sur-praehen-dere！

手痒，先贴了再说。
粗糙，请对照着看——

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。” Leer toda la entrada »

Portfolio杂志关闭， 执行主编Joanne Lipman说是”because of financial reasons at Advance”。

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。

这是我觉得相当不错的一条稿子——

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）

【Part 1】早知今日，会有当初的收购吗？

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。

【Part 2】报纸能否在21世纪传媒丛林中保有一席之地？

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。”

【Part 3】新模式，新尝试

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。