【名利场】深探《纽约时报》燃烧的内战

纽约时报内部年轻一代和资深一代的矛盾显现，保守派认为觉醒派不够尊重存在已久的新闻传统，不明白事物发展本就有其规律。觉醒派则认为老一辈不愿承认世界和媒体格局已然发生变化，不愿承认自己的标准和规范也应相应做出改变。为能够生存下来，纽约时报正历经一场复杂又忧心的变革。

深探纽约时报燃烧的内战

作者：Joe Pompeo

译者：文诗韵 & 张嫣

校对：王乐颖

编辑：李林治

“JOURNALISM IS NOT ABOUT CREATING SAFE SPACES”: INSIDE THE WOKE CIVIL WAR AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

“新闻业并不是织就一张安全网”－深探纽约时报内部燃烧的内战

本文选自 Vanity Fair | 取经号原创翻译

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Late in the evening on November 8, 2016, The New York Times newsroom was being whipsaw ed . Donald Trump, to the utter shock and horror of the coastal establishment, was winning. Reporters and editors were in overdrive , tearing up one historic front page for another. The story that America’s paper of record had been gearing up to tell in the coming days—months, years—was being obliterated in real time. From a journalistic perspective, that wasn’t exactly a bad thing. The new story, after all, was more fascinating, more chaotic—utterly unprecedented. And Trump’s election was the kind of Earth-shattering event that only comes around once or twice in a newsperson’s career. So for someone like Dean Baquet, the Times’s then 60-year-old executive editor, the dominant emotion was exhilaration about this new national epic. But it didn’t go unnoticed that, for some in the newsroom, the journalistic mission was not exactly front of mind. “I just remember younger people with sad faces,” a person who was there told me, describing those employees as generally being in roles that are adjacent to reporting and editing. Baquet remarked to colleagues in the coming days about how surprised he was by that. “He’s thinking, We’ve got a great story on our hands,” my source said. “That was the first indication that a unified newsroom in the age of Trump was going to be a very difficult thing to achieve or maintain.”

2016年11月8日深夜，纽约时报的新闻办公室 两面奔波 。特朗普赢得大选让东部沿海地区感到震惊、恐惧。记者将原本准备好的历史性头版撕掉，然后再 疯狂赶工 换上另一版。那些美国的纪实新闻原本早早备好，打算在接下来的几天、几周甚至几年里报道的故事立即被弃用。确切从新闻业的角度来说，这并非坏事。毕竟新的故事显得更为精彩、混乱，且更加的——前所未有。在一个新闻人一生的事业生涯中，像特朗普当选这样的地震级新闻可能只会有一两次。在巴奎特这位60岁的纽约时报执行编辑看来，他对这一国家历史新篇章更多地是感到狂喜。但另一方面，你不难注意到对于新闻室里的一部分人而言，新闻的使命并不是摆在第一位的。“我仍记得那些年轻人悲伤的面庞。”，某位纽约时报职员这样告诉我。这些年轻职员大多负责与报道、编辑有关的工作。在接下来的几天里，巴奎特跟同事们谈论着他对这一消息感到多么吃惊。“巴奎特想到的是，我们有了一个非常棒的报道，但这也预示着在特朗普时代，我们的新闻办公室将再难达到并维系一个团结一致的状态。”

whipsaw ['wɪpsɔː] to saw with a whipsaw 用粗木锯锯

be in overdrive ['əʊvədraɪv] to start being very active or working very hard加倍努力，拼命工作

For most of its history, the Times has been an autocracy , with a church-like reverence for its values and traditions. Rebellion, as against executive editor Howell Raines in 2003, has often been to restore the old order rather than to overthrow it. But, as at many newsrooms and media offices, and in the culture at large, this is a moment of generational conflict not seen since the 1960s. “I’ve been feeling a lot lately like the newsroom is split into roughly the old-guard category, and the young and ‘woke’ category, and it’s easy to feel that the former group doesn’t take into account how much the future of the paper is predicated on the talent contained in the latter one,” a Times employee in that latter group told me a couple months ago. “I know a lot of others at the paper with similar positions to mine, especially women and people of color, who feel that senior staff isn’t receptive to their concerns.”

