亚马逊掌门人能否复兴《华盛顿邮报》

    贝佐斯表示，报社目前的管理层将继续留任，也不会裁员。这意味着已故凯瑟琳•格雷厄姆的孙女凯瑟琳•韦慕斯将继续担任报社发行人。韦慕斯领导这份报纸期间，它经历了最具传奇色彩的发展时期，其中包括水门事件。这对于报纸行业而言是另外一个好的信号。之前，报纸行业经历了多年裁员和管理层混乱，对报纸的质量造成了负面影响。【《纽约时报》（The New York Times ）曾经认为这是《新闻周刊》（Newsweek）所面临的主要问题，尽管后者曾孤注一掷，尝试与《每日野兽》（Daily Beast）合并】。

    《华盛顿邮报》是最早尝试在线新闻、同时也是最懂行的参与者之一，时间甚至早于网络的诞生。目前，它在互联网上依然具有强大的影响力，许多栏目也颇受欢迎，如厄兹拉•克莱恩的栏目Wonkblog。但与此同时，它也表现出“旧媒体”的一些趋势，造成年轻读者日益流失。比如新闻内容通常乏味冗长，采用“公说公理，婆说婆理”的报道模式；而且报纸的社论版似乎只是为了证明《华盛顿邮报》在政治上没有立场，而不是为了帮助读者理解当天发生的问题。此外，该报纸也失去了创建“政客新闻网”（Politico）的机会。后者被认为是最成功的新媒体机构。

    当然，报纸与整个行业都承受着同样的市场压力。过去六年，《华盛顿邮报》的收入几乎减少了一半。印刷品发行量和广告收入的下降趋势不可阻挡。很明显，它现在的老板已经没有勇气对公司业务进行全面改革。韦慕斯自己也曾对《华尔街邮报》媒体记者保罗•法伊表达过类似的观点：“如果说新闻业是一种使命，那么鉴于削减成本和盈利的压力，上市或许并不是《华盛顿邮报》最好的归宿。”

    当然，这并不意味着贝佐斯一定能成功。报纸行业所面临的是结构性问题——我们并不能确定，我们通过报纸了解的那些专业报道的公共事件新闻能否产生足够高的市价，以支撑报业生产。互联网迫使报纸将新闻报道与最能刺激消费者需求的其他部分（如优惠券、意见栏和星座等）分离。纯粹的新闻必须找到自己的立足之地。即便是贝佐斯也不见得能取得成功，而且他的耐心总有耗尽的时候。去年，他就曾对《财富》杂志表示：“从长远来看，我们充满信心。但再远的未来也有走到头的时候。”（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/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."