利己主义动机被提高到了哲学的高度？这不过是因为我们正在超越自我。

Anderson’s argument begins with a technological trend. The cost of the building blocks of all electronic activity—storage,processing, and bandwidth—has fallen so far that it is now approaching zero. In 1961, Anderson says, a single transistor was ten dollars. In 1963, it was five dollars. By 1968, it was one dollar. Today, Intel will sell you two billion transistors for
eleven hundred dollars—meaning that the cost of a single transistor is now about .000055 cents.

安德森用技术发展趋势引出他的观点。建构所有电子行为的花费——存储、处理和带宽——目前已经降到接近零的地步。安德森说，一个单晶体管在1961 年卖10美元，1963年卖5美元，到了1968年，降到了1美元。而在今天，英特尔1100美元卖给你200万个晶体管——这意味着一个单晶体管的价钱 是0.00055美分。

Anderson’s second point is that when prices hit zero extraordinary things happen. Anderson describes an experiment conducted by the M.I.T. behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of “Predictably Irrational.” Ariely offered a group of subjects a choice between two kinds of chocolate—Hershey’s Kisses, for one cent, and Lindt truffles, for fifteen cents. Three-quarters of the subjects chose the truffles. Then he redid the experiment, reducing the price of both chocolates by one cent. The Kisses were now free. What happened? The order of preference was reversed. Sixty-nine per cent of the subjects chose the Kisses. The price difference between the two chocolates was exactly the same, but that magic word “free” has the power to create a consumer stampede. Amazon has had the same experience with its offer of free shipping for orders over twenty-five dollars. The idea is to induce you to buy a second book, if your first book comes in at less than the twenty-five-dollar threshold. And that’s exactly what it does. In France, however, the offer was mistakenly set at the equivalent of twenty cents—and consumers didn’t buy the second book. “From the consumer’s perspective, there is a huge difference between cheap and free,” Anderson writes. “Give a product away, and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you’re in an
entirely different business. . . . The truth is that zero is one market and any other price is another.”

安德森的第二个观点是：当价格接近零时，就会发生非常之事。安德森描述了麻省理工行为经济学家、《可预见的无理性》（Predictably  Irrational）一书作者Dan Ariely主持的一个试验。Ariely向课题小组成员提供了两种巧克力选择：1美分的好时Kisses，15美分的瑞士莲truffles。四分之三 的人选择了truffles。接着，他重做了实验，每种巧克力的价格都减去1美分。此时Kisses就等于免费了。接着发生了什么呢？大家的选择完全倒转 过来了。69%的人选择了Kisses。两种巧克力之间的价格差美编，但是神奇的“免费”具备推动消费者跑的能力。亚马逊同样具备这样的经验，向每张25 美元以上的订单免运费。这个办法是在你买的第一本书少于25美元时，诱使让你买第二本。这确实也起了作用。但是，在法国，则是提供相当于20美分的礼物， 此举实为败笔——人们也就不买第二本书了。“在消费者看来，在免费和便宜之间有着巨大的差异，”安德森写道，“免费赠送一个产品，它能够成为一种病毒式营 销。收费，哪怕只是收1美分，就变成了一个完全不同的买卖……事实上，零是一个市场，其他价格则是另一个市场。”

Since the falling costs of digital technology let you make as much stuff as you want, Anderson argues, and the magic of the word “free” creates instant demand among consumers, then Free (Anderson honors it with a capital) represents an enormous business opportunity. Companies ought to be able to make huge amounts of money “around” the thing being given away—as Google gives away its search and e-mail and makes its money on advertising.
数字技术的价格下降，给你带来了应有尽有的原材料，安德森认为，“免费”的魔力就在于，它创造了消费者的紧迫需求，免费（安德森尊之为一种资本）带来了巨大的商业机会。公司可以通过免费送出的东西创造巨大的财富——就像google的搜索和邮件功能让它在广告上大赚一样。

Anderson cautions that this philosophy of embracing the Free involves moving from a “scarcity” mind-set to an “abundance” mind-set. Giving something away means that a lot of it will be wasted. But because it costs almost nothing to make things, digitally, we can afford to be wasteful. The elaborate mechanisms we set up to monitor and judge the quality of content are, Anderson thinks, artifacts of an era of scarcity: we had to worry about how to allocate scarce resources like newsprint and shelf space and broadcast time. Not anymore. Look at YouTube, he says, the free video archive owned by Google. YouTube lets anyone post a video to its site free, and lets anyone watch a video on its site free, and it doesn’t have to pass judgment on the quality of the videos it archives. “Nobody is deciding whether a video is good enough to justify the scarce channel space it takes, because there is no scarce channel space,” he writes, and goes on: Distribution is now close enough to free to round down. Today, it costs about $0.25 to stream one hour of video to one person. Next year, it will be $0.15. A year later it will be less than a dime. Which is why YouTube’s founders decided to give it away. . . . The result is both messy and runs counter to every instinct of a television professional, but this is what abundance both requires and demands.

安德森警告说，这种拥抱免费的哲学，还伴随着“空空”大脑模式到“富足”大脑模式的转移。让某种东西免费意味着它的一些东西被浪费了。因为几乎不花 什么钱就能制造某物，从数位上来说，我们能够提供的东西就有浪费之嫌。安德森认为，我们为监控和判断内容质量而精心架构的程序，其实是匮乏时代——我们不 得不担心如何分配新闻纸、书架空间和广播时间等稀缺资源的时代——的史前文物。这一切都一去不复返了。他说，你看看You Tube，这个google旗下的免费视频网站。You Tube让任何人都可以免费上传视频到网站，让任何人都可以在它的网站上免费看视频，它不不要对网站上的视频质量做任何评判。“没有人决定一段视频是否足 够好到可以占据有限的空间，因为空间并非稀缺”，他这样写道，并进一步说：发行费用现在也接近免费。今天，一小时的视频所需流量费用大概是0.25美元。 明年，这个价钱可能是0.15美元。再下一年，可能不到0.1美元。这就是为何You Tube的创始人决定让它免费……这一决定带来的结果是混乱的，而且与职业电视的本能完全背道而驰，但是带出了旺盛的需求。

There are four strands of argument here: a technological claim (digital infrastructure is effectively Free), a psychological claim (consumers love Free), a procedural claim (Free means never having to make a judgment), and a commercial claim (the market created by the technological Free and the psychological Free can make you a lot of money). The only problem is that in the middle of laying out what he sees as the new business model of the digital age Anderson is forced to admit that one of his main case studies, YouTube, “has so far failed to make any money for Google.”

这里存在四个立基点：一是技术要求（数字架构是绝对免费的），一是心理要求（消费者爱免费），一是程序要求（免费意味着绝不做判断），还有一个是商 业要求（由免费技术和免费心理架构起来的市场能给你带来财富）。在展开论述他所预见的数字时代全新商业模式时，安德森遇到的唯一问题是，他不得不承认，他 的主要研究个案You Tube，“至今还未能给google赚钱。”

Why is that? Because of the very principles of Free that Anderson so energetically celebrates. When you let people upload and download as many videos as they want, lots of them will take you up on the offer. That’s the magic of Free psychology: an estimated seventy-five billion videos will be served up by YouTube this year. Although the magic of Free technology means that the cost of serving up each video is “close enough to free to round down,” “close enough to free” multiplied by seventy-five billion is still a very large number. A recent report by Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube’s bandwidth costs in 2009 will be three hundred and sixty million dollars. In the case of YouTube, the effects of technological Free and psychological Free work against each other.

