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据国外媒体报道,由于美国各大报纸纷纷削减海外新闻开支,《波士顿环球报》(Boston Globe)资深记者查尔斯·赛诺特(Charles Sennott)近日离职,并创办了自己的新闻机构GlobalPost.com。
GlobalPost下周一正式上线,以广告赞助为主提供免费新闻服务,同时向其他报纸出售新闻。最初,GlobalPost的报道范围涵盖近50个国家,包括巴西、印度尼西亚,以及中国和印度等主要发展中国家。
加盟GlobalPost的资深新闻人员每月基本工资为1000美元左右,同时会获得GlobalPost的相应股权。这新新闻人员的工作形式是兼职,意味着他们还可以服务于其他新闻机构。
GlobalPost网站总裁兼CEO菲利普·巴尔邦尼(Philip Balboni)表示:“开通GlobalPost服务对我们是一项巨大挑战,因为以前还没有人这样做。GlobalPost宗旨是向美国公众及其他国家的英文读者提供国际新闻服务。”
Overseas reporters have been a casualty of budget-chopping in news organizations, leaving an opening for the online start-up GlobalPost. But at a time when many news executives are exploring noNPRofit business models to keep specialized reporting flowing, GlobalPost, which made its debut Jan. 12, is intended to be a moneymaking venture.
With 65 correspondents worldwide — drawn from a surfeit of experienced reporters eager to continue working in their specialties, even as potential employers disappear — GlobalPost has begun offering a mix of news and features that only a handful of other news organizations can rival.
Recent articles, free at GlobalPost.com, included reports on Thailand’s Islamic insurgency and Indian yogis worried about the financial crisis.
That ad-supported reporting is only one part of the GlobalPost business plan. If it is to succeed, it will depend in part on how many people sign up for a separate paid section of the site, which was to have been available in test mode beginning last week but is now expected to go online soon.
Called Passport, it offers access to GlobalPost correspondents, including exclusive reports on business topics of less interest to general audiences, conference calls and meetings with reporters and breaking news e-mail messages from those journalists.
Passport subscribers, who pay as much as $199 a year, can offer ideas for articles.
‘‘If you are a member, you have a voice at the editorial meeting,’’ although the site will decide which stories to pursue, said Charles Sennott, a GlobalPost founder and its executive editor. He said Passport was meant to ‘‘create a feeling of community’’ for subscribers who might otherwise see newsrooms as ‘‘impenetrable and fortresslike.’’
GlobalPost correspondents, who include the former Washington Post writer Caryle Murphy in Saudi Arabia and a Time magazine correspondent turned novelist, Matt Beynon Rees, in Jerusalem, are paid extra for Passport work. Their basic compensation is $1,000 a month for four articles, plus shares in the venture. The site had 500 applicants, Mr. Sennott said.
Only a couple of dozen people have signed up for Passport, said Philip Balboni, GlobalPost’s other founder and the president and chief executive. The site is depending on marketing partnerships to generate subscriptions, some discounted, and hopes to have more than 2,000 by the end of the year.
Two months in, the Boston company says demand for the free site — the mainstay of the business — is ahead of expectations. It has logged 250,000 unique visitors, compared with the 90,000 Mr. Balboni had hoped for by now, and 1.1 million page views, more than half by returning visitors.
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