面对日渐艰难的处境，传统出版商结成联盟向国会申请了一项反垄断豁免，加上社交媒体巨头们意识到欧美地区的政治氛围开始将矛头对准他们，他们已经企图停战。他们提供的停战筹码如何？这场拉锯战将就此停止吗？请关注本期Quriosity。
社交媒体的停战筹码
“We’re pleased that the conversation has moved on from this ideological position that all content should be free,” says an executive at the Wall Street Journal, which charges readers for digital access. Earlier this year the Journal opted out of “first click free” and experienced a 50% decline in traffic from Google. It also saw a quadrupling of conversions to subscription among those who came to the site and hit the paywall. To the Journal, both data points confirmed the sheer power of tech platforms over publishers.
《华尔街日报》是一家对用户线上访问收费的报纸，它的一位经理表示：“我们很高兴我们的对话已经不再停留在‘所有内容都应免费’的思想阵地。”今年早些时候，《华尔街日报》决定不再采用“首次点击免费”，使得它在谷歌上的流量下降了50％。然而与此同时，在那些访问网站并点击付费的读者中，订阅量翻了两番。对于《华尔街日报》来说，这两个数据都证实了与出版商相比，技术平台拥有绝对的获利权。
As for Facebook, users today get all instant articles free of charge. It has signed up ten publishers (including The Economist) for a trial that gives some users of Facebook’ s mobile app access to ten free instant articles per month but then sends them to a publisher’s paywall. Even so, many readers are not likely to encounter one.
而对于Facebook的用户来说，他们仍然可以免费获得所有的即时文章。目前，Facebook已经与包括《经济学人》在内的十家出版商签署一项试验的合约。合约内容是，一部分Facebook手机app的用户每月可以免费获取十篇即时文章，然后将跳转至出版商的“付费墙”。可是即便如此，很多读者还是不会付费阅读。
Even if more help comes as promised, the economic imbalance leaves the industry at the mercy of the platforms’ generosity or immediate public relations imperatives: Facebook and Google are on the way to holding nearly 60 percent of the online advertising market, according to eMarketer.
Mr. Klingensmith said that for midsize dailies, which have been hit particularly hard by the shift in ad spending, “it is impossible for us to go as a one-off company and negotiate or even get an appointment with these companies.”
即使出版商们像承诺的那样获得了更多的帮助，地位不平衡也使新闻行业不得不处于谷歌和Facebook的慷慨馈赠和直接公共关系规则的支配之下。根据eMarketer的分析，Facebook和谷歌预计将掌握近60%的线上广告市场。克林根史密斯说，对于被广告开支转变沉重打击的中型日报社而言，“像单枪匹马那样运营，和这些公司（谷歌和Facebook等）谈判甚至合作是不可能的。
In seeking the right to negotiate together, the news providers are trying to avoid the trouble that major book publishing houses got into when they worked with Apple to develop an online book rival to Amazon. Without any government clearance, they ran afoul of antitrust laws.
为寻求共同谈判的权利，新闻提供者也在努力避免主流出版社在与苹果公司合作开发和亚马逊竞争的电子书时，曾陷入的麻烦。没有政府的许可，他们可能与反垄断法相抵触。
向国会借力
The Alliance acknowledges that its bid requires legislation giving them specific clearance to negotiate as a group, which is not commonly granted. The New York Times, which is part of the alliance, notes that the media alliance is asking for “long shot” legislation from a Congress that’s controlled by Republicans and is “not in a very press-friendly mood these days.” Why are publishers hoping that there is strength in numbers? They want to be able to push “for stronger intellectual-property protections, better support for subscription models and a fair share of revenue and data,” according to Chavern.
联盟承认它的努力需要法律给予他们特定的许可来作为一个团队进行谈判，而这通常是无法授权的。联盟成员《纽约时报》称，联盟想要的是能帮助他们翻盘的一项法令，但在对新闻业不太友好的共和党所控制的国会之下，其实现的可能性微乎其微。为什么出版商们会寄希望于“人多力量大”呢？沙维恩认为，他们希望能够推进知识产权保护，更好的订阅模式以及在收入与数据上更合理的份额。
The Alliance’s outside counsel, Jonathan Kanter, said he was hopeful that one argument in particular could sway them: “The product at issue is important from a public policy perspective — we’re not just talking about widgets, we’re talking about news, and news is crucial for a democratic society.” Whatever the outcome, that should be a starting point everyone can agree upon.
