【英语科技】报纸灭绝的后果

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that newspapers, at least in their printed form, are dying out. True, almost half of US adults still read a daily newspaper, but that figure is down from more than 80 per cent in 1964. The most obvious impact has been on local competition: a century ago, nearly 700 US cities had more than one daily paper; now, only about a dozen still enjoy the privilege. And this year has already seen the loss of the print editions of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Denver's Rocky Mountain News and the Citizen of Tucson.

All this is despite America's long-standing Newspaper Preservation Act, which in 1970 gave distressed local newspapers an exemption from competition laws, allowing them to form business alliances, fix prices to advertisers and subscribers, and prop each other up. The act is evidently not enough to keep competition alive.

The internet, of course, is both a cause of this trend and, perhaps, the reason it may not matter much. Publishers are more worried about the loss of advertising revenue than readership. Newspapers flourished by bringing together local advertisers and local readers, but in an internet age, that no longer looks like such a difficult trick.

But while the internet is chipping away at print's foundations, it also provides an amazing range of alternative sources of information. Journalists and the nostalgic may wring their hands, but should anyone else care? There has never been a wider range of opinion and analysis, available to anyone with an internet connection.

Yet new research by two Princeton-based economists, Sam Schulhofer-Wohl and Miguel Garrido, suggests that we should all be nervous about the trend. They studied what happened when The Cincinnati Post closed at the end of 2007. The answer: local politics suffered. In the suburbs of Cincinnati where the Post had the strongest presence, fewer candidates ran for municipal office in the election after the paper folded, voter turnout fell, and incumbents grew more likely to win re-election.

This may not surprise economists. Matthew Gentzkow of the University of Chicago concluded in 2006 that, in crowding out radio and newspapers, television was a substantial contributor to falls in voter turnout and in the typical person's political knowledge, as measured by questionnaire. (Gentzkow's statistical method relies on the fact that television was introduced to different regions at different times.) A study from 2000, co-authored by the Princeton academic Alícia Adserà, found that those US states with higher newspaper circulation also had less corruption. The same was true when the authors compared countries, although in each case it is hard to be sure about the direction of causation.

There is no doubt about causation in the case of The Cincinnati Post. The Post's date of closure was all but predestined in 1977, when a 30-year joint venture with the Cincinnati Enquirer was established with an expiry date of December 31 2007. (As an evening newspaper, the Post had been losing readers for decades.) Five years ago, the Enquirer announced that it would not be renewing the joint venture and the Post's fate was sealed. This makes the statistical analysis more persuasive, because it means that the closure date was not determined by some other factor – such as a sudden local recession in Cincinnati – which might also have affected local politics.

It seems that neither blogs nor online news sources serve the same role in Cincinnati's political life as The Cincinnati Post. That may change, but the trouble is that, with some glorious exceptions, blogs seem to be heavy on opinion and analysis, light on reporting. Analysis is valuable, but is it enough?

我们很难回避这样一种结论：报纸——至少是以印刷形式存在的报纸——正在灭绝。诚然，美国仍有约半数成年人阅读日报，但与1964年的逾80%相比，比例已有所下降。地方报业竞争受到的冲击最为明显：一个世纪以前，近700个美国城市拥有一份以上的日报；如今，只有十几个城市依然享有这种特权。今年，《西雅图邮讯报》(Seattle Post-Intelligencer)、丹佛市的《落基山新闻》(Rocky Mountain News)以及《图森公民报》(Citizen of Tucson) 都已停止发行印刷版。

尽管美国的《报纸保护法》(Newspaper Preservation Act)出台已久，但仍无法阻止这一切的发生。1970年，该法案赋予陷入困境的地方报纸以反竞争法豁免权，允许其结成业务联盟，制定针对广告商及订户的价格标准，并互相扶持。该法案显然不足以维持竞争格局。

当然，互联网既促成了这种趋势，也或许可以解释，这种趋势为何可能不那么重要。出版商更担心的是广告收入——而非读者群——的流失。过去，报纸通过把地方广告商与地方读者结合起来实现繁荣，而在互联网时代，这看上去已不再是件难事。

尽管互联网正在侵蚀印刷业的根基，但它也提供了一系列令人眼花缭乱的替代信息来源。这可能会令记者和怀旧人士坐立不安，但其他人有必要介意吗？只要能接入互联网，任何人都能获得空前广泛的观点与分析。

然而，来自普林斯顿(Princeton)的两名经济学家——萨姆•舒霍佛-沃尔(Sam Schulhofer-Wohl)和迈古尔•格里多(Miguel Garrido)的最新研究表明，我们所有人都应对这种趋势感到不安。他们针对2007年底关闭《辛辛那提邮报》(The Cincinnati Post)所导致的后果进行了研究。结论是：地方政治因此受到影响。《辛辛那提邮报》关闭后，在其过去发行量最大的辛辛那提郊区，竞选市政公职的人数减少，选民人数下降，在任者也更有可能再次当选。

经济学家或许不会对此感到意外。2006年，芝加哥大学(University of Chicago)的马修•根茨科(Matthew Gentzkow)就得出结论：正如调查问卷所显示的那样，在广播与报纸受到排挤的过程中，电视是造成选民人数下降、人们的政治知识减少的重要原因。（根茨科的统计方法基于电视在不同时期引入不同地区的事实。）2000年的一项研究发现，在美国，报纸发行量较高的州，腐败程度也较轻。作者在对不同国家进行比较时，得出了同样的结论，但在每一个案例中，很难确定谁是因谁是果。该研究的联席作者是普林斯顿学者厄利舍尔•艾德泽勒(Alícia Adserà)。

在《辛辛那提邮报》的案例中，两者之间的因果关系则是毋庸置疑的。《辛辛那提邮报》的关闭日期早在1977年就确定了，当时《辛辛那提邮报》与《辛辛那提问询报》(Cincinnati Enquirer)组建合资企业，期限30年，合作期满日期为2007年12月31日。（几十年来，作为一份晚报，《辛辛那提邮报》的读者数量一直在下滑。）5年前，《辛辛那提问询报》宣布将不再继续合营，《辛辛那提邮报》的命运就此尘埃落定。这增强了统计分析的说服力，因为这意味着，报纸关闭日期不是由可能会影响地方政治的其它因素——比如辛辛那提市的经济突然陷入衰退——决定的。

无论是博客，还是在线新闻来源，似乎都无法取代《辛辛那提邮报》在辛辛那提政治生活中所扮演的角色。这种状况可能会改变，但问题在于，除了某些受人关注的特例，博客似乎都重在观点和分析，而轻于报道。分析固然有价值，但仅有分析就够了吗？

译者/章晴