《經濟學人》

http://www.economist.com/

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很多人大概都會相信這樣的說法：目前這個年代是紙媒的衰世，網媒的盛世。

在紙媒盛世時，《華盛頓郵報》記者伍華德花了十八個月，才挖掘出一條水門醜聞；但現在「維基解密」卻可以在一夜之間就揭發數萬條獨家密聞，數量多到即使伍華德窮其一生，應該說窮其「萬生」，也跑不出這麼多獨家。

再加上網媒比紙媒的傳播速度更快，只要按一個鍵，新聞即可傳遍天下；網媒的聯結性與互動性也比紙媒更具廣度；臉書等社群媒體的如響斯應特性，讓網媒在熱度 上也超過紙媒；有些網媒，例如去年得過普立茲獎的ProPublica，更專走紙媒早已棄之多年的調查報導路線，致力於新聞深度的開發。

紙媒「四度」皆敗的結果是：發行大幅下跌，廣告急遽萎縮，閱讀人數也快速流失；這幾年美國有一百多家報紙，英國有八十多家地方報，台灣也有五、六家報紙， 都在不堪虧損的狀態下吹響了熄燈號。當然，雜誌的處境也一樣，美國《商業周刊》宣布破產後被彭博集團購併改名，《新聞周刊》更以一塊美金廉價賣出。

表面上看，跟沒落的紙媒舊帝國相比，網媒確實像是崛起中的新帝國；但網媒已進入盛世的說法，其實卻未必盡然，甚至是個假象；更何況，即使是處於衰世，也有紙媒仍然到處攻城掠地。

網媒盛世的三個反證是：其一，美國知名老牌網媒Slate，雖然有《華盛頓郵報》的財務支持，但最近仍因嚴重虧損而大量裁員。其二，被《時代》周刊評選為 全美排名前五位的知名新興網媒《每日野獸》（The Daily Beast），雖然與《新聞周刊》合併後聲勢更盛，但每年仍然虧損一千多萬美元。其三，號稱是「廿一世紀報紙」的《每日報》（The Daily），雖然以全球最夯的iPad為平台，又有梅鐸的雄厚財力支持，但創報至今不但訂戶很少，影響力更微乎其微。

而代表紙媒衰世的唯一例外，就是《經濟學人》的逆勢成長。《經濟學人》是「人瑞」級紙媒，創刊已一百六十八年，它雖是周刊，卻自稱是每周發行一次的報紙，而且內容以分析評論為主，走的是「硬內容」路線。

在上個世紀七○年代之前，《經濟學人》的全球發行量只有十萬份左右，但在網媒崛起以及全球經濟風暴的雙重夾擊中，它的發行量卻不減反增，目前已暴增至一百六十多萬份，廣告收入也逐年成長，讓它成為集團的金雞母。

更重要的是，《經濟學人》不但能在蕭條年代中賺錢，它的影響力也與日俱增，全球意見領袖都以閱讀這份報紙為榮，它既是身分的表徵，也是決策的依據。當然， 《經濟學人》的成功也證明「好新聞就是好生意」，證明即使所有媒體都迷信「市場為王」，但始終遵奉「內容為王」的媒體，仍然可以維持紙媒帝國於不墜。

換句話說，網媒雖然改寫了新聞史，數位匯流所創造的新媒體也是擋不住的大趨勢，但《經濟學人》自稱的那套「復古模式」，卻是紙媒化危機為轉機的一個典範，如果辦紙媒的人都能以其為師，紙媒雖不能取網媒而代之，但告別衰世卻是指日可待。

「與其贈來者以勁改革，孰若自改革」，這是龔自珍一百多年前替告別衰世所下的一帖藥方，這帖藥方對正在尋求救亡圖存之道的紙媒，也同樣有效。

全文網址: 王健壯：紙媒衰世與網媒盛世 | 名人堂 | 意見評論 | 聯合新聞網


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Copernicus’s cosmos

Oh heavens, no

How one man took on the church

Sep 24th 2011 | from the print edition

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See the revolution of the times

A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionised the Cosmos. By Dava Sobel. Walker & Company; 272 pages; $25. Bloomsbury; £14.99 . Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

THE common rule in biography is that the more important the subject, the heavier the tome—with both pages and piety. Dava Sobel flouts this convention. Famous for her delightfully quirky books on the history of science, starting with the 1995 bestseller, “Longitude”, she delivers here a refreshingly fast-paced and breezy account of the life of Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish cleric who knocked the Earth from its perch at the centre of the solar system and put the

Ever since Claudius Ptolemy published the “Almagest” in the second century AD, almost all astronomers had believed that the Earth lay at the centre of the universe. The sun, the planets and the stars supposedly revolved around it once a day. It was a faith reinforced by common sense, a reverence for the wisdom of antiquity, and its resonance with Christian mythology. Geocentrism fit with several passages in the Bible, and with the church’s view of the world more generally, which held that the Earth, as the abode of God’s greatest creation, sat at the centre of everything. Ptolemy’s model was complex, with planetary orbits modified by smaller orbits (called epicycles), but it fit with observations, and could even be used to predict what the night sky would look like at an arbitrary date in the future.

It is not known when the idea of a sun-centred cosmology came to Copernicus. He was not the first to dream it up: Aristarchus of Samos, a Greek astronomer, proposed something similar around 250BC, although no details of his system survive. Copernicus’s first speculations on the subject appear in a 40-page booklet printed before 1514, which he circulated to some friends and colleagues. Although he continued to refine the theory, he was reluctant to publish, either because he feared ridicule for such an outlandish suggestion, or because he worried about a reaction from the church. Indeed the church would imprison Galileo Galilei, an Italian astronomer, for advocating the sun-centred model of the universe a century later.

But Copernicus did eventually publish his celestial theory at the end of his life. One person seems to have been instrumental in persuading him to go ahead, a scholar called Rheticus, or Georg Joachim von Lauchen, a young mathematician who arrived on Copernicus’s doorstep in 1539 and spent two years as his pupil.

In her introduction, Ms Sobel writes that she has long been fascinated by this meeting. She uses the book to imagine what took place between the two men, presenting it in the form of a play. The scarcity of surviving evidence gives Ms Sobel some poetic latitude. Readers are treated to a demonstration of an arcane machine, subplots involving pederasty and concubinage, and a conspiracy to hide Rheticus’s presence (he was a Lutheran) from the Catholic bishop of Varmia. Rheticus ultimately overcomes his own doubts about Copernicus’s theory and manages to persuade his host to commit his ideas to paper.

“A More Perfect Heaven” does a good job of giving the flavour of life in Reformation-era Europe, at least among its intellectual elite. But there is strangely little discussion of the intellectual underpinnings of Copernicus’s system of the world, and of the meticulous observations that eventually convinced him that Ptolemy was wrong. It was a giant leap suddenly to argue that the Earth orbits the sun, rather than the other way around, particularly without telescopes. Imagine trying to deduce this with the naked eye, a sextant and little else. Then imagine the difficulties of defending it against the obvious criticisms in an era before mathematically rigorous physics: why are we not flung from the Earth if it spins round so fast? Why are there not hurricane-force winds? That Ms Sobel overlooks these questions is a shame, since it rather undervalues an immense intellectual achievement and leaves a noticeable hole in an otherwise excellent book.