The tech/editorial culture clash
科技思維有助於新聞業的發展（上）
　
At this year’s annual meeting of the Online News Association in Denver, many of the 2,000 attendees and delegates crowded into the opening keynote address. In the middle of the most charged US election in living memory, at a time when the relevance and role of the news media were under intense scrutiny, the assembled newsroom operatives were not coming to hear a leading editor or garlanded correspondent give insights on the upcoming election or the state of the world. Instead, they listened intently to Fidji Simo, Facebook’s director of product, talk about how the future is all about giving users more of what they want.
 
　　在美國丹佛舉辦的網路新聞協會（Online News Association，ONA）年會上，現場2000名與會者和代表大多是衝著這次的開幕演講而來。在充滿高張力的美國總統大選期間，也是新聞媒體受到嚴格管控的時期，齊聚一堂的新聞工作者，並不是來聽某位總編輯或記者，對即將到來的選舉或國際情勢發表高見。相反的，臉書產品總監Fidji Simo有關未來如何滿足用戶更多需求的演講，更令他們感到興趣。
　
The intertwining of interests between enormously powerful technology companies and every news organization on the planet has troubled both sides. Mark Zuckerberg has firmly stated he does not see Facebook as a media company, but as a technology company. Journalists at the Online News Association, known as ONA, were skeptical about the influence of technology companies, though aware of the interdependence. “To tell the truth, they are keeping us alive at the moment,” said the founder of a small news startup. “If it wasn’t for advertising from Facebook pages, we might not be here.”
　
　　這些科技公司和地球上的每一個新聞機構之間的利益交織，也同時困擾著雙方。Mark Zuckerberg曾堅決地表示，他不認為臉書是一家媒體公司，而是一家科技公司。網路新聞協會的記者則對科技公司的影響持懷疑態度，儘管了解到這是個相互依存情況。「老實說，他們讓我們得以生存，此時此刻」，一個小型新聞組織的創辦人說。「若不是臉書的網頁廣告，我們可能不會聚在這裡」。
　
Another technologist working with international newsrooms was far more dogmatic in questioning the motives and values of the Silicon Valley interlopers: “They are not your friends. They are interested only in growth and money, and once news is dependent on them, they will turn off the traffic tap and start charging.”
　
　　另一位常與國際型新聞機構合作的技術人員，則對這群來自矽谷的攪局者不敢苟同：「他們不是你的朋友，他們只對未來發展和金錢感興趣，一旦新聞業依賴他們，他們將關閉流量的大門，並開始索取費用」。
　
The mutual unease in this new pact is symptomatic of a deeper, systemic dysfunction in the relationship between journalism and production technologies. The cultures of journalism and software development are ostensibly working toward the same goal—organizing information, informing the public, generating money from advertising—but in most respects, they are very different. In 1959, the British public intellectual C. P. Snow famously identified what he called the “two cultures” into which society was divided: “literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other, scientists,” he wrote. “Between the two a gulf of incomprehension—sometimes…hostility and dislike, but most of all a lack of understanding.”
　
　　這一新協議所造成的不安，突顯的是新聞業和生產科技之間，存在著更深層的系統性問題。新聞業和軟體開發者的組織文化，表面上雖有共同的目標，像是整合資訊、通知公眾和透過廣告賺錢，但在其他方面，他們是非常不同的。在1959年，英國公共知識分子C.P. Snow曾提出所謂的「兩種文化」(two cultures)觀點，說明了社會被分為兩個極端：「文學知識分子在一個極端，而科學家則在另一個極端」，他寫道。「在兩者之間有一個難以理解的分歧，有時敵對和不喜歡，但最重要的是缺乏理解」。
　
The concepts and dissonance Snow described will be familiar to anyone who has worked to assimilate legacy media companies into the digital environment. While many fields have been disrupted by automation and computation, few have converged as abruptly and as publicly as software engineering and journalism. The news media is witnessing its business models and production processes being remade by Web publishers and search engines. Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon have replaced media companies as the most important information delivery mechanisms within the space of a decade. Every major news event in the world, from bombs raining down on Aleppo to the late night tweeting of presidential candidates, is broken through social media and seen through our luminous mobile phone screens. Facebook’s value is now over $360 billion, twice as much as that of The Walt Disney Co., its nearest traditional media rival.