在纽约时报的历史里，大多数时候它是 专制的 ，对其价值理念和传统保持着如宗教般的 尊崇 。而像2003年雷恩斯事件这样的“叛乱”，结局通常是重归旧秩序，而不是成功。然而，正如其他许多新闻媒体以及整个文化大环境所面对的，这是自上世纪60年代以来从未见过的代际冲突。“最近我常常觉得新闻室分成了两派，一边是保守势力，一边是年轻人为首的觉醒派。而且前者明显没有考虑到时报的未来正是寄于后者的才能之上。”几个月前，纽约时报一位分属觉醒派的职员这样告诉我，“我知道很多纽约时报里与我职位相似的人，尤其是女性和有色人种，她们都感觉到上层并 不愿 了解她们的担忧。”

雷恩斯事件：2003年，纽约时报执行总编雷恩斯因为该报年轻记者布莱尔剽窃、编造新闻的丑闻被迫辞职。雷恩斯忽视布莱尔的错误及其他编辑对布莱尔文章的警告，明知布莱尔的缺点却仍提升此名黑人记者，此事几乎成为《纽约时报》创刊152年来爆出的最大丑闻。来源：维基百科

autocracy [ɔː'tɒkrəsɪ] a system of government in which one person or group has unlimited power 专制统治，独裁政体

reverence ['rev ə rəns] great respect and admiration for someone or something 尊敬，崇敬

receptive [rɪ'septɪv] willing to consider new ideas or listen to someone else’s opinions 〔对新思想或他人意见〕乐于接受的，愿意倾听的

There have been various flash points with this conflict. When Vox revealed in November, for instance, that star political reporter Glenn Thrush had acted inappropriately with several female journalists who were more than a few years his junior, there was a contingent of predominantly younger, next-gen Times employees who felt strongly that the Times could not credibly continue to employ Thrush while also leading the charge in covering the cultural reckoning that had entangled him; furthermore, when the Times, after an exhaustive investigation, determined that Thrush should be suspended and effectively demoted, but not fired, many within this group were disappointed by what they described as a lack of transparency around the decision. (A series of internal town halls addressing the matter helped to temper that sentiment.)

这场代际冲突中爆发点甚多。例如，在2017年11月，当新媒体《Vox》爆出纽约时报的著名白宫记者Glenn Thrush对过去几年作为其下属的女记者有不当行为时，纽约时报的下一代新生力量－年轻职员们 大都 强烈表示在大肆针对Thrush所做的一系列文化道德 声讨 后，纽约时报无法在继续雇佣他的同时还保持自己的可信度。而当纽约时报经过彻查，决定Thrush应当被停职，大幅度降职但不是被开除后，内部许多人都感到失望，并认为这一决策并不透明。(一系列的针对该事件的见面会使得内部情绪有所缓和)

contingent [kən'tɪndʒ(ə)nt] depending on something that may happen in the future 依情况而变的，视条件而定的

entangle [in'tæŋgld] If something is entangled in something such as a rope, wire, or net, it is caught in it very firmly. 紧紧缠住的

Within the newsroom, it can be difficult for members of this cohort to stomach , say, abiding by restrictions on what they can and cannot say on Twitter and Facebook (platforms that younger millennials were essentially born into), as mandated by an expanded social-media policy issued in October; or being told that participation in last year’s Women’s March was a no-no (which brings to mind Linda Greenhouse getting into trouble for attending a pro-choice march in 1989); or feeling comfortable with Baquet making an appearance at the same Financial Times conference as Steve Bannon last month. “The woke set was grossed out ,” an insider told me. (Addressing the matter in an e-mail to the Web site Splinter, Baquet said, quite reasonably, “It sort of feels sort of ‘unjournalistic,’ if that is a word, to refuse to participate in a forum because Bannon or someone else will be in the same event.”)

