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【中文标题】新闻周刊新的一章
【原文标题】A New Chapter
【登载媒体】新闻周刊
【原文作者】Tina Brown
【原文链接】http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/12/23/a-new-chapter.html
有时候，改变并不一定意味着更好，只是别无选择。你手上这一期是《新闻周刊》最后一期印刷版。从1月份的第一个星期开始，它将只会出现在你的iPad、Kindle电纸书或者手机上。到2月底，你将会看到全新版本的电子《新闻周刊全球版》，目前还在开发过程中。
在经历了混乱不堪的两年之后，我们最终决定，放弃印刷版本，直接飞跃到数字化的未来。2010年，92岁的音响大亨西德尼•哈曼从《华盛顿邮报》手中以象征性的一美元价格收购了濒临死亡的《新闻周刊》，以试图挽救这个传奇性的杂志。很快，这个罹患不治之症又雄心勃勃的老人又寻求与《每日野兽》合并，那是我和巴里•迪勒的IAC公司在2008年创建的新闻刊物。简直是一片混乱。
刚开始的几天颇让人沮丧。交易刚结束的时候，《新闻周刊》的大部分知名作者和记者纷纷离开。我们没有执行主编、没有新闻编辑、没有总编、没有特写编辑编辑、没有华盛顿分社，连非重要消息报道小组也没有。广告客户成群结队地离开。《时代周刊》曾经有自己的办公大楼，令人骄傲的标志悬挂在踌躇满志的竞争对手《时代生活》大厦的视平线上。但是现在却蜗居在华尔街附近乱七八糟的一间办公室里，就像东柏林国家安全部的遗迹。《新闻周刊》员工们还没有做好决定是否要接受这样的收购，他们在灰白色的办公隔断后面，用警惕的眼神观看聚集在办公室另一边、活跃的《每日野兽》团队。就像足球比赛的两支队伍。
然而，办公室阴郁的情绪很快被一些在我职业生涯中最重要的新闻所取代：颠覆性的阿拉伯春天、难以置信的日本海啸、颇具故事性的杀死本•拉登，以及处死卡扎菲。没有比突袭考试更好的方法来检验一个新闻团队的健康状况了。令人欣慰的是，我们饱受打击的“新闻野兽”作者和编辑团队、那些甚至都不知道对方姓名的同事们，很快形成了一个忍者新闻部队，为《新闻周刊》创作出和《每日野兽》一样好的报道。
《新闻周刊》巴黎分社主编、中东问题专家克里斯•迪基在2011年初独自一人承担起阿拉伯春天报道的全部工作。1月份，他与其他人合作，创作出突尼斯总统和他的家人如何运作一个黑手党国家的报道。三个星期之后，在他有关侯赛因•穆巴拉克倒台的权威报道中，他寻获到重要的消息，在导致穆巴拉克政府灭亡的革命发生之前，他就已经因孙子的去世而变成行尸走肉了。迈克•吉里奥是一名年轻的记者，原本的工作职责是为《新闻周刊》申请不大可能获得批准的launchpad许可证。他想尽办法，为《每日野兽》和《新闻周刊》挖掘出不少有关埃及活动人士威尔•戈宁的消息。2011年5月，奥萨马的死亡让新闻野兽们开始了一次马拉松历程，新组建的团队在常规期刊之外，仅用了一天半的时间，就制作出一份引人入胜的奥萨马增刊。
萨米•尤萨福塞是负责阿富汗和巴基斯坦的老牌通讯员，他连夜驾车赶往阿伯塔巴德，上传本•拉登居住区的第一手图片。即使在CIA拉起警戒线，搜索法律证据的时候，他还在向几位受到炮击惊吓的邻居收集资料。在攻击发生后不到24个小时，《每日野兽》的读者就在杂志上亲眼目睹了海豹突击队的作战过程。三天之后，《新闻周刊》发表了记叙本•拉登流亡生活的权威报道。尤萨福塞和伊斯兰堡分社的主编、不知疲倦的罗恩•莫罗与塔利班高层权力机构展开了一系列的面谈，了解到新的权力分配方案。编写这些稿件的同时，我们还在为皇家婚礼制作一期极为成功的光面纸纪念刊。
在这一片混乱当中，《新闻周刊》无与伦比的骑士西德尼•哈曼因白血病并发症突然去世。我们用最好的方式来纪念他——继续办好这个伟大的刊物。我们还把这个已经充分合并的团队搬入CIA公司那个幽灵般的、白色玻璃的弗兰克•盖里大厦。那里位于纽约最繁华的餐饮区，团队前进的步伐并没有停止。
在这些针对恐怖分子的战争中，《新闻周刊》的读者了解的信息最全面，这要感谢丹尼尔•克莱德曼有关奥巴马秘密情报部门的优秀报道。克莱德曼有时会与《每日野兽》的国家安全通讯员艾里•雷克合作，后者曾经详尽报道过导致美国大使克里斯托弗•斯蒂文斯死亡的利比亚班加西恐怖袭击。这又是一个业界的榜样，在纷繁复杂的突发时间中，炮制出优秀的新闻报道。
1933年第一期《新闻周刊》：罗斯福当选、经济大萧条、希特勒。2012年，《新闻周刊》重现60年代《广告狂人》的杂志封面。
《新闻周刊》的另一项成就是神气十足、勇敢无畏地报道了颠覆法国政坛的性丑闻。本•拉登被杀后两个星期，革命的火焰依然在中东地区燃烧，另一个重磅炸弹落在纽约：国际货币基金组织总裁多米尼克•斯特劳斯-卡恩因在曼哈顿酒店性侵犯一名女服务员而被逮捕。我们用传统的执着精神追逐这条新闻，记者团队最终与丑闻女主角纳夫撒托•迪亚罗完成了一次全面的采访，并且制作成封面文章《女佣的故事》。这个来自几内亚女人与有机会成为法国总统——当然是在遇到她之前——的“宇宙之王”（译者注：《暮光之城》的网络同人小说，讲述有关性虐的故事，又名《五十度灰》）斗争的故事，搅翻了媒体界。在迪亚罗的故事发表之前，我们有过激烈的思想斗争，但是后来暴露的肮脏事件内容，以及斯特劳斯最终达成和解，证明我们当初的决定是正确的。
还有很多很多的故事：撼动中国政府的盲人律师陈光诚；轻松摧毁美国富裕城市的飓风桑迪；重新营造美国60年代风情的愉快男人《广告狂人》专刊；介绍军事英雄的《英雄》专刊，其中尤以托尼•多考皮尔撰写的美国空军救伤直升机《一尘不染73》最为刺激；还有总统大选，我们当时在封面上给总统起绰号，安德鲁•苏利文的文章《第一位同性恋总统》是其中最才华横溢的稿件。我们又回到了封面的主题：是的，有人在惹是生非，为什么要否认呢？但是我们的目标，永远是让读者享受到充满激情、具有启发性的文章。《新闻周刊》在久远的历史中被冠以各种形容词，但绝对没有“怯懦”。在过去的两年中，我们从未怯懦，在写下这些话时，我心中充满自信和满足。