为什么会这样呢？就因为安德森所极力推崇的免费原则。当你让人们尽可能地上传和下载他们所想要的视频时，他们中的许多人把你放在了供应者的位置。这 就是所谓的免费心理学：预计YouTube今年将端出750亿段视频。尽管神奇的免费技术意味着端出每一段视频的成本“四舍五入后接近免费”，而这个“接 近免费”的数字再乘以750亿，结果仍然是一个大数字。瑞士信贷（Credit Suisse）最近的一个报告指出，YouTube在2009年的带宽支出将达3.6亿美元，免费技术和免费心理相互掐架。

So how does YouTube bring in revenue? Well, it tries to sell advertisements alongside its videos. The problem is that the videos attracted by psychological Free—pirated material, cat videos, and other forms of user-generated content—are not the sort of thing that advertisers want to be associated with. In order to sell advertising, YouTube has had to buy the rights to professionally produced content, such as television shows and movies. Credit Suisse put the cost of those licenses in 2009 at roughly two hundred and sixty million dollars. For Anderson, YouTube illustrates the principle that Free removes the necessity of aesthetic judgment. (As he puts it, YouTube proves that “crap is in the eye of the beholder.”) But, in order to make money, YouTube has been obliged to pay for programs that aren’t crap. To recap: YouTube is a great example of Free, except that Free technology ends up not being Free because of the way consumers respond to Free, fatally compromising YouTube’s ability to make money around Free, and forcing it to retreat from the “abundance thinking” that lies at the heart of Free. Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube will lose close to half a billion dollars this year. If it were a bank, it would be eligible for TARP funds.

那么，YouTube如何创收呢？没错，它在卖力地出售视频旁边的广告。问题是，由免费心理吸引而来的视频——盗版内容、猫猫狗狗视频、以及其他用 户产生的内容——并不是广告商想要的。为了出售广告，YouTube不得不去购买那些由专业机构制作的内容，譬如电视秀和电影。瑞士信贷大略估计它 2009年在购买这些授权方面的支出是2.6亿美元。对安德森来说，YouTube阐释了这样一条原理，即免费移除了审美判断的必要性。（正如他指出 的，YouTube证明了“围观者能看明白什么是蹩脚货”。）但是，为了赚钱，YouTube不得不为那些不是蹩脚货的节目付费。
换言之，YouTube是一个很好的关于免费的例子。除了因为用户对免费的反馈，不幸地导致了youtube通过免费来赚钱的能力受挫，使得它不得不放弃 赖免费而生的“丰富思想”，免费技术结果并不免费。瑞士信贷预计YouTube今年将亏损5亿美元，如果它是一家银行的话，它将符合“不良资产救助计划基 金”(TARP funds)的条件。【laohuang注：TARP funds，指金融危机发生后，美国财政部拨出7000亿美元金，用作问题资产救助计划】

Anderson begins the second part of his book by quoting Lewis Strauss, the former head of the Atomic Energy Commission, who famously predicted in the mid-nineteen-fifties that “our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.”

在书的第二部分，安德森引述了前原子能委员会头目刘易斯·施特劳斯（Lewis Strauss）的话作为开头，也就是刘易斯在1950年代中期的著名预言，“我们的孩子将充分享受到便宜到没法计算的家庭电能”。

“What if Strauss had been right?” Anderson wonders, and then diligently sorts through the implications: as much fresh water as you could want, no reliance on fossil fuels, no global warming, abundant agricultural production. Anderson wants to take “too cheap to meter” seriously, because he believes that we are on the cusp of our own “too cheap to meter” revolution with computer processing, storage, and bandwidth. But here is the second and broader problem with Anderson’s argument: he is asking the wrong question. It is pointless to wonder what would have happened if Strauss’s prediction had come true while rushing past the reasons that it could not have come true.

“如果施特劳斯是正确的话，会发生什么呢？”安德森想知道，接着带出一长串的清单：如你想要的尽可能鲜活的水，不依赖化石燃料，没有全球变暖，丰富 的农产品。安德森想认真探讨“便宜到没法计算”的问题，因为他相信，我们正处在计算机处理、存储和带宽的“便宜到没法计算”的革命的尖端。

Strauss’s optimism was driven by the fuel cost of nuclear energy—which was so low compared with its fossil-fuel counterparts that he considered it (to borrow Anderson’s phrase) close enough to free to round down. Generating and distributing electricity, however, requires a vast and expensive infrastructure of transmission lines and power plants—and it is this infrastructure that accounts for most of the cost of electricity. Fuel prices are only a small part of that. As Gordon Dean, Strauss’s predecessor at the A.E.C., wrote, “Even if coal were mined and distributed free to electric generating plants today, the reduction in your monthly electricity bill would amount to but twenty per cent, so great is the cost of the plant itself and the distribution system.”

施特劳斯的乐观，来自于核能的成本——对比化石燃料，实在是太便宜了，他认为它（借用安德森的原话）相当之接近免费。但是，生产和分配电力需要一套 庞大而昂贵的传输线及发电厂的基础设施——而这些基础设施在电力成本中占了绝大多数的份额。燃料的价格反而不过是很小的一部分而已。正如施特劳斯在与原子 能委员会的前任高登·迪安（Gordon Dean）所写的，“即使今天煤炭能够免费储藏和运输给发电厂，你每月的电费清单也最多不过减少20%，发电厂和传输系统的成本实在太高了。”

This is the kind of error that technological utopians make. They assume that their particular scientific revolution will wipe away all traces of its predecessors—that if you change the fuel you change the whole system. Strauss went on to forecast “an age of peace,” jumping from atoms to human hearts. “As the world of chips and glass fibers and wireless waves goes, so goes the rest of the world,” Kevin Kelly, another Wired visionary, proclaimed at the start of his 1998 digital manifesto, “New Rules for the New Economy,” offering up the same non sequitur. And now comes Anderson. “The more products are made of ideas, rather than stuff, the faster they can get cheap,” he writes, and we know what’s coming next: “However, this is not limited to digital products.” Just look at the pharmaceutical industry, he says. Genetic engineering means that drug development is poised to follow the same learning curve of the digital world, to “accelerate in performance while it drops in price.”

这正是技术乌托邦所犯下的错误。他们设想这非凡的科学革命将把前辈们的痕迹一扫而光——如果你改变了能源你就改变了整个系统。于是，施特劳斯从原子 能一下跳到人类情感，预见了“一个和平时代”。“没有了货币、玻璃纤维和无线电波，也就没有了世界”，另一个连线杂志的空想家凯文·凯利（Kevin Kelly），在他的1998数字宣言中这样宣称，“新经济的新规则”提供了同样不合逻辑的推论。现在又来了一个安德森。“产品越多地由思想而非原材料制 造，越快地变得便宜”，他写到，我们知道接下来是什么了：“但是，这不限于电子产品”。看一看制药行业就知道了，他说。遗传工程意味着药物的发展遵循着数 字世界同样的学习曲线，来“加速降价”。

But, like Strauss, he’s forgotten about the plants and the power lines. The expensive part of making drugs has never been what happens in the laboratory. It’s what happens after the laboratory, like the clinical testing, which can take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. In the pharmaceutical world, what’s more, companies have chosen to use the potential of new technology to do something very different from their counterparts in Silicon Valley. They’ve been trying to find a way to serve smaller and smaller markets—to create medicines tailored to very specific subpopulations and strains of diseases—and smaller markets often mean higher prices. The biotechnology company Genzyme spent five hundred million dollars developing the drug Myozyme, which is intended for a condition, Pompe disease, that afflicts fewer than ten thousand people worldwide. That’s the quintessential modern drug: a high-tech, targeted remedy that took a very long and costly path to market. Myozyme is priced at three hundred thousand dollars a year. Genzyme isn’t a mining company: its real assets are intellectual property—information, not stuff. But, in this case, information does not want to be free. It wants to be really, really expensive.

