亞馬遜掌門人能否復興《華盛頓郵報》

????貝佐斯表示，報社目前的管理層將繼續留任，也不會裁員。這意味著已故凱瑟琳?格雷厄姆的孫女凱瑟琳?韋慕斯將繼續擔任報社發行人。韋慕斯領導這份報紙期間，它經歷了最具傳奇色彩的發展時期，其中包括水門事件。這對于報紙行業而言是另外一個好的信號。之前，報紙行業經歷了多年裁員和管理層混亂，對報紙的質量造成了負面影響。【《紐約時報》（The New York Times ）曾經認為這是《新聞周刊》（Newsweek）所面臨的主要問題，盡管后者曾孤注一擲，嘗試與《每日野獸》（Daily Beast）合并】。

????《華盛頓郵報》是最早嘗試在線新聞、同時也是最懂行的參與者之一，時間甚至早于網絡的誕生。目前，它在互聯網上依然具有強大的影響力，許多欄目也頗受歡迎，如厄茲拉?克萊恩的欄目Wonkblog。但與此同時，它也表現出“舊媒體”的一些趨勢，造成年輕讀者日益流失。比如新聞內容通常乏味冗長，采用“公說公理，婆說婆理”的報道模式；而且報紙的社論版似乎只是為了證明《華盛頓郵報》在政治上沒有立場，而不是為了幫助讀者理解當天發生的問題。此外，該報紙也失去了創建“政客新聞網”（Politico）的機會。后者被認為是最成功的新媒體機構。

????當然，報紙與整個行業都承受著同樣的市場壓力。過去六年，《華盛頓郵報》的收入幾乎減少了一半。印刷品發行量和廣告收入的下降趨勢不可阻擋。很明顯，它現在的老板已經沒有勇氣對公司業務進行全面改革。韋慕斯自己也曾對《華爾街郵報》媒體記者保羅?法伊表達過類似的觀點：“如果說新聞業是一種使命，那么鑒于削減成本和盈利的壓力，上市或許并不是《華盛頓郵報》最好的歸宿。”

????當然，這并不意味著貝佐斯一定能成功。報紙行業所面臨的是結構性問題——我們并不能確定，我們通過報紙了解的那些專業報道的公共事件新聞能否產生足夠高的市價，以支撐報業生產。互聯網迫使報紙將新聞報道與最能刺激消費者需求的其他部分（如優惠券、意見欄和星座等）分離。純粹的新聞必須找到自己的立足之地。即便是貝佐斯也不見得能取得成功，而且他的耐心總有耗盡的時候。去年，他就曾對《財富》雜志表示：“從長遠來看，我們充滿信心。但再遠的未來也有走到頭的時候。”（財富中文網）

????譯者：劉進龍/汪皓

????Bezos says current management will stay put and there will be no layoffs. That means Katharine Weymouth -- granddaughter of the late Katherine Graham, who led the paper during its most storied period, including the Watergate era -- will stay on as publisher. Another good sign in an industry skittish from years of cutbacks and management chaos, all of which can have a negative impact on the quality of work produced by a newsroom. (The New York Times diagnosed this as a major part of Newsweek's problems even as it attempted a Hail Mary merger with the Daily Beast.)

????The Post was among the earliest and savviest entrants into online news, even before the Web, and it has maintained a strong presence on the Internet, with popular initiatives like Ezra Klein's Wonkblog. At the same time, it still displays some of the tendencies of "old media" that turn off younger readers, such as often presenting the news dully and in binary "he said/she said" fashion, and maintaining an editorial page that sometimes seems aimed more at proving that the Post is politically "balanced" than at helping anyone understand the issues of the day. The paper will have also always passed up the opportunity to create Politico, arguably one of the most successful new media outfits.

????And of course the newspaper -- which has seen revenues fall by nearly half just in the past six years -- is at the mercy of the same market forces the rest of the industry has endured. Print circulation and ad revenues have continued their inexorable decline, and it had become clear in recent years that the current owners didn't have the stomach to fully transform the business. Weymouth herself said as much to the Post's media writer, Paul Farhi: "If journalism is the mission, given the pressures to cut costs and make profits, maybe [a publicly traded company] is not the best place for the Post."

????None of which means that Bezos will necessarily succeed. The industry's problems are structural -- it's not clear that professionally reported public-affairs journalism, the way we have come to know it through newspapers, can command a market price high enough to sustain its production. The Internet has split that kind of reporting off from the other parts of newspapers (like coupons, advice columns, and horoscopes) that stirred most of the demand for newspapers. Hard news now has to find its own market. And not even Bezos can necessarily make that work, nor will even he be patient forever. "We believe in the long term," he told Fortune last year, "but the long term also has to come."