这并不是一份传统守旧的杂志，也不是老生常谈的场所。它所奉行的精神是，我们努力迎接最新、最重大的变化，我们所投入的数字化媒介将让所有竞争对手在未来有一天，也会以同样的热情投身其中。我们走在了时间的前面。一份即将迎来80岁生日的杂志，当它在2月份揭开新的面纱时，会再次呈现出勃勃的生机，把我们的读者带领到一个未曾探索过的新领域。然而，有一件事不会改变，这是我们对高层次新闻行业的郑重承诺。如果不这么做，我们就不配称自己为《新闻周刊》。那么，在和印刷版说撒由那拉之时，我们感谢150万忠诚的读者，请你们为我们祝福，并且在明年全电子化的版本中再次加入我们。
原文：
Sometimes, change isn’t just good, it’s necessary.
The issue in your hand is the last edition of Newsweek in print. The next, in the first week of January, will be on your iPad or Kindle or phone. By late February, you will see the full evolution of the spanking-new, all-digital Newsweek Global, currently in development.
It’s been a turbulent two-year journey, culminating in our decision to leave print and take the leap into a digital future. In 2010 the 92-year-old audio tycoon Sidney Harman bought a moribund Newsweek from the Washington Post Co. for a dollar in a quixotic bid to save a legendary magazine. Shortly after, the incurable old romantic asked The Daily Beast, the news site I founded with Barry Diller’s IAC in 2008, for its hand in marriage. And it’s been a blast.
The first days were distinctly unpromising. Most of the boldface bylines and star writers who defined the brand had flown the Newsweek coop by the time the deal was done. There was no executive editor at Newsweek, no news editor, no managing editor, no features editor, no Washington bureau chief, no “back of the book” department still standing. Advertisers had peeled off, too, in droves. Where once Newsweek had been housed in its own building, its proud logo in the eye-line of its swaggering competitor in the Time-Life Building, it was now lurking in an office labyrinth near Wall Street reminiscent of the Stasi headquarters in East Berlin. The watchful eyes of the remaining Newsweek personnel who had or had not decided to “take the buy-out” peered from behind pale gray cubicle walls at the jaunty Daily Beast crew, crowded together down the other end. They were separate tribes, segregated as if at a soccer match.
This morose office comedy, however, was soon overpowered by one of the most amazing news cycles in my professional memory: the tectonic Arab Spring, the mind-boggling tsunami in Japan, the operatic killing of bin Laden, and the lynching of Gaddafi. There is no better way to judge the health of a news organization than by how it rises to unscripted examination. And what was gratifying was how our buffeted band of “NewsBeast” writers and editors, women and men who scarcely knew each other, swiftly became a ninja news army, packing as much heat for Newsweek as they did for The Daily Beast.