但是，像施特劳斯一样，他忘记了发电厂和输电线。药品最值钱的部分，也绝不是实验室里的研发。它更多地存在于实验室之后的环节，比如临床测试，这可 是要花数年的时间和数百万美元的金钱。此外，在制药界，公司们已使用了潜在新技术，去做一些与硅谷中那些相应技术所完全不同的事情。他们正在试图去服务一 些小而又小的市场——针对某些特殊群体和疾病而研制药物——而小市场通常意味着大价钱。生物技术公司健赞（Genzyme）投入5亿美元研发了一种治疗庞 贝氏症(Pompe Disease)的治疗药Myozyme，这种疾病的患者在全世界不超过1万名。这就是典型的现代药物：高科技，目标直指那些需要长期和昂贵治疗的市场。 Myozyme的价格约为30万美元一年。健赞公司也不是一家采矿公司：他的实际资产是知识产权——信息，而不是原材料。但是，在这个案例中，信息并不想 要免费。事实上，它想要非常、非常贵。

And there’s plenty of other information out there that has chosen to run in the opposite direction from Free. The Times gives away its content on its Web site. But the Wall Street Journal has found that more than a million subscribers are quite happy to pay for the privilege of reading online. Broadcast television—the original practitioner of Free—is struggling. But premium cable, with its stiff monthly charges for specialty content, is doing just fine. Apple may soon make more money selling iPhone downloads (ideas) than it does from the iPhone itself (stuff). The company could one day give away the iPhone to boost downloads; it could give away the downloads to boost iPhone sales; or it could continue to do what it does now, and charge for both. Who knows? The only iron law here is the one too obvious to write a book about, which is that the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws.

还可以举出其他很多有关信息的案例来指向免费的反方向。《泰晤士报》把它的内容免费放在网站上，但是《华尔街日报》却发现有百多万名订阅者乐意为在线阅读付费。广播电视——最早的免费信息践行者——现在过得很挣扎。但是付费电视，每个月都因提供特定内容而收费，现在过得很好。也许很快，苹果公司出售 iPhone相关软件下载（思想）要比卖iPhone（原材料）更赚钱，或许它也可以继续像现在这样，两者都收费。谁知道呢？而今这里唯一的铁律就是，数字时代已经转变了产品的制造和销售模式，再没有什么铁律。这再明显不过了，根本无须写一本书。

“Free: The Future of a Radical Price” (Hyperion; $26.99);
Chris Anderson

先是他们家的Jeff Bercovici博客自曝 Conde Nast Closing ‘Portfolio’

华尔街日报说，Condé Nast Shuts Down Portfolio

纽约时报说，Portfolio Magazine Is Shut Down

连英国的卫报也说，Condé Nast’s Portfolio magazine closes

CNBC也忙不迭地说，The Death Of Portfolio Magazine: Another Print Industry Fatality

新闻周刊解释，Condé Bust，Why Portfolio magazine failed

商业周刊讲解，Conde Nast Shutters Portfolio. Why It Failed

……..

如此多同行的注目，难得的礼遇，或许还掺杂着兔死狐悲的复杂感伤。

“Editorially, we were proud of the product and the team that produced it,” said David Carey, group president of a collection of Condé Nast titles that includes Portfolio. “But our timing, in terms of building an advertising franchise, proved to be terrible.”

这一句话说明了全部。

媒体的市场生存法则，从未改变。

2007年4月，Portfolio推出了创刊号，金灿灿的封面，豪华采编团队，更有近一半（40人）主攻其网站，财大气粗$100millions（另一说是$125millions，甚至更多）的预算

这张图片来自他们家2008年12月号杂志，封面也是它，文章叫做The End

显然，这不是开始，也不是结束，Portfolio不是倒下的第一个，也不会是最后一个。

Tribune大裁员是最近新闻界的热点新闻。

金融危机和传媒颓靡，是同时正在媒体人耳边呼呼刮着的寒风。纸媒这棵枯木能否等到春天，新媒体这枝嫩芽能否绽放，是正在让很多报纸都头疼的问题。

Sam Zell是个口无遮拦的生意人，一点都不忸怩地就媒体的本质问题说了一些相当诚实的话——这点非常可贵——且直击国内不少媒体人要么太把自己当回事、要么太不把自己当回事的痛处！

Sam Zell从房地产转战到传媒业，配合次贷危机以来的美国地产这块大背景，再聚光灯一下金融危机中的传媒，实在很好玩。

在对话中，应该说Sam Zell其实并没有真正找到所谓的“新商业模式，这也是所有媒体们遭遇共同困境的真实情况，但他非常直白地挑明了纸媒的死穴，而且我觉得很更重要的是，他确实在践行一些想法，在尝试一些可能。

媒体人VS.媒体大老板，这对话组合也是不错的。

——所以，忍不住吭哧吭哧把它翻了一遍。

谨遵医命要按时就寝，翻过了之后没有顺它一遍，且纯属义务劳动，难免粗糙，请将就着看吧！

英文也附上，看到有不妥的地方，请自行核对英文版。

原文这里，它本是一气呵成的，可实在太长了，被我强行给拆分，分开来贴，标题也是我塞进来的。

Zell’s Sell

by Portfolio Staff Nov 24 2008

The former real estate mogul discusses his approach to newspapers.
前地产巨头谈他的传媒之路

Before Sam Zell bought the Tribune Company last year, he said he was “skeptical” of using staff reductions to increase profit. He famously told the Los Angeles Times, “I promise you I did not come here to be the captain of the Titanic.”
在Sam Zell去年收购Tribune公司以前，他声称对通过裁员的办法来提高盈利持怀疑态度。他对洛杉矶时报全员说的一句话非常有名，他说，“我保证，我来到这儿可不是想当泰坦尼克号的船长。”

Since then, however, the newspaper industry’s woes have intensified—and Zell has made numerous staff reductions at Tribune’s newspapers, which in addition to the L.A. Times also include the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun. The outspoken Zell,who made his fortune investing in real estate, has dubbed the Tribune purchase “the deal from hell.”
然而，话刚落音，报业不景气日益严峻——Zell也已经在Tribune报业集团旗下包括洛杉矶时报、芝加哥论坛报、巴尔的摩太阳报等在内的多家媒体实行了多次裁员。靠房地产发家的Zell戏称，收购Tribune是一桩“来自地狱的交易”。

