亞馬遜掌門 我能帶《華盛頓郵報》走進數字時代
multi-billionaires like to buy extravagant things.
有錢人喜歡買奢侈的東西。Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, owns a space exploration company. Lawrence J. Ellison, chairman of the Oracle Corporation, has his own private Hawaiian island.
維珍集團(Virgin Group)創始人理查德·布蘭森(Richard Branson)擁有一家太空探索公司。甲骨文公司(Oracle Corporation)董事長勞倫斯·J·艾利森(Lawrence J. Ellison)在夏威夷擁有一座私人島嶼。
And last year, Jeff Bezos, who as chief executive of Amazon has made billions turning the book publishing business on its head, decided to buy one of the country’s oldest newspapers, The Washington Post. But, according to Mr. Bezos, it was never something he thought he wanted to own.
去年，給圖書出版業帶來了天翻地覆的變化並因此累積了鉅額身家的亞馬遜(Amazon)首席執行官傑夫·貝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)決定收購美國曆史最悠久的報紙之一——《華盛頓郵報》(The Washington Post)。不過，據他本人透露，之前從沒想過自己會買下它。
“I don’t know anything about the newspaper business, so at the time I said, ‘Why would I even be a candidate to buy The Post?’” he said in a conversation at the Business Insider Ignition conference in New York on Tuesday.
週二，在紐約參加Business Insider網站主辦的Ignition大會時，貝佐斯在對話環節中表示，“我對報業一無所知，所以當時我問，‘爲什麼我會成爲郵報的潛在買主呢？’”In his telling, which was one of the first candid interviews on the subject since he bought the paper for $250 million last year, Mr. Bezos was approached through an intermediary by Donald E. Graham, then the chairman and chief executive of The Washington Post Company. Aside from his lack of expertise on the newspaper industry, Mr. Bezos was skeptical for other reasons.
這是自去年花費2.5億美元（約合15.3億元人民幣）收購郵報以來，貝佐斯就該話題進行的首批敞開心扉的採訪之一。他稱，是時任華盛頓郵報公司(The Washington Post Company)董事長兼首席執行官的唐納德·E·格雷厄姆(Donald E. Graham)通過中間人找到了他。除了缺乏報紙行業的經驗外，貝佐斯還存在其他方面的顧慮。“I went through a few gates before deciding to buy The Post. Is it hopeless? I didn’t want to do it if it was,” he said. ” The Internet has radically disrupted traditional newspapers. The world is completely changed, and advertisers have tons of options on how to reach people in local areas.”
“我在決定收購郵報前跨過了好幾個門檻。這份報紙還有沒有希望？如果沒有了的話，我可不想買，”他說。“互聯網徹底顛覆了傳統報紙。世界已經被完全改變，廣告商有無數種可以引起地方民衆注意的選擇。”Mr. Bezos and the staff of The Post have their work cut out for them. As the newspaper industry undergoes significant change to cope with the rise of digital publishing, The Post has gone through multiple rounds of buyouts, and recently announced cuts to employees’ retirement benefits. Similar to The Post, The New York Times is currently going through a round of employee buyouts.
貝佐斯及郵報員工面臨很多艱鉅任務。隨着數字出版的崛起，傳統報業正在經歷深刻的變革。郵報已經開展了多輪買斷離職，最近還宣佈要削減員工的退休福利。與之類似，《紐約時報》目前也在開展一輪買斷離職計劃。But Mr. Bezos was ultimately convinced that The Post, which he called a national institution, could be brought into the digital age by leveraging the technical expertise and knowledge that he had gained over his decades spent building Amazon into a global technology company.
不過，貝佐斯最終確信，利用他數十年來在把亞馬遜打造成一個國際性科技公司的過程中所獲得的技術專長和知識，他可以把郵報帶入數字時代。他將郵報稱作一家全國性機構。“I didn’t know anything about the newspaper business, but I did know something about the Internet,” Mr. Bezos said. “That, combined with the financial runway that I can provide, is the reason why I bought The Post.”
“我對報業一竅不通，但我的確對互聯網有所瞭解，”貝佐斯說。“正是因爲這一點，再加上我所能提供的金融渠道，就是我買下郵報的原因。”Under Mr. Bezos, the paper has already taken initial steps to that end. Last month, The Post introduced a free app for Kindles, the immensely popular e-reader products built by Amazon, which will bring free daily editions of the newspaper to Kindle Fire owners for six months; after that, it will cost $1 for the next six months.
在貝佐斯的領導下，該報已經朝這個目標邁出了最初幾步。上個月，郵報推出了免費的Kindle版應用。Kindle是亞馬遜打造的電子閱讀器，極受歡迎。Kindle Fire用戶可以用這個應用免費閱讀每天的郵報，時間長達六個月；之後的訂閱價爲每六個月1美元。He has also placed much of his faith in Shailesh Prakash, The Post’s head of technology, who has worked closely with Mr. Bezos on how the paper’s app will work with Amazon’s devices. And the paper has made a string of 15 or 16 hires specifically with the Kindle app in mind, Martin Baron, the paper’s editor, has said.
貝佐斯還對郵報的技術主管沙來什·普拉卡什(Shailesh Prakash)寄予厚望。他們二人展開了密切合作，研究如何將郵報的應用與亞馬遜的設備整合起來。郵報的主編馬丁·巴倫(Martin Baron)表示，報社專門針對Kindle應用接連招募了15或16個人。Ultimately, Mr. Bezos’ goal is to rework The Post into something that expands beyond the local daily newspaper, into one that reaches across borders.
貝佐斯的最終目標是通過對郵報進行改造，使之突破地方日報的侷限，走向世界。“The Post has the good fortune of being the newspaper of the capital city of the United States of America,” he said. “That’s a great starting point to being a national and even global publication.”
“作爲美利堅合衆國首都的報紙，郵報十分幸運，”他說，“對於成爲一份全國乃至國際出版物，這是一個非常好的起點。”
