付费内容的问题的症结在于你

    但是，令我不安的是，我时常听到同龄人或年轻一代鼓吹不再需要掏钱订报刊了。他们认为付费的做法太过老套，完全可以通过关注我这样在社交媒体上转发那些收费内容来解决。现在出现了一个现象，免费内容越来越同质化。投资者亨特•华克最近发帖提到了杰西卡•莱辛新办的交易刊物《情报》（The Information）。他认为，她写出来的内容和隐去的内容同样重要。莱辛将出版物定位在小众人群上，商业模式有些像老套的股票简报和阴谋家在地下室里印制出来的小册子。问题的关键是她对内容收费，并且只要内容独到、观众乐见，她就能生存下去。

    媒体理论学家杰夫•贾维斯曾说过一段著名的话：商业模式（或者类似的东西）绝没有标准答案。对此，我十分同意。我并没有强求消费者要出于某种义务感一定要花钱订阅。我想说的是，如果你没有读到《时代》周刊有关无家可归者的报道，还有《华尔街日报》有关政府卑鄙行径的报道，你就算不上是一位真正意义上的公民，就算事情已经过了几十年。如果你没有读过《财富》杂志对主要竞争对手采取的行动，你就不可能成为成功的商人或媒体主管。换言之，如果你不愿意花钱订阅的话，吃亏的是你，而不是我们。

    最近，我碰见一位硅谷大公司的高级主管，她自称因为没有时间而不读报纸或杂志（我想，书她也不会读）。我越想，就越替她、她的公司和我们的社会感到悲哀。因为要疲于应付手头的工作，只有时间读邮箱里那些专业和与工作高度相关的材料。我敢打赌，这样下去，那些肯花时间拓展视野、阅读各种人写的东西、同时认真担负起作为公民和领导者的责任的竞争者，终将超越她。

    虽然不敢断言最终胜利花落谁家，但是，我知道，胜利绝不青睐那些不能够——或不愿意——掏钱阅读高质量新闻报道的人。（财富中文网）

    译者：邓婕   

    What grates, however, is the sense I keep hearing from people of my generation and younger that they don't need to pay for journalism. They treat the paid model as somehow quaint and even chastise people like me for posting articles on social-media sites that aren't available for free. Yet what is beginning to dawn on people is that there's a sameness to what is available for free. Investor Hunter Walk captured this in a recent post about Jessica Lessin's new trade publication The Information. He praised her as much for the content she is omitting as for what she is producing. Lessin is aiming for a narrow audience, a business model as old as stock newsletters and conspiracy theorists cranking out pamphlets in their basements. The point is that she is charging for something, and she will succeed only if what she produces is unique and desirable.

    Media theorist Jeff Jarvis has become famous for saying that "should" isn't a business model (or something like that). I agree. I'm not advocating that consumers should pay for journalism out of some sense of duty. I'm saying that you're not the citizen you ought to be if you don't read the Times on homelessness and the Journal on shocking governmental behavior, even decades after the fact. And you can't possibly be the businessperson or media executive you need to be without reading Fortune's take on a key competitor. In other words, if you're unwilling to pay, you're the loser, not us.

    I recently met a senior executive at a major Silicon Valley company who doesn't read newspapers or magazines (or, I presume, books) because she doesn't have time, she said. The more I think about it, the sadder it makes me -- for her, for her company, and for our society. She thinks she only has time to read the specialized and highly germane material that flows into her inbox because she is too busy with the tasks at hand. I'm willing to bet that over the long haul her competitors who take time to broaden their horizons, to read about other kinds of people, who take seriously their responsibilities as citizens and leaders will win out over her in the end.

    I can't confidently predict what that victory will look like. But I know it won't look like the ignorance of someone who can't -- or won't -- pay to read the high-quality journalism that's all around them.