在这个新闻行业步履维艰的时代，谷歌和Facebook两大行业巨头垄断了数据市场，使得传统出版商面临巨大的生存挑战。传统出版商向两大社交媒体发起了一场拉锯战，孰胜孰负？请关注本期Quriosity。
Google and Facebook are gaining increasing control over digital distribution, so newspapers that once delivered their journalism with their own trucks increasingly have to rely on these big online platforms to get their articles in front of people, fighting for attention alongside fake news, websites that lift their content, and cat videos.
谷歌和Facebook正获得越来越多的对数字分销的控制权，所以以前那些通过卡车分销的报纸越来越需要依靠这些大的线上平台，来让读者看到他们的文章。同时，他们还要与假新闻、抄袭和猫咪视频作斗争。
And for all of Google’s and Facebook’s efforts to support journalism by helping news organizations find new revenue streams — and survive in the new world that these sites helped create — they are, at the end of the day, the royals of the court. Quality news providers are the supplicants and the serfs.
即使谷歌和Facebook为新闻机构发掘了新的收入来源，使其在这类网站创造的新世界中得以生存，以此支持着新闻业的发展，但他们最终成为了今天游戏规则的皇室，而高质量新闻的提供者亦成为了他们的仆役。
So what we used to call “the newspaper industry” — but which now includes outlets with robust online existences — is coming together to make its biggest push so far to change the balance of power.
所以，以前我们口中的“报纸行业”，现在却更多地拥有强大的在线渠道，而且它们正联合起来，以前所未有的力度来改变媒体行业中的权力平衡。
战局不利的出版商
However, in recent months Google and Facebook have made changes that may escape the notice of most of their billions of users, but not of news organizations. Facebook began displaying the logos of publishers in some of its posts, so readers can identify the news source. And Google for the first time gave publishers the ability to control how many times the search engine’s users can visit news sites free of charge. Both will directly help papers to sell subscriptions.
然而谷歌和Facebook在近几个月内做出的一些改变没能逃过新闻机构的眼睛，但这两家公司数十亿用户中的绝大多数都没能察觉。Facebook开始在其某些帖子上展现出版商的标志，使读者能够识别新闻来源。谷歌首次放权给出版商来控制搜索引擎用户免费浏览新闻网站的次数。这两项举措将直接帮助报纸出售订阅。
To critics of the social-media giants, that might look like wolves offering to help the sheep while still feasting on the herd. The business of both Facebook and Alphabet, parent of Google and YouTube, is to occupy people’s time and attention with their free services and content, and to sell ads against those eyeballs. For them, quality journalism is just another hook.
社交媒体巨头还是遭受了“黄鼠狼给鸡拜年”的批评。谷歌和YouTube的母公司Alphabet和Facebook的业务是用免费的服务和内容来占据人们的时间和注意力，同时依靠关注量来出售广告。对公司而言，高质量的新闻报道只是另一个诱饵。
In 2016, newspaper revenue fell 10 percent to $18 billion compared with 8 percent the previous year, according to Pew Research Center, which analyzed the revenue of seven publicly traded newspaper companies. To put that in perspective, Google parent Alphabet’s net income was $19 billion last year, while Facebook’s was $10 billion.
皮尤研究中心分析了七家上市报纸公司的收入，发现较之于2015年8%的跌幅，其于2016年环比下降了10%。相较之下谷歌母公司Alphabet的净利润为190亿而Facebook的为100亿美元。
But even as they lay off journalists - almost 60 percent of newspaper jobs have been cut in the past quarter century, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics - publishers aren’t worried about just the bottom line.
据美国劳工统计局数据显示，尽管出版商们在过去的25年里裁员近60%，但他们需要担心的不仅仅是成本问题。
出版商的反击
Facebook calls its “News Feed” offering its most important product, but in recent years it has tweaked the feed in ways that de-emphasise actual news, instead prioritising updates from friends and family over those from publishers. The associated ad revenues for many publishers have been either nominal, in the case of Facebook’s fast-loading “instant articles”, or as yet mostly non-existent, in the case of videos they make for the social network. News site shave found they have no choice but to work with the two tech giants, however: Facebook, with its 2bn users, and Google, which directs 10bn clicks a month to publishers, are where their readers are.
Facebook利用其生态系统中的一个重要支撑——“News Feed”（动态消息）来提供其最重要的产品，但近几年它通过优先推送朋友和家人的动态而非出版商的，来达到调整供给方式，弱化实际新闻的目的。大多数出版商的相关广告收入只是名义性的，比如Facebook的快速加载“即时文章”的功能。至于他们为社交网络制作的视频，收入就几乎为零。但是新闻网站别无选择，只能与这两家科技巨头合作，因为Facebook拥有20亿用户，而谷歌每月能为出版商带来100亿次的点击。新闻网站的客户全部囊括在了这两家公司中。
So there is no confusion about where the power lies. That is unlikely to change much in future, although publishers are fighting back a bit. In America a consortium of nearly 2,000 news organisations, the News Media Alliance, is asking Congress for an antitrust exemption to allow publishers to negotiate collectively with the two firms.
