马云如何办好《南华早报》

Jack Ma of Alibaba, the $200bn Chinese ecommerce giant, is making an awful mess of the purchase of the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s English-language daily. He should take a lesson from his business rival, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post.

市值达2000亿美元的中国电商巨擘阿里巴巴(Alibaba)的马云在收购香港英文报纸《南华早报》(South China Morning Post)的问题上搞得一团糟。他应该汲取其商业竞争对手杰夫贝索斯(Jeff Bezos)的教训。贝索斯是亚马逊(Amazon)的创始人，《华盛顿邮报》(Washington Post)的东家。

“Trust us. Why do people have to think that if we have it, it will lose its independence?” Mr Ma asked indignantly on Tuesday at the World Internet Conference in the southern city of Wuzhen — an event demonstrating that “China has been on an upward internet spiral for 21 years, with Tencent and Alibaba becoming the beating heart,” according to news agency Xinhua.

在江南城镇乌镇召开的世界互联网大会(World Internet Conference)上，马云恼怒地问道：“相信我们。为什么人们会认为我们会让报纸失去编辑自由呢？”新华社称，这个大会表明，21年来中国互联网一直在螺旋式上升，腾讯(Tencent)和阿里巴巴成为跳动的心脏。

The answer to Mr Ma’s question is an interview given by Joseph Tsai, Alibaba’s executive vice-chairman, to the paper Alibaba bought this week for $266m. Mr Tsai complained: “There is too much of a focus on what is wrong with Alibaba...I’m not saying SCMP should step up coverage of Alibaba, but it should be more curious.”

阿里巴巴集团执行副主席蔡崇信(Joseph Tsai)前一阵子接受了该集团斥资2.66亿美元收购的《南华早报》的采访，其间他在不经意间提供了对马云所提问题的答案。蔡崇信抱怨称：“对阿里不好的地方的关注太多了……我不是说《南华早报》应该增加对阿里的报导，但它应该更好奇。”

Mr Tsai promised that Alibaba will not tell journalists what to report but he dropped hints about how to behave if they wish to stay employed. Western news organisations report on China “through a very particular lens” of hostility to communism, he said. “We see things differently, we believe things should be presented as they are.”

蔡崇信承诺，阿里巴巴将不会指示记者报道什么，但他暗示，如果他们希望保留工作，就得明白如何表现。他说，西方主流媒体是从对共产主义的敌意这个“非常特定的角度”报道中国的，而“我们的看法不一样，我们相信实事求是。摆事实，讲道理，这是我们将来运作的原则”。

The trap into which Mr Ma has fallen is believing that news organisations should write what companies or governments regard as “responsible”. Most companies think journalists are too negative about them, and sometimes they are even correct, but trying to fight it is a misguided cause. If Mr Ma pursues it, he will discredit the paper by turning it into tame, predictable propaganda.

马云落入的陷阱是，他认为资讯机构应该撰写被企业或者政府视为“负责任的”稿件。多数企业认为记者对它们的报道过于负面，有时企业方面甚至是对的，但试图为此大动干戈就是受到了误导。如果马云寻求这么做，他将让《南华早报》丧失信誉，沦为一家驯服的、陈词滥调的宣传机构。

Mr Ma could yet play a vital role in restoring the SCMP, which has seen better days. Its tradition of independence and willingness to take on powerful interests remains as valuable in China as elsewhere. Other industry traditions, such as inefficiency, resistance to digital technology and preference for comfortable decline over disruptive change, do not.

马云仍可能在恢复《南华早报》昔日荣光方面扮演关键角色。它的独立传统和叫板强大利益集团的意愿，在中国和其他地方依然可贵。其他行业“传统”则不那么可取，比如效率低下，抵制数字技术，以及宁愿缓缓衰落也不愿颠覆式变革。

Mr Ma is the latest of the technology press barons, which include figures such as Mr Bezos and Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook who acquired the New Republic magazine in 2017. They have the wealth, and hopefully the patience, to acquire titles facing digital competition and to help them adapt.