　
　　Snow所提到的不和諧概念，對於曾經試圖將傳統媒體和現今數位生態連結的人來說並不陌生；雖然在許多層面已經被自動化的計算干擾，但也有少部份就自然地融合在一起，像是軟體工程和新聞業的合作。新聞媒體正見證的，是其商業模式和生產過程被網頁出版商和搜尋引擎重塑的過程，谷歌、蘋果、臉書和亞馬遜在過去10年已經取代了媒體公司作為重要的資訊傳遞機構。 世界上每一個重大新聞事件，無論敘利亞的炸彈襲擊事件，還是總統候選人深夜所發的推特訊息，都透過社交媒體傳送到我們的手機上。臉書的市值超過3600億美元，足足是與它市場規模相近的迪士尼（The Walt Disney）的兩倍。
 
The wealth and influence generated by Silicon Valley has devalued media owners’ and news executives’ political capital, and increasingly replaced them completely. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million in 2013, when its former owner, Don Graham, acknowledged that his family no longer had the resources to keep the Post relevant in the digital era. With Bezos’s investment and under the editorship of Martin Baron, the Post is a resurgent and innovative force. Pierre Omidyar, who made a fortune as the founder of eBay, has invested in both a local news initiative in his home state of Hawaii, and in First Look Media, which owns The Intercept and invests in documentaries and films with a journalistic focus, including the Academy Award-winning Spotlight. (Omidyar’s Democracy Fund also supports CJR’s local news coverage.) Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes had a brief and less happy association with media when he bought the New Republic, triggering mass staff resignations and selling the title to publisher Win McCormack after only four years.
　
　　矽谷所生產的財富和影響力，使得媒體所有者和新聞高階主管的政治資本貶值，並有取而代之的趨勢。亞馬遜的創辦人Bezos在2013年以2.5億美元收購了華盛頓郵報，因為華郵的前任經營者Don Graham和其家族已經沒有足夠資源來保持華郵在數位時代的競爭力。有了Bezos的投資，和Martin Baron在編輯工作上的協助，華郵代表一個復甦和創新的力量。因創立eBay而致富的Pierre Omidyar，投資了他家鄉夏威夷的一個地方新聞節目，以及建立擁有網路媒體「攔截」（The Intercept）的First Look Media，也資助了一些新聞專業的紀錄片和電影，像是奪得奧斯卡獎的電影驚爆焦點（Spotlight）。臉書的共同創辦人Chris Hughes在買下美國百年老牌雜誌「新共和」（The New Republic）時，也有過一段短暫又不愉快的經驗，曾造成該媒體大量的離職潮，4年不到就轉售給媒體人Win McCormack。
　
The difference between the Silicon Valley and East Coast publishing mindsets was most dramatically illustrated during the Gawker lawsuit, whereby the media news and gossip website founded by British journalist Nick Denton was bankrupted in a privacy suit brought by wrestler Hulk Hogan and covertly funded by Silicon Valley investor and billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel’s single-minded pursuit of Gawker was sparked by a 2007 story outing Thiel as gay. Thiel, often a supporter of free speech and the Committee to Protect Journalists, saw no inconsistency in successfully closing down Gawker. “I refuse to believe that journalism means massive privacy violations….I think much more highly of journalists than that,” Thiel told The New York Times. “It’s precisely because I respect journalists that I do not believe they are endangered by fighting back against Gawker.”