因此，谁掌控大权一目了然。尽管出版商们小有反击，但社交媒体和出版商的形势在未来不太可能有大的改变。NMA是美国一支代表了近2000家新闻机构的同业协会，它向国会请求一项反垄断豁免，来使出版商有权与这两大巨头进行谈判。
David Chavern, the consortium’s president, lists some of the demands: more ad revenue; the sharing of data about their audiences on the tech platforms; better branding for publishers, as the use of logos is very limited (people simply say, “I read that on Facebook”, says Mr Chavern); and support for subscriptions.
协会主席戴维•沙韦恩罗列了其中一些要求，包括增加广告收入，两大平台共享用户数据，更好地推广出版商品牌（由于标识的使用受限，沙韦恩说：“人们只是认为在Facebook上阅读了新闻），以及支持新闻订阅。
It’s an extreme measure with long odds. But the industry considers it worth a shot, given its view that Google and Facebook, regardless of their intentions, are posing a bigger threat economically than President Trump is (so far) with his rhetoric. The thinking is that publishers need the option of operating as a group — and the leverage that would come from any collective action — should they determine that it’s the only way to win meaningful accommodations.
这是一个风险极大的非常手段。但是业界认为值得一试。因为到目前为止，不论Google和Facebook的意图如何，它们对经济造成的威胁比特朗普总统的言辞更为严重。出版商们的想法是，他们需要联合起来，作为一个整体去运营，他们需要集体行动带来的杠杆效应，他们应该确定，这是取得有意义的和解的唯一方法。
The maneuvering is about more than the fight for digital territory. It’s about the endurance of quality journalism — expensive to produce, and under economic pressure as never before — at a time when false, cost-free “reportage” about things like “millions of illegal votes” can gain enough prominence to drive federal initiatives.
这一举措不仅仅是为了争夺数字领域领地，更是为了高质量新闻报道的长久发展。因为在当今世界，高质量新闻成本也高，新闻业面临着前所未有的经济压力，类似“数百万非法选票”这样虚假的、无成本的“报告文学”反而能获得足够的关注，甚至推动联邦倡议。
企图停战的社交媒体
The tech giants are making concessions on some of these points may be because they sense that the political mood is turning against them in America and in Europe, or because of genuine concern for the media ecosystem. And more direct action has been taken against them in Britain and across Europe, where regulators recently socked Google with a huge antitrust fine.
科技巨头在一些要求上妥协的原因可能是他们意识到欧美地区的政治氛围已将矛头对准他们，又或是出于对媒体生态真切的关心。英国和欧洲都对限制他们的权力采取了更直接的措施，比如欧洲地区的监管机构已经对谷歌处以了巨额的反垄断罚款。
In the tumultuous news climate, Google and Facebook don’t want to be seen as undermining real journalism. And executives with both companies said it was in their interests to have ample, reliable news content. “We’re committed to helping quality journalism thrive on Facebook,” Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnerships, said.
在动荡的新闻环境中，谷歌和Facebook不想被视为新闻业的危害。两家公司的行政经理都表示获得充足而可靠的新闻内容符合他们的利益。Facebook的新闻合作方的领导坎贝尔·布朗说“我们致力于帮助优质新闻依托Facebook的平台蓬勃发展。
Recently Google News Lab, formed in 2015, helped fund “Report for America”, which will put an initial 18 reporters in small-town newsrooms across the country, with more to come in future years. And it is working to help newsrooms take advantage of new technology to innovate and increase online revenue. “We want to help publishers succeed as they transition to digital,” Google said in a statement, calling the effort “a priority.”
近期，成立于2015年的谷歌新闻实验室为“美国报道”项目提供资金。他们将派第一批18位记者去往遍布全国的小镇新闻编辑室，并将在接下来几年中增派更多的记者。谷歌正在帮助新闻编辑室利用新技术来实现创新并增加线上利润，它把这些努力称为“优先事项”并在一次声明中说“我们想帮助出版商顺利过渡到数字化。”
Several newspaper executives say Google’s dealings with them seemed more sincere than Facebook’s. But both firms’ changes to click-through policies are significant. Google’s old policy for users directed to make their first visit to a newspaper website was called “first click free”, but it actually gave users three free clicks on a newspaper’s site every day. As more publishers put up paywalls online, they lobbied Google to limit free access. Google prefers an entirely free, open web—the better for searching and for ad placements— but in the end it relented.
几家报纸的经理说相比Facebook，谷歌对他们更真诚。但两家公司对点击政策做出的改变都很重大。谷歌针对用户首次访问新闻网站的旧政策叫做“首次点击免费”，但事实上它每天为用户提供三次在新闻网站上的免费点击。随着更多的出版商对在线阅读“付费墙”，他们试图说服谷歌限制免费阅读的次数。为了更好的搜索体验和投放广告，谷歌更倾向于完全免费、开放的网络，但最终它还是屈服了。
But as Mike Klingensmith, the publisher of The Star Tribune and the chairman of the News Media Alliance, said in an interview, “they’re talking to us, but there hasn’t been a lot of action yet.”
但是明星论坛报的出版商、新闻媒体联盟的主席迈克·克林根史密斯在采访中说：“他们正在与我们交涉，但还没有采取更多的行动。
未完待续......更多精彩见下期Quriosity
图片来源：网络图片
