紐時賞析／多數停刊、「時代」雜誌蹣跚前行 加速凋零中的雜誌產業

The Magazine Business, From the Coolest Place to the Coldest One

加速凋零中的雜誌產業

I miss magazines. It’s a strange ache, because they are still sort of with us: staring out from the racks at supermarket checkout lines; fanned wanly around the table in hotel lobbies; showing up in your mailbox long after the subscription was canceled, like an ex who refuses to accept the breakup.

我懷念雜誌，這是一種奇怪的痛，因為它們在某種程度上仍與我們同在。超市排隊結帳時，它們從架上盯著我們；在飯店大廳桌子周圍憔悴晃動；取消訂閱很久後還會出現在信箱，像是拒絕接受分手的舊愛。

But they’re also disappearing. This accelerating erosion has not been big news during a time of pandemic, war and actual erosion, and yet the absence of magazines authoritatively documenting such events, or distracting from them, as they used to do with measured regularity, is keenly felt.

但它們也在消失。在疫情、戰爭與雜誌真的衰微的時期，這種加速衰微並不是什麼大新聞，但人們敏銳地感覺到，缺乏權威性雜誌來記錄這些事件，或像過去那樣定期的讓注意力從這些事情轉移。

Time marches on, or limps, but Life is gone. There’s no more Money. The print editions of their former sister publications Entertainment Weekly and InStyle, which once frothed with profit, stopped publishing in February. It’s been au revoir to Saveur and Marie Claire; shrouds for Playboy, Paper and O. (As I type this, people are tweeting about The Believer being bought by a sex-toy site.)

「時代」雜誌還在前進，或說蹣跚前行，但「生活」雜誌已經逝去。「金錢」雜誌沒了。它們以前的姊妹刊物「娛樂周刊」和「InStyle」印刷版曾獲利豐厚，但已在2月停止出版。大家向「Saveur」和「美麗佳人」告別，也讓「花花公子」、「紙」與O雜誌穿上壽衣。（就在我撰寫此文時，人們在推特上說「The Believer」被一個情趣用品網站收購了。)

Two recent books — “Dilettante,” by Dana Brown, a longtime editor at Vanity Fair, and a new biography of Anna Wintour, by Amy Odell, formerly of cosmopolitan.com — are graveyards of dead or zombie titles that were once glowing hives of human whim.

最近出版的兩本書，「浮華世界」資深編輯達納．布朗的「Dilettante」及柯夢波丹前成員艾咪．歐德爾的安娜溫圖新傳記，有如亡者的墓地，或曾是人類奇想的光輝巢穴冠上了殭屍名號。

“There were so many magazines in 1994,” Brown writes. “So many new magazines, and so many great magazines. All the young talent of the moment was eschewing other industries and flocking to the business. It was the coolest place to be.”

布朗寫道：「1994年有很多雜誌。很多新雜誌，很多很棒的雜誌。當時所有年輕人才避開了其他行業，湧向這個行業。那是最酷的。」

Then suddenly the coldest. On the big fancy cruise ship that Brown had just boarded — Vanity Fair, where he’d been beckoned by Graydon Carter while a barback at the restaurant 44 — he and so many others then could only see the tip of an enormous iceberg they were about to hit: the internet. Smartphones, little self-edited monster magazines that will not rest until their owners die, were on the horizon. These may have looked like life rafts, but they were torpedo boats.

然後突然變成最冰冷的地方。布朗在44號餐廳吧檯用餐時，被總編輯卡特招攬，剛登上有如大型豪華郵輪的「浮華世界」，但他跟其他許多人只能看到他們即將撞上的巨大冰山一角：網路。智慧手機這種自我編輯、直到擁有者死去才會停止的小怪物雜誌也即將來臨。這些東西可能看起來像是救生艇，但它們其實是魚雷艦。

Every year, the American Society of Magazine Editors issues a handsome award, a brutalist-looking elephant called the Ellie, modeled after an Alexander Calder elephant sculpture. Any writer would be proud to have it on the mantelpiece.

每年，美國雜誌編輯協會都會頒發一項大獎，這是一頭野獸派風格、名叫「艾利」的大象獎座，模仿考爾德大象雕塑設計而成。作家都以把它放在壁爐上為榮。

The history of modern American literature is braided together with its magazines. The future can feel like a lot of loose threads, waving in the wind.

現代美國文學史與它的雜誌彼此交織在一起。未來就像是許多鬆散的線，在風中飄揚。

文／Alexandra Jacobs 譯／陳韋廷