On November 12, Zell spoke with Condé Nast Portfolio editor in chief Joanne Lipman at Quadrangle Group’s Foursquare media conference, where, true to form, he came out swinging against journalistic icons. He declared the worthlessness of Pulitzer Prizes (”I haven’t figured out how to cash in a Pulitzer Prize”), said the newspaper business model is “unequivocally…a failure,” and challenged New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, saying “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.”
11月12日，在私人投资公司Quadrangle GroupZell的媒体会议上，Zell和康纳利旗下Portfolio的主编Joanne Lipman展开了一次对话，他一如既往地对新闻业的前景做了多方位阐述。他公然宣称普利策新闻奖毫无价值（“我到现在还没有弄明白如何去衡量普利策奖的价值”），认为报纸的商业模式“毫无疑问地…..是一种失败”，并质疑纽约时报出版人亚瑟·苏兹贝格说，“如果你想要做一个公益信托，那就做成公益信托好了。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”。

Zell also talked about running spadias (ads that wrap around an entire newspaper section) and said that comparing Tribune’s advertising declines to that of other newspaper companies is “comparing leprosy to cancer.”
Zell同样也谈到了running spadias（一种缠绕在整份报纸上的插页广告），并说比较Tribune公司和其他报业集团的广告下滑，等于是在“拿麻风病和癌症做比较”。

The Foursquare conference was an off-the-record event; Sam Zell and event organizersagreed to put this transcript on the record.
Foursquare媒体会议不允许做现场录音，Sam Zell和活动组织者同意将这次会议记录公开发表。

（未完待续）

EMCEE: Thank you, gentlemen. And now Sam Zell will be in a conversation with Joanne Lipman.
主持人：谢谢，各位绅士们！下面我们有请Sam Zell和Joanne Lipman开始对话。

JOANNE LIPMAN: All right. Welcome, Sam Zell. It’s great to have you here. Thanks very much. You barely need introducing, but a quick recap. Sam, of course, made his reputation buying up distressed real estate, earning himself the nickname, “The Grave Dancer.” In his more recent incarnation as a media mogul, that nickname might be more apt than ever. Last year, Sam, of course, bought the Tribune Company, which owns newspapers and local television stations, for $13 billion. Since then, the newspaper industry, as we all know, has been in a free fall, and Tribune properties, which include the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, and the Orlando Sentinel, have also been in a free fall, along with the rest of the industry. And so it’s apropos that we talk with Sam today. And everybody here wants to know the same thing, which is: If you knew then what you know now, would you have made this deal?
JOANNE LIPMAN: 好，欢迎Sam Zell。很高兴今天你能来到这里。非常感谢。你都不需要我再多做介绍了，当然，Sam在房地产行业中树立了自己的名声和威望，并赢得了“坟墓舞者”这一雅号。现在他转身成为媒体巨头，也许这一雅号用来形容现在的Sam更为贴切。去年，Sam以13亿美元的价格收购了Tribune公司——该公司旗下拥有好几家报纸和地方电视台。正如我们所知，从那以后，报业开始了自由落体运动，Tribune旗下包括洛杉矶时报、芝加哥论坛报、巴尔的摩太阳报、奥兰多哨兵报在内的报纸及其他产业也同样难以幸免。因此这也是为何今天我们和Sam在这里进行探讨。此刻这儿的每一个人都想知道的同一件事情，就是：早知有今天的局面，当初你还会做这一笔收购吗？

SAM ZELL: Well, obviously, the newspaper business and advertising, generally, has gone off a cliff. And it didn’t go off a cliff in October or September. It went off the cliff in January. When we looked at the historical numbers, we saw an average erosion of about 3 percent. At the time we underwrote the transaction, we used a 6 percent erosion.  And the last time I checked, 19 percent erosion is bigger than 6.
Sam Sell：好的，很显然，大多数报纸的行情和广告都已经掉下了悬崖。而且，它不是在今年10月或者9月才开始掉的，而是在今年1月便已经开始。回看媒体过往历史数据，我们看到下降的速度大概是3%，我们在确定财务细目的时候，我们使用的数字是6%，而在我最近一次的数据核对中，我发现这个数字是19%，比 6%要多得多。

JOANNE: Yeah.
Jonne:的确。

SAM: And so it’s just a whole new ballgame. Just like if you asked the guy would you have stepped on the tracks if you’d known the train was coming, the answer is no. But once the train is here, you’ve got to deal with it.
Sam：所以，情况完全不一样了。就像是你问一个人，如果知道明火车就要开过来了是否还会走在铁轨上一样，答案当然是No。而一旦火车已然在这里了，你就不得不去面对它。

JOANNE: Right. Would you actually have gone into the newspaper industry, or would you simply have wanted to adjust the price accordingly?
Jonne：没错。那么你是否会因此深入报业，或者你仅仅只是想要相应地保住当初收购时候的价值而已？

SAM: I don’t think that I ever woke up in the morning and said, “I want to own a newspaper.” I think that the attraction to the Tribune deal was the ability to put the deal together, to apply a business patina to what has historically been a nonbusiness business, and ultimately test the thesis as to whether or not there is a place for the newspaper in the 21st century.
Sam ：我并不是在某个早晨醒来忽然一拍脑袋说，“我想要拥有一份报纸”。我想我当初之所以看中了Tribune这笔交易，很重要原因是，给一直以来作为一项非商业性目的的事业加上商业色彩，并最终来检验报纸在21世纪能否保有一席之地，这两者可以在这一桩买卖中结合起来。

JOANNE: And the answer to that question would be what? Is there a place for the newspaper?
Jonne：那么，报纸有没有一席之地？今天你对这一问题的答案是什么？

SAM: I think the answer is certainly, but the answer to whether the conventional approach to the newspaper business that has been the model since the beginning of time, I could tell you unequivocally that model is a failure, or that model has passed its time of relevance. The newspaper business basically grew up as a monopoly, and like every other monopoly, it built processes and approaches that reflected its monopoly status. One example was the rate card you give to an advertiser in order for that person to determine how he would like to participate. You needed a Ph.D. in order to understand the rate card. In the days where the customer had no options, you could give him the rate card and say, “Take it or leave it.” But today, that doesn’t work.
Sam:我认为，答案是肯定的，但至于报纸有史以来所采用的传统经营模式能否达成这一目标，我可以毫不含糊地告诉你，这个模式不会成功，或者说，报纸的传统经营模式已经过时了。从根本上说，报纸商业模式是在垄断的基础之上发展起来的，就跟其他行业的垄断一样，报纸建构的过程和方法和反射出其垄断地位。一个例证就是广告价目单，你给广告主提供了不同种类的广告价格清单，以供他们决定如何投放广告。要真正理解一张广告价目表，或许得派一个哲学博士来才行。在广告主没有太多媒体选择的时候，你可以扔给他一张价目表并告诉他说，“你爱登不登”。但是今天，这招已经不管用了。

I think the newspaper industry truly still doesn’t understand that it is in a business with customers, and the business must reflect the needs and demands of the customer. And to the extent that we don’t do that, we will disappear.
我认为，今天的报业真的还是不理解自己其实是在跟客户做生意，而这生意必须要考虑到客户的需求。否则，我们就玩完了。

JOANNE: So what is the new model? Have you figured that out yet, or are you cutting your way to…?
Jonne：那么，新的模式是什么呢？你是否已经弄明白了，或者你也在艰难寻找的路上…..?

