紐時賞析／矽谷放棄新聞服務 新聞業更加震盪不安

Silicon Valley Ditches News, Shaking an Unstable Industry

矽谷放棄新聞服務 新聞業更加震盪不安

Campbell Brown, Facebook’s top news executive, said last month that she was leaving the company. Twitter, now known as X, removed headlines from the platform days later. The head of Instagram’s Threads app, an X competitor, reiterated that his social network would not amplify news.

臉書最高新聞主管坎貝兒．布朗上月表示，她會離開公司。推特，也就是現在大家所知的X，在數天後從平台移除頭條新聞。X的競爭對手、Instagram的應用程式Thread負責人重申，他的社群網路不會增強新聞能見度。

Even Google — the strongest partner to news organizations over the past 10 years — has become less dependable, making publishers more wary of their reliance on the search giant. The company has laid off news employees in two recent team reorganizations, and some publishers say traffic from Google has tapered off.

甚至谷歌這個過去10年新聞組織的最強夥伴，也變得較不可靠，導致出版商對於仰賴這個搜尋引擎巨頭態度更謹慎。該公司在近期兩次團隊組織改造解雇新聞員工，有些出版商表示源自谷歌的新聞流量已逐漸變少。

If it wasn’t clear before, it’s clear now: The major online platforms are breaking up with news.

如果說之前事態尚不清楚，那麼現在清楚了：主要線上平台正和新聞分手。

Some executives of the largest tech companies, like Adam Mosseri at Instagram, have said in no uncertain terms that hosting news on their sites can often be more trouble than it is worth because it generates polarized debates. Others, like Elon Musk, the owner of X, have expressed disdain for the mainstream press. Publishers seem resigned to the idea that traffic from the big tech companies will not return to what it once was.

有些大型科技公司主管，像是Instagram的莫瑟里，就曾明確地說，在他們的網站上提供新聞支援，通常帶來的麻煩可能比其價值多，因為這會產生兩極化辯論。其他人，像是X的所有人馬斯克，則表達對主流媒體的蔑視。出版商似乎已接受來自大型科技公司的流量不會恢復到以往的看法。

Even in the long-fractious relationship between publishers and tech platforms, the latest rift stands out — and the consequences for the news industry are stark.

即使出版商和科技平台本就長期關係緊張，新的分歧也很明顯，且對新聞業的影響顯而易見。

Many news companies have struggled to survive after the tech companies threw the industry’s business model into upheaval more than a decade ago. One lifeline was the traffic — and, by extension, advertising — that came from sites like Facebook and Twitter.

超過10年前，科技公司讓新聞產業商業模式陷入巨變，許多新聞公司就已奮力求存。其中一個命脈就是源自臉書和推特等網站的流量，進而延伸到廣告。

Now that traffic is disappearing. Top news sites got about 11.5% of their web traffic in the United States from social networks in September 2020, according to Similarweb, a data and analytics company. By September this year, it was down to 6.5%.

現在流量正在消逝。數據和分析公司Similarweb指出，美國頂尖新聞網站2020年9月網頁流量約11.5%來自社群網路，到今年9月降至6.5%。

“The disruption to an already difficult business model is real,” Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of The Atlantic, said in an interview. LaFrance noted that while social traffic had always gone through boom and bust times, the slide in the past 12 to 18 months had been more severe than most publishers expected.

「大西洋月刊」總編輯艾德麗安．拉法蘭斯在一次訪談中表示，「對這項本已困難商業模式的破壞，是真實存在的」。拉法蘭斯指出，儘管來自社群網路的流量總會歷經起伏，但過去12至18個月下滑狀況比大多數出版商預期的還嚴重。

“This is a post-social web,” she added.

她補充說：「這是一個後社群網路。」

It didn’t start out this way. During the rise of the consumer internet roughly 20 years ago, companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter embraced journalism, and articles from traditional media companies appeared on their platforms.

一開始並不是這樣。約20年前消費網際網路崛起時，谷歌、臉書和推特等公司擁抱新聞業，傳統媒體公司的文章出現在他們的平台上。

文／Mike Isaac, Katie Robertson, Nico Grant　譯／羅方妤

說文解字看新聞

【羅方妤】

此一時也，彼一時也。各國新聞媒體仍在抱怨社群平台搭便車，爭取廣告分潤之際，現傳出各大線上平台陸續結束合作關係，裁撤新聞服務相關員工。Taper當動詞跟片語taper off都是使某物逐漸減少。Traffic在網路指訪客造訪的數量：Traffic to the site had increased threefold. 在本文指新聞流量和點閱數。

Executive當名詞時通常指企業高階主管，executive editor在新聞部指的是總編輯，managing editor是執行副總編輯。

片語break up with somebody通常是指婚姻和情侶關係分手，這裡指的是主要線上平台和新聞結束合作關係。

Host當動詞有主持、主辦活動的意思，在本文指社群平台在網站上提供和維持新聞服務：a company that builds and hosts e-commerce sites. Fractious指為了雞毛蒜皮小事就暴怒，此處形容出版商與社交媒體間關係緊張，一觸即發；請注意勿跟factious弄混。