Despite publishers’ disillusionment with low financial returns, there is no sign of them retreating from publishing material directly onto Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and other distribution platforms.
儘管出版商對初期的投資回報不如預期，目前仍沒有跡象顯示出版商會放會放棄臉書、Snapchat、Instagram和其他社交平台。
Anxiety and uncertainty abound around the future of journalism. The initial promises from social media platforms of revenue for publishers are yet to materialize. Even as traffic rises, monetization remains a work in progress. Some publishers and industry watchers have started to question the conventional wisdom pushing the pursuit of scale.
焦慮和不確定性圍繞著新聞業的未來，社交媒體平台對出版商收益的初步承諾也尚未實現。即使流量增加，收益的創造仍是一項持續進行的工作。一些出版商和趨勢評論員也開始質疑這種追求規模化的傳統觀點。
In looking more closely at the relationship between platforms and publishers, it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that platforms are the dominant partner. Mark Zuckerberg’s manifesto last week reminded us that social platforms like Facebook need the words produced by newsrooms to feed its billions of users and generate digital advertising revenue. Publishers rely on social media to exponentially increase the visibility of their work, and to bring in ad dollars via revenue-sharing models that are, slowly, being established.
在討論平台和出版商之間的關係時，很難跳脫平台仍是主要合作夥伴的結論。上週，Mark Zuckerberg提醒我們，即便像臉書這樣的社交平台，仍需要新聞編輯室生產的內容做為其數十億用戶資訊來源。內容出版商依靠社交媒體來來提升曝光度，並透過仍在發展的收益共享模式帶來廣告收入。
Research conducted by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism shows publishers wading deeper into the Wild West of social media. During election week alone, the 14 publishers we studied made a total of 12,120 posts designed to sit natively on platforms, rather than drive traffic back to their own websites—an average of 866 per publisher.
哥大數位新聞研究中心的報告指出，出版商對社交媒體的依賴愈來愈深，僅在美國總統大選週期間，就有14家出版商選擇在社交平台發佈12,120則貼文，而不是增加自身網站的流量（平均一個出版商發出866個貼文）。
We began tracking publishers’ activity on social platforms nine months ago as part of our ongoing Platforms and Publishers project. Our first week-long study in April 2016 covered nine publishers across 12 social platforms: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, CNN, The Washington Post, Fox News, Vox, Vice News, and BuzzFeed . We have repeated this data collection quarterly, and expanded the research to include four additional platforms and five more publishers, including three regional publishers: the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Buzzfeed News, and Vice.
我們在9個月前開始追蹤社交平台上出版商的使用情況，這是我們目前「平台和出版商計劃」（Platforms and Publishers project）的一部分。在2016年4月第一個星期的研究，涵蓋了12個社交平台上的9個出版商，分別是紐約時報、華爾街日報、赫芬頓郵報、CNN、華盛頓郵報、福斯新聞、Vox、Vice News和BuzzFeed。 我們每一季會重新收集這些數據，並擴大研究範圍，包括4個額外的平台和另外5家出版商（洛杉磯時報、芝加哥論壇報、紐約日報、Buzzfeed News和Vice）。
In April 2016, here’s how nine diverse journalism companies were posting across 21 different platforms:
2016年4月，9個不同的新聞機構在21個不同平台上分布情形：
By February 2017, here’s how this landscape shifted:
2017年2月則是：
There is no singular trend in the data we collected. Publishers are still experimenting with how best to reach, retain, and monetize their audiences. Meanwhile, the platform landscape is constantly changing: The tech companies behind the social platforms are continually competing to outdo (or replicate) their rivals’ latest innovations as they wage their own battles to keep publishers not just on but in their platforms.
這兩次的結果並沒有什麼意外。出版商仍嘗試如何最有效地接觸和留住用戶，並藉此獲利。同時，社交平台景觀不斷變化，其背後的科技公司仍不斷競爭，想辦法勝出他們對手，確保出版商持續專注在平台上。
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作者：Pete Brown
編譯：朱弘川
原文網址： http://www.cjr.org/tow_center/platforms-and-publishers-no-sign-of-retreat.php