纽约时报内针对在社交媒体如推特、脸书上什么可以说，什么不能说的进一步管理规定在十月出台，这对于新闻办公室里的年轻群体来说是难以 忍受 的，毕竟千禧一代就是在社交媒体浪潮中成长起来的。令人无法忍受的, 还有被禁止参加去年的女权大游行，这不禁让人想起在1989年琳达•格林豪斯就因参加主张堕胎合法化的游行而陷入麻烦。同样地，巴奎特出现在史蒂夫·班农上月出席的金融时报大会上也并不让人愉快。“在“觉醒”的青年一派看来，这些事 令人作呕 ，”一位内部人士这样告诉我。（巴奎特在给Splinter网站发邮件时表示，因为班农或者其他人参加过同样的会议就拒绝出席该场合，显得有些不够像“新闻人”，如果这是一个合适的形容词汇的话。）

琳达·格林豪斯(Linda Greenhouse)：资深法政记者，在《纽约时报》从事过30年联邦最高法院新闻报道(1978-2008)。1998年获普利策奖，是美国最杰出的法律记者之一。来源：维基百科

史蒂夫·班农：美国极右派代表，鼓吹种族主义，“白人至上”，是特朗普的首批内阁成员，后在美国国家安全委员会重组后被撤职。来源：维基百科

stomach ['stʌmək] to be able to accept something, especially something unpleasant 承受，容忍，忍耐

gross out to make someone wish they had not seen or been told about something because it is so unpleasant 使恶心，使作呕

The most fractious convulsion along these lines has been the recent uproar over the Times’s op-ed section, specifically as it relates to a pair of new additions—conservative pundits Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss—who each possess certain contentious views. Stephens, for his part, is a fervent never-Trumper who wants to see the Second Amendment repealed, but he also has expressed skepticism about climate science. Weiss, herself a millennial, is a robust crusader for campus free speech, which puts her at odds with some swaths of the left, and she’s also challenged aspects of the #MeToo movement.

在分裂的两派间，最让人愤怒的 事件 来自最近纽约时报评论专栏。专栏引入两位保守派学者布雷特·斯蒂芬斯和巴里·韦斯，两人持有的观点都饱受争议。斯蒂芬斯是 狂热 的反特朗普派，迫切希望美国宪法第二修正案被废除，同时还质疑气候变化的真实性。韦斯作为千禧一代，是校园自由言论的坚定 斗士 ，这让她在左派人物中出尽风头。她同时也对＃MeToo运动的观点提出了挑战。

巴里·韦斯：在MeToo运动中，韦斯在纽约时报撰文发表观点讨论女性所声称的受到性骚扰是否应当被不假思索地相信和接受。来源：Huffpost

美国宪法第二修正案：美国权利法案前十条修正案之一，与1791年12月15日正式通过，它保障人民持有和携带武器的权利，即，公民享有正当防卫的公民权利。

convulsion [kən'vʌlʃ(ə)n] a great change that affects a country动乱，骚动

fervent ['fɜːv(ə)nt] believing or feeling something very strongly and sincerely 热情的；炽热的；热烈的；强烈的

crusader [kruːˈseɪdə] A crusader for a cause is someone who does a lot in support of it. (支持某项事业的) 斗士

