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新闻业的互联网之害

新闻业的互联网之害

Dan Mitchell 2013-03-26
时下,互联网改善新闻业现状的观点层出不穷,但它们都忽略了一个最重要的新闻类别,那就是本地新闻。没错,大家能够读到的新闻总体上来说越来越丰富,但是,跟人们日常生活和切身利益息息相关的本地新闻却是个例外。它的质量和数量都在急剧下降。

    对于一位财经作家而言,最糟糕的或许是,依格雷西亚斯完全搞错了新闻经济学的定义。他把新闻比作农业:“就像少数农民现在生产的农产品之丰沛足以让我们的祖辈啧啧称奇一样,如今的读者能够接触到他们根本没时间读完的高品质报道。”他说,由于网络新闻相对无阻力的生产方式,记者变得更有效率,对记者的需求量也随之减少。但新闻采访并不是种庄稼。报道州议会并不会因为随后产生的新闻可以更便捷地发布在互联网上而变得更容易些。此外,无论是在互联网出现之前还是之后,记者都需要投入大量时间,才能收获一定的“产出”。当然,所谓的“产量”是以记者对州议会审查的数量(这才是真正重要的东西)来衡量的。

    此外,依格雷西亚斯的整体论点建立在一个错误的假设之上,即新闻就是新闻,除了写作质量以外,新闻本身并没有什么区别,无论它是来自伦敦金融城(City of London),还是来自市政厅。“问问你自己,”他命令道。“你今天能够读到的好东西比起13年前是多了还是少了?”没错,就总体而言,显然是更多了,这很好。但就如全美各地的社区一样,在我所居住的加利福尼亚州奥克兰,本地和州一级的新闻较13年前少了很多,而且这类新闻报道的质量也大不如前。

    依格雷西亚斯仅仅在一句话中非常简短地提了一下本地新闻:“传统的报纸过去常常跟单一的跨城对手进行竞争。”在包含这句话的段落中,他介绍了网络竞争的方式,“网上的竞争非常激烈,供人们阅读的内容非常多。”如果比起自己所在社区的犯罪情况,大家更关注塞浦路斯银行危机的话,那他说的没错。 (财富中文网)

    译者:任文科

    Perhaps worst of all for an economics writer, Yglesias utterly mischaraterizes the economics of journalism. He compares journalism to agriculture: "Just as a tiny number of farmers now produce an agricultural bounty that would have amazed our ancestors, today's readers have access to far more high-quality coverage than they have time to read." Thanks to the relatively frictionless production of news on the Web, he says, journalists are more productive, and so fewer of them are needed. But newsgathering isn't farming. Covering a statehouse isn't made any easier by the fact that the resulting news stories can be published quickly and easily online. Just as many reporter-hours are needed to achieve a given level of production as were needed before the Web (that is, if "production" is measured by the amount of journalistic scrutiny given to the statehouse, which is what's really important.)

    Further, Yglesias's whole argument rests on the erroneous presumption that news is news and there's no differentiation to the news product other than the quality of the writing, whether it emanates from the City of London or from the city hall. "Just ask yourself," he commands. "Is there more or less good material for you to read today than there was 13 years ago?" Well, in total, there's more, obviously, and that's great. But here in Oakland, Calif., just as in communities across the land, there's a lot less local and state news than there was 13 years ago, and what news there is isn't nearly as well-reported.

    The one very brief nod Yglesias gives to local and regional news is in this single sentence: "A traditional newspaper used to compete with a single cross-town rival." This sentence was contained in a passage where he describes how competition works online, where there's "lots of competition and lots of stuff to read." And he's right, as long as you care more about the banks in Cyprus than you do about crime in your neighborhood.

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