《纽约时报》主编下课幕后：曾主导创新 管理水平受好评

    《纽约时报》（the New York Times）日前宣布解雇总编吉尔•艾布拉姆森时，传媒界一片哗然。即便是《纽约时报》那些见多识广的记者们也一下子被这条消息“弄懵”了，发行人小阿瑟•苏兹伯格在宣布时只是说，艾布拉姆森被解雇是因为“新闻编辑室的管理出了问题。”

    但在所有关于艾布拉姆森管理风格的讨论中，在所有是否针对女性管理者实施双重标准的讨论中，很少有人谈到一个话题，同时也可能最最重要的一个话题：在暮气沉沉的传统报业中，艾布拉姆森的新闻编辑室管理水平远超业界大多数人。

    过去十年，出版界受冲击最大的报业频频传来倒闭、裁员、转为网络版、取消收费墙和/或将内容制作外包给资历较浅、薪酬较低的社区成员和“供稿人”（如果多少还有一点资历，多少还支付一点薪酬的话）的种种消息。有一段时间，《芝加哥先驱报》（Chicago Tribune）和《休斯顿纪事报》（Houston Chronicle）甚至依赖电脑算法和一帮菲律宾写手。

    虽然不少传统媒体依然缺乏方向（依然搞不清如何将那个被称为互联网的东西变成一个可持续的商业模式），被戏称为“灰色女士”的《纽约时报》已经较好地完成了数字化转型。《纽约时报》网站走在了行业前面，积极运用从数据图形化到视频等诸多新生代功能，制作传统新闻。艾布拉姆森在主编生涯中对未来的重视（间或还参加科技传媒会议）值得赞许。

    她在《纽约时报》树立收费墙数月后上任，实施了多项堪称行业典范的数字项目。2012年12月，《纽约时报》全新的数字叙事平台亮相，在这个平台上，约翰•布兰奇的长篇叙事报道《雪从天降》(Snow Fall)一炮而红。这个平台展现了多媒体叙事的创意和创收可能，受到广泛推崇和效仿，这种形式更是被冠以“雪从天降”体。

    3月份，《纽约时报》推出了几款付费数字产品，包括一个应用软件，提供新闻、美食、评论等内容。目前要判断这些产品的效果仍为时过早，但艾布拉姆森能把编辑部的资源集合在这些地方仍然值得嘉许。

    正如传媒投资银行DeSilva and Phillips的里德•菲利普斯当时告诉我：“我的印象是，这些产品是小试牛刀，但他们至少是在创新。这一点最重要。”

    他还说：“在探索未来新闻方面，他们显然是美国报业的先锋。”

    不管发生什么，艾布拉姆森显然是在专注于当代新闻报道面临的种种挑战。她和她的继任者迪安•巴奎特曾经委托以发行人苏兹伯格的儿子A.G.为首的一组记者为《纽约时报》制作一份《创新报告》。这个小组花了几个月的时间进行调研，并在上周公布了调查的结论：好吧，《纽约时报》需要加快行动。

    具有讽刺意味的是，这份报告出炉后，一些人暗示，《纽约时报》编辑部之所以没能更进一步，全是艾布拉姆森的错。（财富中文网）

    Jaws collectively dropped in the media fishbowl yesterday with the announcement that New York Times editor-in-chief Jill Abramson was losing her job. Even the Times' crack reporters were initially "gob-smacked" by the news in their front yard, delivered to them by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. -- who merely said that Abramson had been dismissed over "an issue with management in the newsroom."

    But in all the talk about Abramson's management style -- and the important debate about whether or not women executives are held to a double standard -- there has been little said on a topic that may be most relevant of all: In a just plain lousy environment for traditional broadsheets, Abramson's newsroom was managing far better than most.

    In the past decade, newspapers -- the most bludgeoned segment of the ink-on-paper realm -- have shut down, cut staff, gone online-only, thrown up paywalls, and/or outsourced content-producing to less vetted, lesser paid (if vetted and paid at all) community members and "contributors." For a brief time, the Chicago Tribune and Houston Chronicle even relied on computer algorithms and a corps of writers in the Philippines.

    Yet while much of old media remains adrift (and still trying to figure out how to turn that thing called the Internet into a sustainable business model), The Gray Lady has managed its digital transformation relatively well. Its website leads the industry in delivering old-school journalism with new-age enhancement from data visualizations to video. Abramson, who spent her executive editorship with one foot in the future (and at the occasional tech media conference), deserves some credit for this.

    Her tenure, which began months after the paper put up its paywall, brought a handful of digital initiatives that have served as models for the industry. In December 2012, the Times debuted a new digital storytelling platform for "Snow Fall," a long-form narrative written by John Branch. The platform demonstrated both new creative and revenue-generating possibility for multimedia storytelling, and has become so widely admired and imitated by media companies, that the form itself is now known as Snowfall.

    In March, the Times launched a handful of subscription digital products, including an app that curates news and others that highlight areas of coverage like food and opinion. It's too early to know how well these have worked, but that Abramson committed newsroom resources to them is something.

    As Reed Phillips, of the media investment bank DeSilva and Phillips told me at the time, "My impression is these products are trial balloons, but at least they're innovating. That's the most important thing."

    He added, "They're clearly the leader among U.S. newspapers in how they're approaching the future of news."

    In any case, Abramson was clearly focused on the modern-day challenges of delivering the news. She and her successor, Dean Baquet, commissioned a team of journalists -- headed by Sulzberger's son, A.G. -- to develop an Innovation Report for the Times. The group spent several months on the study and their findings -- ahem, that the Times needs to move faster -- were shared last week.

    Ironically, that report led some to suggest that it was Abramson's fault that the newsroom wasn't further ahead.