In an episode that riled emotions perhaps more than any other, Weiss fired off a tweet during the Olympics that applauded California-born figure skater Mirai Nagasu, while also incorrectly characterizing her as an “immigrant.” (Nagasu’s parents are first-generation Japanese immigrants.) Weiss deleted the tweet and acknowledged the mis-statement, and later said she felt "awful" about it. But the damage was done. Part of the backlash, as evidenced by an internal chat-room transcript that was leaked to HuffPost, was that Weiss’s tweet exemplified a pattern of “microaggressions,” per the transcript, that “cut the deepest. and this is DAILY.” But the incident also betrayed palpable discomfort with the age-old rules governing the behavior of Opinion writers versus members of the newsroom. Both sides exist in the same space on social media, and each in its own way represents the Times, regardless of how readers engage with the Times in the Twitter-fied media landscape of 2018, where distinctions between the two sides are not as readily apparent. “We make all these assumptions that people understand the difference between the Opinion section and the newsroom,” said an under-30 Times employee from the new guard. A Times reporter could conceivably get into hot water for tweeting something that seems to endorse gun control or Black Lives Matter, and yet “Opinion writers,” this employee said, “get to represent the Times in a way that isn’t right.”

可能最令人愤怒的一个场景是在奥林匹克竞赛期间，韦斯发表了一条赞扬加利福尼亚出生的滑冰选手Mirai nagasu的推特，但错误地将这位选手说成“移民”（Nagasu的父母是第一代日本移民）。韦斯随后删掉微博，称认识到其言论不当，并对此感到抱歉，但破坏已经酿成。HuffPost报道的纽约时报内部聊天内容是对强烈抵制此事的有力佐证，韦斯的推特内容实际上是“微冒犯”的一种 典型 模式。如聊天记录中所说，“微冒犯伤害最深，而且它已经成为日常。”此次的事件同时也反映出新闻室职员对观点专栏作家长期奉为圭臬的行为准则的不满。不论在2018年以推特为标杆的传媒版图里，读者们是如何与纽约时报互动的，这两派都共同存在于社交媒体的同一空间里，并且双方都在某种程度上代表了纽约时报。一位不到30岁的纽约时报觉醒派职员说，“我们假设人们理解观点专栏和新闻室之间的区别。”一个纽约时报记者可能因为发表某种程度上支持枪支管控或者“黑人的命也是命”运动的推特而陷入水深火热，而“专栏作家却在以一种不正确的方式代表纽约时报。”

微冒犯：指“言语或行为透露出对某个边缘族群心怀偏见”，有时是不经意地这麽做，连自己都没意识到。来源：维基百科

黑人的命也是命（Black Lives Matter）：是美国近年因为一连串警察针对性执法过当而造成平民死亡的事件所卷动出来的运动，起源于2013年枪杀黑人青年马丁的佛罗里达白人警察无罪释放，激起了大规模民众抗议。来源：维基百科及有关新闻报道

exemplify [ɪg'zemplɪfaɪ] If a person or thing exemplifies something such as a situation, quality, or class of things, they are a typical example of it. 是…的典范

palpable ['pælpəb(ə)l] a feeling that is palpable is so strong that other people notice it and can feel it around them 明显的，显而易见的

Another example? “The biggest thing people are talking about lately is the way the Times humanizes white men who commit violence versus men of color,” my source continued. (The Times recently confronted this issue via its Reader Center.) “There’s definitely a feeling,” the source added, “that the people most concerned about these sorts of things are people in more junior positions, as opposed to people who are in positions of power.”

至于其他的例子？这位职员继续说道，“最近人们谈论的最大事件是纽约时报如何让那些对有色人种实行暴力的白人男性变的更人性化。”（纽约时报最近正在通过读者中心就此议题进行讨论。）“可以很明显的感受到，最关心这些议题的人是那些处在初级职位的员工，与之截然相反的，是居高位的掌权者。”

上述事件发生背景是3月21日美国奥斯汀地区的爆炸袭击事件。纽约时报因在最初的报道中对犯罪者Mark Conditt的谴责一笔带过，并试图为其解释开脱而饱受批评，其后在纽约时报网站的读者专栏中做了就这一事件的相关回应。

