收购公司对苦苦挣扎的报纸发起猛攻

Business

商业

Private-equity and the press -- Culture vultures

私募股权与报刊——文化秃鹰

Buyout firms are snapping up America's newspapers

收购公司正在抢购美国的报纸

America's local newspapers have been struggling to stay afloat for years.

多年来，美国地方报纸一直在挣扎着维持生存。

Since 2005 roughly 2,200 of them have folded.

自2005年以来，大约有2200家报纸停止发行。

Private-equity firms, which often swoop on businesses in distress, have descended on the industry.

私募股权公司经常对陷入困境的企业发起猛攻，现在它们来到了这个行业。

The share of American newspapers owned by private-equity groups increased from 5% to 23% between 2001 and 2019.

2001年至2019年间，私募股权集团拥有的美国报纸份额从5%上升到23%。

The Covid-19 pandemic has presented new opportunities for buy-outs of troubled media companies.

新冠肺炎疫情为收购陷入困境的媒体公司提供了新的机会。

That has led many of those who read the papers, or write for them, to fear that buy-out barons' readiness to slash costs and seek out new sources of revenue will be bad for newsrooms.

这令许多报纸读者和撰稿人担心，收购巨头准备大幅削减成本并寻找新的收入来源，这会对新闻编辑部门不利。

New evidence suggests that things are not quite that simple.

新的证据表明，事情并没有那么简单。

In a new working paper, researchers at the California Institute of Technology and New York University compare how newspapers that were purchased by private-equity firms have fared relative to those that were not.

在一份新的研究报告中，加州理工学院和纽约大学的研究人员比较了被私募股权公司收购的报纸和未被其收购的报纸的发展情况。

Some of the findings seem to confirm the fear of those newspaper readers and writers who see private-equity types as heartless vulture capitalists unconcerned about democracy.

一些调查结果似乎证实了那些报纸读者和撰稿人的担心，他们认为这类私募股权公司是不关心民主的、无情的贪婪资本家。

After private-equity buy-outs, for example, newspapers laid off more reporters and editors.

例如，在被私募股权收购之后，报纸解雇了更多的记者和编辑。

Across a sample of 766 American publications (accounting for around 45% of total circulation), payrolls were about 7% lower after a couple of years at those with new private-equity capital relative to those without such capital.

在对766家美国出版物（约占总发行量的45%）的抽样调查中发现，几年后，被新的私募股权资方收购的出版物的工资总额比未被私募股权资方收购的出版物低7%左右。

The researchers also identified a 16.7% relative decline in the number of articles written within five years of the buy-outs.

研究人员还发现，在被收购之后的五年内，撰文数量相对下降了16.7%。

And the focus of coverage shifted from local to national news: the share of articles on local politics dropped by about a tenth.

报道的焦点也从地方新闻转向了全国新闻：关于地方政治的文章份额下降了大约10%。

That looks worrying in the context of a study published last year, by researchers at Colorado State University, Louisiana State University and Texas A&M University, which concluded that when readers consume national news their views become more polarised.

从去年科罗拉多州立大学、路易斯安那州立大学和德州农工大学的研究人员发表的一项研究来看，这一状况令人担忧。该研究得出的结论是，读者在阅读全国性新闻时观点会变得更加两极化。

Poor local coverage is also associated with less competitive mayoral elections, and newsroom staff shortages are linked to lower voter turnout.

地方新闻报道不足还与缺乏竞争力的市长选举有关，而新闻编辑部人员短缺又与选民投票率低有关。

Local news may, though, be a losing battle from the business perspective.

然而，从商业角度来看，报道地方新闻可能是在打一场败仗。

Local reporting is expensive, because it requires journalists on the ground and cannot be syndicated.

本地报道的成本很高，因为它需要有记者在现场，而且不能一稿多投。

Moreover, readers appear increasingly apathetic towards local news -- a survey in 2018 by the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, found that only 14% of respondents paid for local papers that year -- and instead seek out national online media.

此外，读者似乎对地方新闻越来越冷漠——智库皮尤研究中心2018年的一项调查发现，只有14%的受访者在那一年付费购买了地方报纸——转而寻找全国性的网络媒体。

As for the size of newsrooms, things could have been much worse were it not for private equity.

至于新闻编辑部的规模，如果没有私募股权，情况可能会更糟。

For the study also found that newspapers which had been bought out were 75% less likely to shut down than if they hadn't been.

因为该研究还发现，被收购的报纸倒闭的可能性比没有被收购的报纸低75%。

Dailies were also 60% less likely to become weeklies -- a common downgrade for many a suffering rag.

从日报变成周报的可能性也降低了60%——这是许多苦苦挣扎的小报进行的一种普遍降级。

The study's authors caution that they cannot estimate the general causal effect of private-equity buy-outs on the press, but only the observed effect on the newspapers in their sample.

该研究的作者提醒称，他们无法判断私募股权收购对新闻界的总体因果影响，只能评估他们在样本中所观察到的对报纸的影响。

Private-equity firms do not purchase newspapers randomly.

私募股权公司不会随意收购报纸。

They target failing newsrooms with potential for turnaround; papers with low circulation but high advertising rates (the price charged to advertisers per square inch) were likelier to be bought.

他们瞄准的是有潜力扭亏为盈的新闻编辑部；低发行量但高广告费（每平方英寸向广告商收取的价格）的报纸更有可能被收购。

But for the newspapers studied, the buy-outs may have been what allowed them to survive.

但对于被研究的这些报纸来说，收购可能是它们得以生存下来的原因。

The accompanying weakening of newsrooms and nationalisation of news may be the lesser of two evils.

随之而来的削弱新闻编辑部和国有化新闻也许是两害相权取其轻。