联盟的外部法律顾问乔纳森·肯特相信这样一个观点就能撼动国会：“从公共政策视角来看，我们不是在谈论小工具，我们是在谈论新闻，而新闻对民主社会事关重大。”不管结果如何，这都应该成为一个公认的起点。
战争仍将继续
Media executives at firms that rely more on selling ads than subscriptions are more enthusiastic about Facebook and Google. “We see them as a friend,” says Paul Zwillenberg, chief executive of Britain’s Daily Mail and General Trust, owner of the Daily Mail. Mail Online has doubled daily visitors and engagement in part by making videos for Facebook and YouTube. That does not mean giving up on direct internet traffic (on which Mail Online can sell ads without sharing revenue with or Google). About 35% of Mail Online’s traffic in America still comes directly to the news site’s homepage, or “front door”, according to, an analytics firm, which is slightly higher than the rate for the homepages of the biggest American papers.
公司里依赖出售广告而非订阅的媒体经理们更偏向Facebook和谷歌。英国《每日邮报》和它所属的通用信托的首席执行官，《每日邮报》的所有人保罗·兹韦伦勃格说：“我们把它们（谷歌和Facebook）当成朋友。”每日邮报在线版日均访问者和参与度翻了一番，部分源于其为Facebook和YouTube制作视频，但这并不意味着它将放弃网站直接产生的流量，其中所售卖的广告不需要与Facebook和谷歌分摊收入。据一家分析公司称：每日邮报在美国35%的流量仍直接来自新闻网站的主页或链接，这比美国最大的报纸公司的主页流量高了一点。
Citing figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Chavern says Google and Facebook “account for more than 70 percent of the $73 billion spent each year on digital advertising, and they eat up most of the growth.” He also cited numbers that support what many of us know: Most people get to their news by clicking on links in their Facebook news feeds, or from Google Search. Nearly 80 percent of all online referral traffic comes from those companies, according to Statista.
沙维恩引用了来自互动广告局的数据，他说:“谷歌和Facebook每年占超过数字广告投入总额（730亿美元）的70%以及大部分的增长率。”他还引用了数据来支撑许多人都知道的事实：大部分人通过点击Facebook提供的新闻链接或是通过谷歌搜索来获取新闻。据Statista称近80%的在线定向流量都产生于这些公司。
But selling digital ads on their own websites is a challenge for most news organisations, in part because of the competition from the duopoly. “Because of this digital duopoly, publishers are forced to surrender their content and play by their rules on how news and information is displayed, prioritized and monetized,” the News Media Alliance said in its press release Monday. “These rules have commoditized the news and given rise to fake news, which often cannot be differentiated from real news.”
但对大多数新闻机构来说，在自己的网站上销售数字广告是一项挑战，部分原因是双头垄断市场所带来的竞争。新闻媒体联盟在周一的新闻发布会上说:“由于这一双头垄断数据市场的局面，出版商被迫放弃其内容，并根据新闻和信息如何显示、优先化和货币化的规则来出版刊物。”“这些规则已经将新闻货品化，并催生出无法与真实新闻区分开来的虚假新闻。
Facebook and Alphabet will take the majority of all digital-ad revenue globally this year, and, by some measures, have recently taken 80-90% of the growth in such revenue. Their data on users’ browsing activities give them a huge advantage in micro-targeting users. Wherever journalism turns, Facebook and Google loom large. Their recent moves, although welcome to many publishers, are unlikely to alter the trajectory of the relationship.
Facebook和Alphabet将获得今年全球范围内所有数字广告的绝大部分收入，并已经在近期通过一些方法获取了收入增长部分的80%到90%。他们基于用户浏览产生的数据在用户的精准定位上拥有巨大优势。不论新闻业转向何处，Facebook和谷歌都显得格外突出。虽然他们最近的动向受许多出版商欢迎，但不太可能改变两者原有的关系格局。