As with most hot-button topics these days, all roads seem to lead back to the real-estate mogul and erstwhile reality-television fixture who now resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. “I would agree that the question of a generational divide is made more complicated by the fact that it’s happening during the presidency of Donald Trump,” said Times managing editor Joe Kahn in an interview. “If this had been the first term of Hillary Clinton, or a less divisive, less polarizing figure for many members of our own staff, some of the issues that have arisen might not have taken on quite the level of importance or urgency or alarm that they have.” At the same time, said Kahn, the Times “has made it really clear that we consider it crucial to our future that we not become an opposition-news organization. We do not see ourselves, and we do not wish to be seen, as partisan media. That means that the news and opinion divide, and things like social-media guidelines and some of our traditional restrictions on political activity by employees, may feel cumbersome to some people at this point in our evolution.”

从当下所有的热议话题来看，似乎这一切最后都指向回那位现正住在宾夕法尼亚大道1600号的地产大亨， 曾经 真人秀的固定出场嘉宾——特朗普。纽约时报执行编辑Joe Kahn在接受采访时表示“因为身处特朗普时代，我们所面对的代际分裂问题变得更为复杂，如果现在是希拉里•克林顿的第一任任期，或者是一个在我们许多职员看来一个不那么分裂、极端的人物担任总统，那么可能现在我们所面对的一些议题就不会显得如何重要、迫切。”同时Kahn表示，纽约时报“也清楚表明，我们认为不让纽约时报变成反对党派的新闻机构对自身未来发展至关重要。我们并不认为，也不希望纽约时报被看作为有党派倾向的媒体，而这意味着新闻和观点专栏会呈分裂之势，并且对正身处在报纸转型期中心的部分职员，他们会觉得一些社交媒体的指导方针以及一些对于职员政治活动的传统约束 多余 。”

宾夕法尼亚大道1600号：宾夕法尼亚大道(Pennsylvania Avenue)是华盛顿哥伦比亚特区的一条街道,联结白宫和美国国会大厦,是所谓的“美国大街”(America's Main Street)。1600号是美国总统官邸所在。

erstwhile ['ɜːstwaɪl] former or in the past 以前的；过去的

cumbersome ['kʌmbəs(ə)m] a process or system that is cumbersome is slow and difficult〔过程或系统〕耗时的，累赘的

To Kahn’s point, the country is in the midst of a unique and restive moment—not least of all for the ever-ubiquitous millennial population—characterized by empowerment and anger and, yes, “wokeness.” Against this backdrop, the Times is arguably changing more rapidly and radically than any other period in its 167-year history, including the ascension earlier this year of its first digital-native publisher, 37-year-old A.G. Sulzberger. Put simply, the Times is working through a complex and fraught makeover in order to become a place that can survive—even if there were no print edition in another 5 or 10 or 20 years. “I have been here a long time,” one veteran editor told me. “The tensions you’re referring to are not just generational. We are all trying to figure out what the Times is in the digital era.”

在Kahn看来，美国正处在一个独特又浮躁的时刻，充满赋权、愤怒，当然还有觉醒的力量，特别是千禧一代一直无处不在。如此背景下，纽约时报转变速度之快，程度之剧烈，在其167年的历史中可谓前所未见。年初，37岁的A.G.苏兹伯格被 提拔 为第一位数字出版商。简单来说，为能够生存下来，纽约时报正历经一场复杂又忧心的变革，甚至，在接下来的5年，10年甚至20年里纸质版纽约时报将会消失。一名老编辑告诉我：“我在纽约时报工作已久，你提到的那些矛盾不仅仅是几代人之间的观念矛盾。在数字化时代，我们一直竭尽所能地探寻《时报》存在的意义。”

ascension [ə'senʃ(ə)n]  when someone moves to a more important or higher position or job formal〔地位或职位的〕上升，升高

注：A.G.苏兹伯格，2018年1月1日，被称为“A.G.”的阿瑟·格雷格·苏兹伯格从将从父亲手中接棒，成为第五代出版人。在这之前，A.G.苏兹伯格于2016年10月被任命为公司的副出版人。