SAM: I think the answer is we are testing and testing and changing. We’ve reformatted all eight newspapers. Among other things, we shrunk the size of the newspapers by an inch. And then we responded to our customers. Our customers have an enormous interest in our newspaper on Sunday; have almost no interest on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; Thursday and Friday, they’re more interested; and Saturday might as well be in the desert. So we did something that was really extraordinary. It kind of came out of Econ 101. We looked at demand and we said, “Gee, we ought to reduce supply when demand is weak”—a very shocking concept, particularly for the newspaper industry. So, we’ve now done that across all of our newspapers.

Sam：我想，我们正在不断地试验和调整试图找出答案。我们重新规划了旗下的全部8家报纸。此外，我们还把报纸的规格缩减了一英寸。同时我们还对客户需求做出回应。客户对我们的周末版很有兴趣，对周一、周二、周三刊兴趣索然，对周四、周五刊比较感兴趣，对周六刊避之不及。于是，我们对此做了相应的调整。这有点儿像是Econ 101【译者注：经济101管理办法】的法子。我们接受了这些要求并表示，“嗯，在需求减弱的时候我们得减少供应”——这是一种有点让人吃惊的观念，特且是在报业。现在我们已经在旗下所有报纸中推行。

We did not have a single salesperson on commission. In other words, every single newspaper had a cadre of salaried salesman.Now, you know, I’m just a businessman, but I’ve never seen any kind of a sales force that was effective if, in fact, they had no incentives. Now, part of the reason is that historically, because it was a monopoly, newspapers heavily depended, and still do, on national advertising, where the salesman is an order taker. When the guy from Macy’s calls and says, “We want six pages,” you don’t say to him, “Well, how about nine.” You just say, “Yes, sir. Send me the check and we’re on.” But, among other things, what that led to was a massive abdication of potential advertisers within the local markets using zones,so that, in effect, the zone belongs to the salesman. Nobody else can go in there. Even if nobody has bought anything in that zone for 20 years, it’s still his territory.

我们连一个靠抽取佣金拿提成的销售员都没有。换言之，我们每一家报纸都有一支付给薪水的骨干销售队伍。你知道，我只是一个生意人，我从没见到过有任何销售人员能够在没有没有激励措施的情况下积极高效地工作。部分的原因在于，报纸是垄断的，而且自有史以来、到目前也一直都极大地倚重于全国性广告，报纸销售人员等于是报纸的订购者。当一名来自梅西公司的客户打电话来说，“我们想要6份报纸”。你不会跟他说，“拿9份吧。”你一般回答说，“好的，先生。请给我付款，我们将为您送到。”如果你不去主动争取对方多订购你的报纸，在某些层面上这会导致来自当地市场的潜在广告客户流失，而这些市场是属于这些当地销售人员的地盘。此后再也没有谁能够凭空打入这一市场。甚至即使在20年里那一区域再没有人来买报纸，在以后的报纸发售中，这也仍是属于他的地盘。

I mean, this is nutty stuff. And, in effect, what we’re trying to do is address the newspaper business like a business.
我的意思是，这一发行模式是很牢固的。事实上，我们正在试图把报纸销售当作一门生意在经营。

As you and I talked about earlier, somebody has to address the home-delivery question. Right now, if you go across the street and you buy a newspaper from a vendor, you will pay 50 cents. But if you get it home-delivered, which costs the company 10 times as much, you pay 30 cents. I don’t understand. Okay? I mean, you try and make those numbers work, and it don’t make any sense.

像我和你早些时候所谈到的，一些人已经抱怨过家庭投递的问题。现在，如果你穿过街道从小贩手里买一份报纸大约需要50每份，但如果你是家庭订阅的话，每份的价格是30美分，而报社的实际支出将十倍于此。我没法理解，好不好？我的意思是，你尽量提高订阅量，但却没有任何意义。

JOANNE: So, all the things you’re talking about are somewhat around the periphery. They’re all working within the structure of the conventional newspaper, and if you really need to blow up the business model and start from scratch, what might that model be? We saw the Christian Science Monitor just said they’re doing away with the print edition and only going to the Web. Do you see something that radical, or is there some other way of looking at this?

Jonee：呃，现在你谈到的都是一些报纸的外围话题。他们都是围绕着报纸约定俗成的模式在运转，如果你真的想要从头开始一种全新的商业模式，那么它将是怎样？基督教科学箴言报前不久称他们正准备放弃印刷版投身网络版。你认为此举是否激进，或者是一种可以接受的方式？

SAM: Well, if you want to play futuristic—and I don’t know how big an f on the word futuristic—you can make a case that the world in the future is all Kindles, and you’ll send out an email to everybody to their Kindle, and that’s how they’re going to get their newspaper every morning. That’s a real possibility at sometime in the future.

SAM: 好的，如果你想玩新潮的话——我不知道F【译者注：此处F应该代表False，英文中用T和 F表示对与错的判断】在新潮的（futuristic）这个单词中占到多大的比重——你可以设想这一情形，未来全世界都是Kindle【译者注：Amazon于2007年11月发布的一种名为“点燃”（Kindle）的便携式阅览器，它能够从互联网上下载数字格式的图书，报纸与杂志。零售价大约是399美元】，你可以给每一个人的Kindle上发送电子邮件，这也成为他们每天获取报纸的方式。未来这一情况极有可能发生。

But most importantly I think the newspaper has to acknowledge the reality of the world we’re in. When I grew up—and I hate to tell you I’m that old—but when I grew up, the definition of “breaking news” was your front door. So you run…you go up in the morning, you open up the front door, you see what happened. Okay? Well, that’s not the case anymore. Now, you hit your homepage, now you turn on CNN, or some other news-TV program, and that’s how you find out what the latest news is.

但是我想最重要的一点是，目前报纸必须认清楚当下的现实。当我长大成人——我可真不喜欢告诉你们，我已经老了——但是当我长大成人的时候，“爆炸性新闻” 来自于你的家门口。你每天早上起床来，冲到门口，打开大门，然后你在报箱取出报纸得知发生了哪些事情。那么，如今事情已经不是这样了。现在你点开你的主页，你打开CNN，或者其他的电视节目——这才是现在你获知新闻的方式。

So then the question becomes: Is there a role for newspapers? And I think the answer is yes, there’s a role for newspapers,providing the newspapers understand what that role is and are able to adjust to it. So, for example, most of my newspapers do not have a comparative advantage on international news. I’m not going to compete with Bloomberg or Reuters to, in effect,secure the latest international news. On the other hand, I’ve got staff and people and knowledge locally that nobody else has. So…and when you do focus groups with people and you ask them, “What do you want from your newspaper?” they tell you,”local, local, local.” And they say it over and over again, “I want to know what’s going on locally because that’s the onlything I can’t find from 10 other sources.”