Newsweek’s Paris bureau chief and Middle East editor Chris Dickey spent the early part of 2011 as a one-man Arab Spring bureau. In January he co-wrote the gripping story of how the Tunisian president and his family had run a mafia state; three weeks later, in his authoritative account of Hosni Mubarak’s fall, he traced how the death of a grandson had knocked the stuffing out of the despot even before the revolution called for his demise. Mike Giglio, a young reporter recruited from the unlikely launchpad of the Newsweek licensing department, wrangled a series of scoops for the Beast and the magazine on the Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim. The end of Osama in May 2011 triggered a NewsBeast marathon. The newly combined staffs crashed out, in addition to a regular issue, a riveting Osama special in a day and a half.
Sami Yousafzai, Newsweek’s veteran correspondent covering Afghanistan and Pakistan, drove all night to Abbottabad to upload some of the first pictures of the bin Laden compound and extract information from the shell-shocked neighbors, even as CIA teams cordoned off the area to search for forensic evidence. Less than 24 hours after the attack, Daily Beast readers were treated to eyewitness accounts of the Navy SEAL operation. Three days later, Newsweek published the definitive account of bin Laden’s life on the lam. For the Beast, Yousafzai, along with our Islamabad bureau chief, the indefatigable Ron Moreau, went on to get a string of exclusive interviews with the Taliban high command on the new balance of radical power. This feat was pulled off while we were producing, at the very same time, a highly successful glossy souvenir issue on the royal wedding.
In the middle of all this mayhem, Sidney Harman, Newsweek’s peerless knight, suddenly died from complications of leukemia. We honored him in the way he would have appreciated best, by continuing to produce a great magazine. We also moved the now fully merged teams into IAC’s spectral, white-glassed Frank Gehry building in New York’s meatpacking district, where the pace continued unabated.
Newsweek readers have been among the best informed on the fallout from the terror wars, thanks to the superb reporting of Daniel Klaidman on Obama’s use of covert intelligence. Klaidman sometimes teams with Daily Beast national-security correspondent Eli Lake, whose deft untangling of the Benghazi raid in Libya that ended with the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens provides another example of our staff bringing its excellence to bear on a vertiginous, fast-moving story.
The first issue, from 1933: FDR’s election, the Depression, and Hitler; and in 2012 Newsweek re-created the sleek style of an issue from the Mad Men days of the 1960s.
Another Newsweek triumph was the panache and unsqueamishness with which we covered the sex scandal that would redraw the political landscape in France. Two weeks after bin Laden’s assassination, with revolutions still upending the Middle East, a bombshell of a different kind hit New York: the arrest of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on charges of sexually assaulting a maid at a Manhattan hotel. Pursuing the story with old-fashioned journalistic doggedness, our team of writers eventually landed the exclusive interview with Nafissatou Diallo, the woman at the heart of the scandal, and the resulting cover story, “The Maid’s Tale,” captured the saga of a hapless woman from Guinea, caught in the vortex of a media storm, battling a Master of the Universe who had, until he encountered her in his hotel room, expected to become president of France. We took heat at the time for endorsing Diallo’s story, but the subsequent sordid revelations about DSK and his recent settlement of the case prove we were right.
There were other stories and events: the tale of Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer who shook the Chinese state; Hurricane Sandy, which humbled America’s wealthiest city; our debonair Mad Men issue, for which we re-created the America—and the American mood—of the 1960s; our “Heroes” issue, chock-full of stories of military valor, none more so than Tony Dokoupil’s spine-tingling account of U.S. Air Force medevacs DUSTOFF 73; and the election, which returned to power a man whom we had dubbed on a cover, to accompany one of several brilliant essays by Andrew Sullivan, our “First Gay President.” Which brings us to our covers: yes, some kicked up some dust. Why deny it? But our aim, each time, was to engage the reader in ways that were intense and provocative. Newsweek has been many things in its storied history, but timid is not one of them. In the last two years, we were never, ever timid, and I write those words with great personal satisfaction.
This is not a conventional magazine, or a hidebound place. It is in that spirit that we’re making our latest, momentous change, embracing a digital medium that all our competitors will one day need to embrace with the same fervor. We are ahead of the curve. A magazine that will soon turn 80 will now be, when all the changes are unveiled in February, a vigorous young publication all over again, taking its readers to territory that is new and uncharted. One thing, however, will not change, and that is our commitment to journalism of the very highest quality. We would not be Newsweek if it were otherwise. So as we say sayonara to print, we thank our 1.5 million loyal readers, and ask you to wish us luck and join us next year in our all-digital future.
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发表于 2012-12-26 12:48
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发表于 2012-12-26 13:09