马云成为最新一位科技巨头背景的报业大亨，加入贝索斯和克里斯休斯(Chris Hughes)等人的行列。休斯是Facebook的联合创始人，于2017年收购《新共和》杂志(New Republic)。他们有钱（但愿也有耐心）收购面临数字竞争的纸质媒体，帮助这些媒体适应。

Many Washington Post journalists revered the Graham family, the paper’s former proprietors, but Mr Bezos has performed a remarkable service for the Post since he acquired it (with his own money, not Amazon’s) for $250m in 2013. Indeed, he has done a notably better job than Don Graham, the family scion who sold it to him.

《华盛顿邮报》的许多记者对前东家格雷厄姆家族抱有敬意，但贝索斯自2013年以2.5亿美元收购该报以来（用其自己、而非亚马逊的资金）提供了卓越的服务。的确，贝索斯干得要比该报的卖家唐格雷厄姆(Don Graham)好得多。

The Grahams, although they were beloved stewards, curtailed the Post to a metropolitan daily with a strong circulation in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia and a limited presence outside. That was highly profitable as long as there was an abundance of print advertising but it left the Post more isolated than The New York Times in the face of digital competition.

格雷厄姆家族虽然是受人喜爱的管家，但他们让《华盛顿邮报》降格为一家在哥伦比亚特区、马里兰州和弗吉尼亚州发行量较大、在其他地区发行量有限的的都市日报。只要有大量的纸媒广告，那种模式就会非常赚钱，但它让该报在面临数字化竞争时比《纽约时报》(New York Times)更加孤立。

Amazon has itself been subjected to plenty of tough, searching and critical coverage by news organisations — more hostile than the routine stuff Alibaba complains about — but as a proprietor Mr Bezos has wisely ignored that. The Post’s journalists have kept writing the same things as before.

亚马逊本身也被资讯机构穷追猛打地发表了大量的批评报道——比阿里巴巴抱怨的不温不火的内容更有敌意——但作为东家，贝索斯明智地没有把它当回事。《华盛顿邮报》的记者们和过去一样自由报道。

Instead of moaning about bias, he has concentrated on efficiency and growth: two areas in which he has far more expertise than traditional news publishers mired in print. The Post appeared doomed to fade like other city dailies — outmatched in Washington by Politico, which was founded in 2007 by former Post journalists — but it now shows signs of recovery.

他没有抱怨偏见，而是聚焦于效率和增长：他在这两个领域要比传统纸媒出版机构拿手得多。《华盛顿邮报》曾经看起来要注定像其他城市日报一样衰落——在华盛顿已被该报前记者2007年创办的Politico超越——但现在它显示出复苏的迹象。

Mr Bezos has offered free digital access to subscribers to other US papers and discounted subscriptions to Amazon Prime members. The website, once a mess, is better looking and faster. It publishes more articles, some of them aggregated from other sources. Its digital reach is climbing and it has just overtaken the NYT in unique monthly visitors, with BuzzFeed in its sights.

贝索斯允许其他美国报纸的订户登入其网站免费阅读文章，并对Amazon Prime会员提供折扣订阅。该报网站一度杂乱无章，但现在好看得多，速度也快得多。它发表更多文章，其中一些从其他来源转载。它的数字订户正在攀升，在每月独立访客(UMV)一项上已经超过《纽约时报》(NYT)，正在追赶BuzzFeed。

One can argue with aspects of this and old hands do, observing that it carries gossipy articles to boost traffic. But, together with the bulk of its old authority, the Post at least has a pulse. Taking the best of its past and turning it into a national, perhaps global, publication is bound to be a long experiment.

人们可以从某些方面说三道四（老笔杆子会这么做），称该网站刊登八卦文章以提升流量。但是，加上其保留的大部分权威，《华盛顿邮报》至少还有生命力。汲取过去的精华，将它转型为一家全国性乃至全球性的刊物，注定是一项长期实验。

As the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once expressed in prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

正如神学家赖因霍尔德尼布尔(Reinhold Niebuhr)曾经在祷告词中表达的那样：“主啊，赐给我平静去接受我所不能改变的，赐给我勇气去改变我所能改变的，并给我智慧去分辨两者的不同。”

Rather than telling journalists to be nicer to China and Alibaba, Mr Ma should focus on what he is good at. Then the SCMP might have a future.

与其告诉记者们对中国和阿里巴巴更加友好，马云应该致力于他擅长的事情。这样《南华早报》或许还有未来。