接下来的问题是：报纸还有自己的位置吗？我认为答案是肯定的，倘若报纸能够理解自己的角色是什么并能够适应该角色的耍，那么报纸仍将有自己的舞台。比如，我的大部分报纸在国际新闻方面并不具备比较优势，我并不打算和彭博社或者路透社去竞争有效、可靠的最新国际新闻。另一方面，我拥有其他家媒体都不可能具备的本土职员、读者和知识。所以，如果你举行焦点座谈会并跟参与调查者提问，“你想从你的报纸上获得什么？”然后他们会告诉你，“本土新闻，本土新闻，还是本土新闻。”他们会反复说明，“我想要知道本地发生了什么，因为只有这些东西才是我从其他10家另外的消息来源无法获知的。”

JOANNE: So you raise a couple of questions there. I mean, one is simply the staffing issue. And it’s interesting, when you came in a year ago, the L.A. Times, you went to the L.A. Times and said, “I have no intention of being the captain of the Titanic,” and you also said that you didn’t believe in kind of cutting your way to success. You, more than the other of your competitive set, have really made very, very deep cuts and particularly among the journalists. So how does that gel with providing the reader more and building on the papers to create a model of success?
Joanne：于是，你在那里引爆了一系列的问题，其中之一就是精简人员。很有意思的是，一年前你刚到洛杉矶时报的时候说，“我来此无意成为泰坦尼克号船长”，同时你也说自己不相信裁员是通往成功之道。而今你比你的其他竞争对手们都要裁得更厉害，尤其是采编人员。那么这样如何能将为读者提供更多的内容和为报纸开创新的盈利模式结合起来？

SAM: Like everything else, we’re dealing with process, we’re dealing with changing methodologies of the way things were done before. If this gentleman over here is a reporter and he calls in and says, “I’ve got a story and you want to put it up on the Web,” he talks to one copywriter, they put it all together, it’s on the Web in 10 minutes. But if that same story with the same facts is going in the newspaper, then it goes to the copywriter, the section editor, the page editor, I mean, it goes to everybody. Okay? And you wonder why the newspapers can’t financially compete.
Sam：这没什么特别的，我们正在有步骤地处理，我们正在改变以往的做事方法。假设这位先生是一名记者，他走过来说，“我有一个新闻，想要把它在网上发布”，他与一名撰写人交流，然后两人一道完成了它，十分钟后这条新闻出现在网页上。但同样的情形下，如果想要在报纸刊载，它必须经过撰写人、区域编辑、版面编辑等一道道流程，我的意思是，它几乎要经过每一个人之手后才能出来。好了，这下你就明白报纸为何竞争不过其他媒体了。

JOANNE: But the newspaper is supposed to be giving you something more than the instant news that you get on the Web. Would you argue that your newspapers—after the year of cutting and attempting to fix the model—would you argue that the journalism is improved from when you purchased your newspapers?
Joanne：但是，人们总是期望报纸能够提供网络即时新闻之外的一些东西。经过一年的裁员和尝试修复商业模式之后，你认为目前你的报纸的新闻业务比起一年前刚收购它们的时候有所提升？

SAM: Interestingly enough, my customers say yes. My customers say yes.
Sam：有趣多了，我的客户这么说。按客户的说法是肯定的。

JOANNE: By what measure is that?
Joanne：但这一衡量尺度是什么呢？

SAM: I’ve reformatted all eight newspapers—they’re much louder; they’ve got more pictures; they have more color; they have easier navigation. I mean, simple things. I ride my motorcycle to work every morning…
Sam :我已经重新规划了旗下八家报纸——他们变得更加大气，有了更多图片，更多色彩，更简明的导读。这些都是很简单的事情。每个早晨我骑着摩托车去上班…..

JOANNE: Good for you.
JOANNE：这对你有好处。

SAM: I say goodbye to my wife as I walk out the door, and I used to ask her, “What’s the temperature?” Because if it’s bitter cold, there’s a problem. And then I would see her go, “Argh!” as she tried to find where the weather is in the newspapers. And in the reformatted Chicago Tribune in the bottom left-hand corner it says, “64 today, 75 tomorrow, 83 the next day,” in
one quarter of an inch in the lower left-hand corner. Isn’t that information that everybody wants?
Sam：出门的时候我跟妻子说再见，我习惯性地问她，“今天几度？”因为如果天气太冷，会出问题。然后我就看到她转身去查温度，“噢！”她开始在报纸上找天气预报的消息，改版后的芝加哥论坛报左下角印着，“今天64度，明天75度，后天83度。”就在左下角四分之一英寸的位置。这难道不是每一个人都想获得的信息吗？

JOANNE: But that customer…there’s a couple of customers that you have. You’re talking reader service. Another customer,obviously, is the advertiser, and your advertising has declined at a more rapid clip than some of your competitors, more so than he Times and USA Today…
JOANNE：但是，这类客户是你们的客户群体之一。你刚刚谈到的是读者服务这一块。显然，另一群客户是广告主。你们广告下滑的速度比其他竞争对手都要快，比如时代、今日美国…..

SAM: Well, I think that’s comparing leprosy to cancer. I mean, I beg to disagree with you, and I think Arthur Sulzberger is out here someplace, and I’m sure he would vie that his has gone down more than mine. [Editors note: In the third quarter of 2008, New York Times Co. ad revenue fell 14.4 percent, while Tribune Co. ad revenue fell 19 percent.] But the answer is everybody’s advertising is dramatically down. We’ve seen literally the destruction of classified advertising. You know, not just in our paper, but in all the papers. There’s somebody here, Mr. Craig, from Craigslist, who is responsible for that.
Sam：我认为，这是在拿麻风病和癌症在做比较。我想与你达成的一点共识是，我认为如果亚瑟·苏兹贝格也在现场的话，他肯定会认为自家下降的速度比我的更多。（编者按：在2008年第三季度财务报表中，纽约时报公司的广告收入下滑了14.4%，Tribune下滑了19%。）而答案却是，每一家报纸的广告都在急剧下降。我们已经看到了报纸分类广告的分崩离析。你要知道，不仅仅是我们报纸，其他报纸也一样。今天来自Craigslist【译者注：美国第一大在线分类广告网站】的葛雷克先生也在现场，他对这事负有主要责任。

I think the answer is that we have to come up with a product that our customers want. In Chicago, we launched a product called RedEye. RedEye, which is delivered to the train stations and the bus stations every afternoon, is aimed to the 25-to-40-year-old. It’s given away free. It has a higher circulation than the Tribune, and makes a profit. We launched a new paper in Chicago called Mash. It’s delivered to 50,000 high schools free once a week, underwritten by Verizon and Nike, to reach perhaps the hardest demographic there is to reach. So these are paper products. They are successful.
我想问题的解决之道是，我们必须拿出客户想要的产品来。在芝加哥，我们发行了一份叫做番茄酱（RedEye）的印刷品，每天下午向火车站和公交车站免费派送，主要针对25-40岁年龄段的群体。现在它的发行量已经超过了芝加哥论坛报，并已经实现盈利。我们在芝加哥还发行了一份叫做Mash的报纸，每周向5万所中学派送，由Verizon【译者注：美国最大的本地电话运营商】和耐克赞助，直抵最精准的人口统计学特征人群。这些纸媒都很成功。

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。

JOANNE: Got it. All right, we’ve got a couple of minutes for questions from the audience. Right over here?
JOANNE:嗯，我知道了。现在，我们这里有一些时间留给观众提问。右边那一位？

QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE: Hi, Jim Jarvis. Mr. Zell, first, I may speak for others here when I say I wish you would do this more often and talk publicly more often. It’s great fun. I’m a journalist, and I got attacked in Salon this morning…or Slate this morning—I get them confused—for holding journalists responsible for the fate of journalists. Is it possible, do you think, to change the culture of journalism? What’s the major changes that need to be made? Are you making any progress in changing that culture, and, if so, how?
观众提问：嗨，我是Jim Jarvis。Zell先生，首先请允许我代表在场的其他人以及我自己说，希望你能够经常做一些公众对话。这非常棒。我是一名记者，今早我在沙龙或者Slate受到了攻击——我让他们很困惑——因为我坚持新闻从业者要对新闻业的未来命运负责。你认为改变新闻业的文化是否可能？新闻业所需要的主要变革是什么？你是否有在试图改变新闻业的文化？如果有的话，你是如何来改变的？

