2015考研英语阅读资讯产业的未来

　　The future of news资讯产业的未来

　　THREE hundred years ago news travelled by word of mouth or letter, and circulated in tavernsand coffee houses in the form of pamphlets, newsletters and broadsides. The Coffee housesparticularly are very commodious for a free Conversation, and for reading at an easie Rate allmanner of printed News, noted one observer. Everything changed in 1833 when the firstmass-audience newspaper, the New York Sun, pioneered the use of advertising to reduce thecost of news, thus giving advertisers access to a wider audience. At the time of the launchAmericas bestselling paper sold just 4,500 copies a day; the Sun, with its steam press, soonreached 15,000. The penny press, followed by radio and television, turned news from a two-way conversation into a one-way broadcast, with a relatively small number of firms controllingthe media.

　　三百年前，资讯以口头或书面形式传播，并且以小册子、简报的形式在小餐馆或咖啡屋中流传。据一名观察员说，咖啡屋是进行自由交谈的不二选择，并且也是休闲阅读的理想场所。但是事情在1883年发生重大转变，第一个面向大众的报纸，纽约太阳报诞生，并且首次引入广告来降低资讯成本，一举两得地为赞助商寻到更多的观众。当纽约报面世时，美国销量最好的杂志每天可以卖4，500份; 但是太阳报却很快达到15，000的销量。报纸以及随后而来的广播、电视将资讯传播方式从两方面的交流变为一方面的由少数公司控制的传播。

　　Now, as our special report explains, the news industry is returning to something closer to thecoffee house. The internet is making news more participatory, social, diverse and partisan,reviving the discursive ethos of the era before mass media. That will have profound effectson society and politics.

　　现在，正如我们的特别报道所言，资讯产业正在向之前咖啡屋相近转变。互联网使资讯变得更易参与，更具有社会性，更容易听到不同的声音，让资讯从大众传媒时代重回百家争鸣的盛况。这对社会及政治将产生重大影响。

　　Going West

　　In much of the world, the mass media areflourishing. Newspaper circulation rose globally by6% between 2005 and 2009, helped by particularlystrong demand in places like India, where 110mpapers are now sold daily. But those global figuresmask a sharp decline in readership in rich countries.

　　在世界大部分地区，大众传媒都在蓬勃发展。世界范围内的报纸销量从2005年到2009年增长了6%，特别是有巨大需求的印度地区，每天就有1亿1千万的销量。但在富裕国家读者人数却大幅下降。

　　Over the past decade, throughout the Western world, people have been giving up newspapersand TV news and keeping up with events in profoundly different ways. Most strikingly, ordinarypeople are increasingly involved in compiling, sharing, filtering, discussing and distributing news.Twitter lets people anywhere report what they are seeing. Classified documents are published intheir thousands online. Mobile-phone footage of Arab uprisings and American tornadoes isposted on social-networking sites and shown on television newscasts. An amateur video takenduring the Japanese earthquake has been watched 15m times on YouTube. Crowdsourcingprojects bring readers and journalists together to sift through troves of documents, from theexpense claims of British politicians to Sarah Palins e-mails. Social-networking sites help peoplefind, discuss and share news with their friends.

　　过去十年整个西方世界中，人们逐渐放弃报纸和电视，而是通过其它的方式与时俱进。更引人著目的是更多的普通民众参与到资讯的收集、分享、筛选和讨论中。推特使人们可以随时随地将他们的所见所闻相互分享。各种各样的文件被无数在线用户上传。手机拍客们拍摄的阿拉伯暴乱以及美国龙卷风的视频和照片在社交网络中广泛传播并且为电视报道所引用。YouTube上一部摄于日本地震期间的相关视频被浏览一千五百万次。众包将读者与记者紧密联系在了一起，共同处理各种资讯文件，从英国政客的消费声明到Sarah Palin的邮件。社交网络为人们与好友之间寻找、讨论和分享资讯提供了平台。

　　And it is not just readers who are challenging the media elite. Technology firms includingGoogle, Facebook and Twitter have become important conduits ofnews. Celebrities and world leaders, including Barack Obama and Hugo Chvez, publish updatesdirectly via social networks; many countries now make raw data available through opengovernment initiatives. The internet lets people read newspapers or watch television channelsfrom around the world: the Guardian, a British newspaper, now has more online readers abroadthan at home. The web has allowed new providers of news, from individual bloggers to sitessuch as the Huffington Post, to rise to prominence in a very short space of time. And it hasmade possible entirely new approaches to journalism, such as that practised by WikiLeaks,which provides an anonymous way for whistleblowers to publish documents. The newsagenda is no longer controlled by a few press barons and state outlets, like the BBC.

　　不仅仅是读者在向传统传媒发起挑战。包括谷歌、脸谱、 Twitter在内的科技公司也逐渐成为资讯传播的重要渠道。包括奥巴马在内的许多名流和政要通过社交网络公布他们的实时动态。互联网打破了人们阅读报纸及收看电视频道的地域限制：the Grardian, 一份英国报纸，现在较其本土读者有更多的网上读者。从博客到类似Huffington Post的网站，互联网使更多人成为资讯的可能提供者，在很短时间内就获得大量关注。互联网也为资讯的发布提供了一种全新的可能，正如维基解密所做的那样，为揭密者提供匿名发布信息的平台。资讯媒体再也不会为少数传媒巨头或部分政府部门所控制，就像BBC。

　　We contort, you deride

　　In principle, every liberal should celebrate this. A more participatory and social newsenvironment, with a remarkable diversity and range of news sources, is a good thing. ATexan who once had to rely on the Houston Chronicle to interpret the world can now collectinformation from myriad different sources. Authoritarian rulers everywhere have more to fear.So what, many will say, if journalists have less stable careers? All the same, two areas ofconcern stand out.

　　原则上来说，每个自由主义人士都应该为此庆祝。一个更具有参与性与社会性的资讯环境，一个更加集思广益、百家争鸣的资讯环境是值得庆祝的。德克萨斯人曾经必须依靠Houston Chronicle来与外界保持联系，但现在却可以通过无数的渠道得到他们想要的消息。专治统治者忧心忡忡。但也有很多人发问，这会不会对记者这个职业产生冲击呢?同样引起关注的还有两点。

　　The first worry is the loss of accountability journalism, which holds the powerful to account.Shrinking revenues have reduced the amount and quality of investigative and local politicalreporting in the print press.

　　首先就是担心负责任的媒体会越来越少，这些媒体会对他们报道的内容负责。经费的减少降低了调查研究和本地政治报道的数量和质量。