　
　　美國矽谷和東岸出版思維最大的區別，可從八卦網站Gawker的訴訟官司中得到答案。這個由英國記者Nick Denton創立的八卦新聞網站，因為和摔跤明星Hulk Hogan隱私訴訟官司而破產，而矽谷億萬富翁Thiel在其中扮演重要角色。Thiel一心針對Gawker而來，是因為2007年Gawker的一篇報導揭露了Thiel的同性戀傾向；Thiel捍衛言論自由，同時也是保護記者委員會（Committee to Protect Journalists）的支持者，但卻毫不猶豫的讓Gawker倒閉。「我不相信新聞業就應該和大規模的侵犯隱私畫上等號，我認為記者遠比這更加重要」Thiel告訴紐約時報，「正因為我尊重記者，所以我認為他們不該因這件事而受到傷害」。
　
Thiel could not see what made many journalists uneasy: that the operation of a free press is not a case of picking the people whose journalism you approve of, and closing those you don’t. In the world of billionaire technologists, the prize lies in creating the most efficient and logical systems possible, cutting the “best” path for users or customers. Anything that stops the progression to seamless scale must be eliminated or “debugged.” In engineering, there is always a right answer, whereas in journalism, there are only more questions.
　
　　Thiel看不出是什麼原因讓許多記者不安：新聞自由的運作並不是挑選你認可的新聞報導，並將那些你不認可的新聞拒於門外。在億萬富翁和科技人的世界裡，目的在於盡可能創造最有效的邏輯系統，為用戶或客戶提出「最佳」的路徑，任何阻礙這項過程的困素都必須被排除或「除錯」。在工程領域中，總是有一個正確的答案，而在新聞業，這樣的做法只會有更多的問題。
　
Shortly after Omidyar established First Look Media, he held a series of meetings with journalists, academics, and technologists to think about what a new model news organization ought to look like. During one session in the basement of his Laguna Beach resort hotel, the exchanges became heated around how and where the technologists ought to work. Surely in the heart of the newsroom, a number of us argued, as the ideal would be a journalistic process rethought and designed to benefit from a deep knowledge of the technology behind it. “But engineers and journalists are so different, surely that is not going to work?” came the response.
　
　　在Omidyar成立First Look Media不久後，他舉行了一系列與記者、學術界和科技人的會談，希望了解未來新聞機構的經營模式。在Omidyar位於拉古納海灘度假酒店地下室的一次會議中，「科技人的未來該何去何從」此議題讓現場交流頓時變得熱絡起來；當然，身為新聞編輯室的核心，在現場的我們以及一些出席者，將新聞過程重新思考，並輔以一個受益於科技知識的架構是最理想的辦法，只是仍有人回應「工程師和記者是如此不同，這方法肯定是行不通的」。
　
There are many different kinds of technologists and many different kinds of journalists, and a large number of them intersect. The best data journalists are often gifted technologists, and the most creative developers can make far more progress in building future applications for news than someone whose main skills are writing or making videos. In most newsrooms, what was once a hostility by journalists toward “the techies” has become an admiration and understanding that journalists with the right technical skills hold the keys to the survival and health of the field. Diversity in thinking about how to tackle stories or harder problems in the organization of our reporting and information has undoubtedly made journalism better.
　
　　許多不同類別的科技人才和記者，他們往往也能彼此合作。最好的資料記者通常也是優秀的科技人才；具有創意的開發人員，則比專職寫作或製作影像的人才，更能在構建未來的新聞應用方面做出貢獻。在大多數的新聞編輯部，記者曾經對「技術人員」的抱有敵意，現在則多了分欽佩和理解，因為具有正確科技技能的記者，才是現今新聞領域生存的關鍵。目前對新聞報導和資訊的要求下，多樣性的思考有助於追蹤線索和處理棘手的問題，這無疑會使新聞業變得更好。
　
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作者：Emily Bell
編譯：朱弘川
原文網址： http://www.cjr.org/analysis/tech_editorial_facebook.php