SAM: I’m on the record as saying that, you know, I think that part of the problems with the newspaper industry revolve around the fact that the newsrooms have basically never recovered from Watergate, and everybody wants to be Woodward and Bernstein, and that’s the definition of success. Obviously, the newspaper business must be a great deal more than that. So I think we are making progress. I think we are changing the paradigms, many of which were just unwritten rules that we don’t put ads on the front page. “Why not?” “Well, because we’ve never put ads on the front page.” “Well, that’s a good reason not to.” You know, “Well, what do you mean you want to put a spadia on the newspaper?” ‘Well, somebody is willing to pay us $100,000 for one day for a spadia on the newspaper.” “I know, but it will destroy the integrity of the front page.” I said, “For $100,000, you know, who’s kidding who? What business are we in?”
要知道，我现在说的都被记录在案哈，我认为报业的部分问题还纠结于这样一个事实——编辑部还沉浸在水门事件的晕眩中没有恢复过来，每一个人都想成为伍德沃德（Woodward） 和伯恩斯（Bernstein），而这就是对所谓成功的定义。显然，报业所涵盖的应该要比这多得多。所以我认为我们正在进步，我们正在改变一些范例，其中很多是不成文的规定，譬如说我们从不再头版登广告。“为什么不呢？”“呃，因为我
们从来没有在头版登过广告。”“呃，那时一个很好的理由。”你知道，“呃，你想在报纸上登一个spadia折页广告，你什么意思？”【译者注：spadia，一种折页广告，是不完整的半页版面,部分包裹在一叠报纸的折页处。】“嗯，有人想花十万美元在我们报纸上登一次spadia折页广告。”“我知道，但是这会破坏报纸头版的完整性。”我说，“为了十万美元，你知道，谁在诱拐谁呢？我们在做一桩什么样的生意啊？”

I remember one of the first things that I noticed when I took over the Tribune was that, in effect, ChicagoTribune.com, which was our website, was in gray lettering, with the hope, maybe, that nobody would notice it. I scratched my head and I said,”This is supposed to be the future. It needs to be on the front page of the newspaper in bright-red letters because you want everybody in the world to connect to the concept of it and go from there.”
我还记得刚收购Tribune后，发生有这么一件事情。我们在报纸上印了我们网站的地址ChicagoTribune.com，用的全是灰色字体，也许是希望没有人能注意到它？我看后后搔搔头皮说，“网站是我们未来的指望，它需要在报纸头版用大红的字体标注出来，因为你得让全世界每一个人都对它有印象，脑子有有这样一个概念，并去访问它。”

And the last thing I’d say to you, which is a much bigger question—86 percent of the cost of the newspaper business is print, paper, distribution, and promotion. That’s untenable long-term and…short-term. And I think when it’s all said and done, the future must attack this inherent problem, which, among other things, if you attack the problem and solve it, you then make newspapers a much more economic advertising venue. Right now, that infrastructure sets the floor. That makes newspapers uncompetitive.
最后我还想跟你说一件事，这涉及到一个大得多的问题哈！报纸86%的开支都被用于印刷、纸张、发行和推广，这样是无法长期支持下去…..短期。当所有人都在讨论并着手解决报纸难题的时候，必须得击中报纸这一与生俱来的要害，一旦你着手处理并解决了它，那么你将使报纸成为一个更经济的广告载体。眼下，报纸的这一基本结构把自己死死地钉在了地上，使得它缺乏竞争力。

JOANNE: I think we have time for one more question…in the back there.
JOANNE:我们还有一个问题的时间，好，后面那一位。

QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE: Richard Bilotti, GSO Capital. I would submit that today the Tribune is truly a television company that happens to sell newspapers. Your television assets probably significantly…in any environment will be significantly worth more than your newspaper assets for the next couple of years. What are the essential changes that you need to make to the television business that you own, if any, given that we’re in the beginnings of a very severe downturn in advertising there, as well?
观众提问：我是来自GSO公司的Richard Bilotti。我认为Tribune公司其实是一家电视公司，顺便也出报纸而已。你们的电视资产很引人瞩目……在接下来几年里，无论情势如何发展，都会比你们的报纸资产要更值钱。假如说我们正处在一个非常严峻的广告下滑时期，你需要给旗下电视做哪些实质性的调整？

SAM: Well, in the case of the Tribune, you’re right that we have 23 TV stations and one superstation and one radio station.Whenever you talk about TV as it relates to the Tribune you have to start with the superstation. We have one of two superstations. Our superstation earns $80 million a year. The other superstation earns $480 million a year. We hit 75 million homes. I think they hit 90. So, obviously, this is a dormant asset that needs desperately to be addressed, which is, frankly,the first place we went to work.
就Tribune目前的状况而言，你所言极是。我们拥有23家电视台和1家特大功率电台和一个广播台。无论何时何地谈及Tribune的电视业务，这个特大功率电台都是不得不首先提到的话题。我们是两大特大功率电台之一。我们这个电台每年收入约8000万美元，而另一家则是4.8亿美元。我们收入中的750万美元来自国内。我认为它们可以达到900万。所以，显然这是一个有待开掘的沉睡资产。坦白地说，这也是我们开始行动的第一步。

We also basically doubled the amount of news that all of our TV stations do, because that news is 100 percent owned by the local station, is an enormously successful revenue producer, and is very local targeted. So that’s two.
同时我们所有的电视台都把播出的新闻总数翻了一倍，因为这些新闻百分百归本地电视台所有，直接面对本土传播，这是一个非常成功、非常了不起的收入制造者。这是我要说的两点。

And then, of course, we also put all the salesmen on commission and did other irrational things like that.
然后，我们所有的销售人员也开始有所动作。当然，我们还有一些其他类似的非同寻常的举措。

But net-net, we’re very, very aware of the TV role, and we’re very aware of what we need to make it better, and we’ve brought in a lot of extraordinary people, who are beginning to make a measurable difference.
但是作为网对网传播，我们也非常清楚电视的角色，清楚我们需要做得更好，我们引进了许多特别的人才，他们正在做一些看得见的改变。

JOANNE: That’s all we have time for. I want to thank Sam Zell.
JOANNE：由于时间的关系，今天我们到此为止，谢谢Sam Zell。

SAM: Thank you. Glad to.
SAM: 谢谢你。今儿个很高兴。

（完）

A：多年来，台上那些人那么多次地重复不着边际的dream 、hope，为什么人们总还是报以热烈掌声呢？

B：美国人选修的演讲学早就说明了，要想获得别人的掌声，首先得学会给别人掌声。

爱德华·肯尼迪，这位来自马萨诸塞州、正在和绝症做斗争的美国参议院议员、民主党党员，”参议院里最后一只狮子”，是仅次于来自西弗吉尼亚的罗伯特·C.伯德（Robert C. Byrd），在美国参议院排名第二位的老资格参议员——自1962年11月当选为参议员至今。