Inside the newsroom and departments that work closely with it, many legacy jobs have been eliminated over the past few years to make room for an entirely new class of employees. These newcomers include Web-trends reporters and community editors and social-media strategists; product people and visualization specialists and audience-engagement gurus ; engineers and audio experts and data scientists and various other positions that didn’t used to exist. The Times also has been hiring more writers and editors from outside its traditional talent channels. (“Other relatively similar newspaper companies,” in Kahn’s words, “that did relatively similar things.”) That means the paper is now crawling with journalists who came from some of the same upstart digital publications the Times now counts as competitors. The result is an increasingly diverse and varied organization that suddenly encompasses lots of people who didn’t come up in old-school journalism environments like the Times, or people who are at least more inclined to challenge some of the newspaper’s entrenched customs in an era where it increasingly feels like the world has been turned on its head and the old rules no longer apply.

编辑部及相关部门里，许多传统岗位都在过去的几年中取消，让位给一批全新的新闻工作岗位。这些新工作包括报道互联网趋势，数据可视化专家，擅长与观众互动的 专家 ；工程师，专业录音师，数据科学家及许多过去未曾出现的其他岗位。纽约时报还在普通人才渠道外聘请了许多写手和编辑。（用Kahn的话来说：“其他新闻公司也采取了相似的行动。”）这表明，来自新兴数字媒体的新闻工作者正遍布新闻业，而纽约时报又恰把这些数媒视为竞争对象。结果就是新闻机构的员工愈加多样，员工队伍中突然涌进许多人，他们或未在老派的新闻工作环境如纽约时报中学习过，或又至少敢撼动新闻业中的部分牢固传统，在这样的时代里，世界好像改头换面，陈规旧矩不再适用。

guru [guru] someone who knows a lot about a particular subject, and gives advice to other people informal 专家，权威

“We’re eager to have people like that on board, because they bring a set of skills that we need,” said Kahn. “But it does present us with a challenge of needing to have a broader discussion about what the values of our workplace are, and also to do a better job of communicating the journalistic values that The New York Times has traditionally had to a new generation of people who may not have learned them from their previous places of work or schooling.” Kahn said there is “a little bit of a disconnect between some of the things that, journalistically, as an institution, we feel compelled to do”—reporting without fear or favor, and giving voice to many different sides and perspectives and all of that—“and our workplace values.” (Equitable race, gender, and sexual-identity representation; diversity of world views and experience; protection from harassment, etc.)

“我们渴望与这些人共事，因为他们身上有我们需要的一系列能力。”Kahn说，“但是，这也确实带来了挑战，我们需要更深入探讨新闻工作的价值，也需要更好地将纽约时报传统的新闻价值观传达给新一代，这些是他们可能无法从之前的工作或学习中学到的。”Kahn表示，作为新闻机构，有些事情是不得不去做的，如公正报道，无所惧亦无所私，传递来自各方，不同角度的观点等，但这与我们坚持的价值观（如种族平等、性别认同，传达多样化的世界观和经验，保护免受歹人骚扰等）有时存在断层。

One of the younger, newer Times employees I spoke with boiled down the conflict as follows, with the obvious caveat that there are, of course, “woke” people in the old guard and traditionalists in the younger set. “The olds,” my source said, “feel like the youngs are insufficiently respectful of long-standing journalistic norms, or don’t get that things are the way they are for a reason. The youngs feel like the olds are insufficiently willing to acknowledge the ways in which the world and media landscape have changed, and that our standards and mores should evolve to reflect that.” (Several Times sources emphasized that this dynamic has been around for decades. As Gay Talese once wrote of the 1950s-era Times: “There were philosophical differences dividing older Timesmen who feared that the paper was losing touch with its tradition and younger men who felt trapped by tradition.”)