社交媒体能让《华盛顿邮报》返老还童吗？

2）分销——要么数字化，要么滚回家：

    第一步当然是彻底放弃报纸的印刷版。是的，我非常了解喝上两杯咖啡，翻阅厚厚一叠报纸周末版那种无与伦比的感受。但我们当年乘坐马车的感觉或许也是如此。不过，等到轿车时代来临，我们还是学会了没有马车的生活。

    紧握印刷版不放将带来沉重的负担，它的代价远不止生产和分销等显而易见的开支，以及制造数百万份报纸对环境的影响那么简单。从分销的角度看，一份印刷版报纸的确无法实现可定制、可追踪和共享（至少不会像数字内容那样共享）等功能，而所有这些事情都是极其重要的——唯如此，一家媒体才能够拥有一个心满意足，而且不断壮大的用户群。

    相比之下，一个强大的数字版——无论是在线阅读，还是在平板电脑后电子阅读器阅读——可以自动且永无止境地根据个体用户的需要和兴趣定制内容。随着时间的推移，它可以不断演变和完善，以更好地满足每位读者的喜好。根据哪些故事正在受到关注，页面和版块可以随时重新配置。此外，引人注目的内容可以即刻与朋友和同事共享，从而抵达更多的受众。

    这些非常基本的概念一直是社交媒体成长历程中不可或缺的因素。然而，当你印制出一份报纸，并把它放在别人家门口时，你就预先制止了这些好处。换句话说，亚马逊不向数以亿计的家庭递送一份硕大无比的产品目录有充分的理由。但愿贝佐斯能够为《华盛顿邮报》带来这种数字化变革。

3）速度——让新闻重新变“新”：

    不管怎么说，从最近的波士顿轰炸案到埃及的动荡局势，一旦出现重大新闻，越来越多的读者都开始转向Twitter了解详情。尽管这些消息或许并不总是可靠，但它们具有诱人的新鲜感，它提供讯息的时间大大早于传统新闻网站。

    报纸官网根本跟不上这种速度——它们需要对消息源进行研究、验证和分析（所有这些皆是一家新闻网站内在价值的组成部分）。但速度依然令人向往。尽管大家都在谈论一周7天，每天24小时的新闻周期，但引用媒体博客乔希•马歇尔的话说，主流报纸撰写文章的速度依然“像是在写学术论文”。报纸必须放弃这种做法。

    在新闻业的黄金时代——在这个持续时间不长、伍德沃德和伯恩斯坦们大放异彩的时期，资金充沛的报纸能够产生严肃的调查报道——这种方式或许是可行的。但现在已经行不通了。读者数量不断下降，分类广告收入急转直下。这些大报风光不再，步履维艰。为了在勇敢的新网络世界中竞争，新闻业有必要回归其更加古老、不那么光鲜的根源——以差不多与新闻同步的速度迅捷地推出短篇幅报道（这种持续的新闻流恰恰非常适合在线出版）。

    作为物流领域无可争议的王者，贝佐斯具备带来这些变化的充分条件。曾经效力于《华盛顿邮报》、现供职于在线新闻网站The Verge的记者格雷格•桑多瓦尔指出：“贝佐斯将提供技术解决方案，帮助记者和编辑更快、更高效地工作，因为他已经在亚马逊非常好地做到了这一点。”实际上，贝佐斯已经表达出了他对于电子邮件通讯和简短报道的强烈偏好。这种偏好暗示，已经盛行于《华尔街日报》(Wall Street Journal)等大报的短篇幅报道或许将降临《华盛顿邮报》。

2) Distribution -- Go digital or go home:

    Step one in this process, of course, is ditching the paper's print edition once and for all. Yes, I know there's nothing like leafing through a thick Sunday paper over a second cup of coffee. But there was probably nothing like taking a horse-drawn carriage ride either. And we learned to live without that when the car came along.

    There are serious liabilities of clinging to print, which go well beyond the obvious expense of production and distribution and the environmental impact of making millions of hard copies. From a distribution perspective, a printed newspaper is really not all that customizable, trackable, or shareable (at least, not in the same way digital content is), and all of these things are hugely important to having a satisfied and growing user base.

    By contrast, a robust digital edition -- whether viewed online, on a tablet or on an e-reader -- can be endlessy and automatically customized to the needs and interests of individual users. It can evolve and improve over time to better accommodate each reader's tastes. Pages and sections can be reconfigured on the fly, based on what stories are getting traction at any moment. Plus, compelling content can be instantly shared with friends and colleagues, reaching an even larger audience.

    These very basic concepts have all been integral to the growth of social media. Yet when you print out a newspaper and plop it down on someone's doorstep, you preempt these benefits. Put another way, there are very good reasons why Amazon doesn't ship a big, fat catalogue to hundreds of millions of homes. Here's hoping Bezos brings that learning to his latest undertaking.

3) Velocity -- Put the "new" back in news:

    For better or worse, when major news breaks - from the recent Boston bombing to unrest in Egypt -- readers increasingly turn to their Twitter feeds for details. While information may not always be reliable, it is tantalizingly fresh, offering accounts well before traditional news sites.

    There's no way a newspaper site could ever match this pace -- research, verification, and analysis take time (and this is all part of the intrinsic value of a news site). But speed is still something to aspire to. For all the talk of a 24/7 news cycle, articles at leading papers are still often written at "an almost academic pace," to quote media blogger Josh Marshall. This has got to give.

    During the golden age of journalism -- the brief Woodward-and-Bernstein era when well-funded papers could produce serious investigative reports -- this approach may have been viable. But that's no longer the case. Readership is sinking, ad and classified revenue is plummeting, and these same big papers are tanking. To compete in the brave new online world, it's necessary for journalism to return to its older and less glamorous roots -- quick, short-form stories pushed out nearly as fast as the news breaks (i.e. exactly the kind of continuous news stream that online publishing is ideally suited to).

    And these are changes Bezos -- the uncontested king of logistics -- is well equipped to bring. "Bezos will come up with technological solutions to help reporters and editors be speedier and more efficient because that's what he has done at Amazon so well," notes Greg Sandoval, a former reporter at the Post now with online-only news site The Verge. Indeed, Bezos has already expressed a strong preference for email newsletters and brief reports, a hint that shorter-form stories -- already prevalent at such venerable papers as the Wall Street Journal -- may be coming to the Post.