更重要的是，作为肯尼迪家族最活跃的在世者，他是美国前总统约翰·肯尼迪（John F. Kennedy）和已故的美国参议院罗伯特·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy）最年幼的弟弟，也是约翰·F.肯尼迪（Joseph Kennedy ）和杰奎琳·布维尔·肯尼迪（Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy）唯一在世的儿子——当然，他们的两个女儿（Eunice Kennedy Shriver 和 Jean Kennedy Smith）也还健在。

爱德华·肯尼迪在民主党内颇具威望，他对党内总统候选人的支持，相当之有分量。最近几届民主党总统候选人，1988年的迈克·杜卡齐斯、2000年 的格尔（Al Gore）、2004年的约翰·凯利（John Kerry），无一不获得他的支持，除了1992年的保尔·松加斯(Paul Tsongas)因被发现确诊患有癌症而临时退出、成全了克林顿之外。

今年1月28日，在华盛顿的一场竞选集会上，爱德华·肯尼迪公开表态支奥巴马竞选08年总统，这次他果然身体力行。

于2008年5月20日被医生宣布患上了恶性脑瘤的他、不得不轮番接受放射性治疗和化疗的他，此刻精神奕奕地出现在众人面前，一头白头发非常打眼，在整个演讲过程中他的眼睛直视前方。他号召大家团结一致支持奥巴马，“这个十一月，火炬将再次传递到新一代美国人手中，和奥巴马一起，你、 我、我们的国家将一起实现其事业。工作重新开始，希望依旧升起，梦想仍将继续。”

在此次美国民主党代表大会为期4天的会议中，爱德华·肯尼迪和奥巴马的妻子米歇尔、前总统克林顿、美国众议院议长南希·佩洛西等，将轮番发表演讲表示对奥巴马的全力支持。奥巴马本人则将在大会的最后一天（8月28日）正式接受民主党提名竞选总统，并发表演讲。

其实，28年前，爱德华·肯尼迪差点也处在今天奥巴马的位置上。

1969年的一个夜晚，他开车带着漂亮的金发姑娘科佩克内回旅馆，途经一座小桥时，汽车冲入河中，姑娘最后被发现死在车中，他幸得逃生却报案不及时。若不是此事迫使他退出了1980年的总统竞选，肯尼迪家族的历史或将重新改写。

当年作为肯尼迪家族的三兄弟中中最年轻、看上去最有前途的一位，爱德华·肯尼迪没能当上总统，多少让人遗憾。不过也有人认为这也许是他的幸运，因为他是三兄弟中唯一好好活下来的人。之后他在推动民权、医疗保健，在提高最低工资，修改移民法、刑法，在推动公平居住、公共教育、促进爱滋病研究、救济穷人、甚至在支持同性婚姻等立法方面都取得了很大成就，成为美国国会参议院里最受人们尊重的参议员之一。

8月25日晚，一听到开场白就忍不住流泪的人们、在场的那20000多人更是明白，28年后的今天，活着的爱德华·肯尼迪站在这演讲台上是多么不容易——

恶性肿瘤在侵蚀他的大脑，就在这个周末，他乘机抵达丹佛，随即在当地一家医院接受了检查。医生担心受到化疗和放射性治疗的影响，他的免疫系统无法适应飞机旅行、高海拔和高密度人群。甚至在演讲前几个小时，他的工作人员还告诉媒体，说他仅出席大会，而由侄女卡罗林·肯尼迪代为致辞。

就在这个夜晚，76岁的爱德华·肯尼迪在妻子的陪同下，蹒跚着穿过长长的人群，来到台前，用他那招牌的波士顿口音，坚持站立着发表了这也许是他人生里最后一次的公开演讲。

听到这场演说的上了年纪的人们，情难自已地想起了爱德华·肯尼迪曾发表的另一场著名告别演说。是的，那是1980年，在纽约举行的美国民主党代表大会前夕，他说，“对我而言，几小时前，这场竞选活动结束了。但是对那些与我们有着共同忧思的人们而言，事业仍将持续，希望依然鲜活，梦想绝不会破灭。”

PS：郑重推介——

爱德华·肯尼迪的传奇，请见 最后的肯尼迪。

爱德华·肯尼迪的演讲视频及文字，请见 这里。

在口耐的人眼中，什么都是口耐的。

嘎嘎，当然要拿出来秀一把！

隆重致谢刘姜小饼童鞋！

本图片版权归该同学所有，翻版必追究之，盗版必追杀之。

顺便问一句，到底要做到怎样的规定动作，才能把眼睛睁到这么圆鼓鼓呢？

hoho，这还让人想起了一部叫做《17岁的单车》的电影。

虽然事实再次证明，奥运会上自行车不是咱中国的强项，但这并不能否定中国人曾经对自行车的无限热爱——依稀记得90年代初的一幅电视画面，很久很久很久以前的一次新闻联播，有个对外国小朋友的采访，问她对北京的印象，她说北京街头的自行车实在太多了！

而今天，跑在北京街头的汽车实在太多了，奥运单双号有没可能继续下去？尚无定论。不过即使单双号了，遇到奥运闭幕式这种情况，还是得大规模地车辆限行。

不幸每天呼吸在汽车尾气中，无比怀念自行车的岁月。

记得小学时候，有一回坐我姐自行车后边，一不留神颠了下来，她没事，我被摔了大花脸。刚好赶上我很喜欢的表哥来家里玩，他那无限惊讶又十分同情地看我的眼神，把我伤心得——嚎啕大哭。大花脸持续了很长一段时间，那时我刚从一所学校转到另一所，原本骄横跋扈的家伙在新环境中自卑到一塌糊涂。直到两年后升初中，又换了个全新环境，才把自己重新找了回来。

怪哉，此事竟丝毫未影响到我学习自行车的热情。从初中开始，我也神气活现地骑自行车上学了。不过有一回差点完蛋，稀里糊涂连人带车栽进一条水渠，虽无大恙，却也吓煞一干人等，差点就被家长给禁骑了。

如此两次事故下来，若换到现在，恐怕早就对自行车排斥到十万八千里之外——喔，少年哪少年，心底里阳光灿烂啊！

我就说呢，现在很多的灰暗心情，都是被汽车尾气给毒害了！

嗯，我们平时都习惯了义务而太缺少权利意识了。

所以，下次乘坐电梯被玻璃砸到头的时候，不要着急和商场的人理论，请尽量在昏倒前优先拨打110，然后才是120。

所以，下次在踩单车掉进没了井盖儿的下水道里的时候，请在原地拨打110而不是哭着跑回家。

你可以忘记钥匙而被锁在门外，但一定要记得及时地拨打110。

提个醒，哪怕是作为被忽视生活的常识也好，总之，在任何你觉得困难的时候，勇敢地拨号吧。

喔，补充一点，心理困难除外……

o(∩_∩)o…

有人做出了事关后半辈子的决定。

没有出现预想中的场景，也没有谁的脑子在发热。

可还是忍不住地激动得哭了。

这是一个无所事事的中午。

但就像你说的，没有什么好等待的了。

因为你所等待的其实一直都在身边。

——So Cool！

*********************分割线***************************

回头琢磨了一下，眼前我能想到并有可能做到的很酷的事情是什么呢？

某天，兴冲冲地去天桥底下买了一辆黑车——两轮的，然后大摇大摆地骑在路上，顺利被警察逮住。最后，我们的领导恼羞成怒地被通知去派出所领人。

哇咔咔咔~~~