亚马逊掌门 我能带《华盛顿邮报》走进数字时代

Multi-billionaires like to buy extravagant things.

有钱人喜欢买奢侈的东西。

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.

维珍集团(Virgin Group)创始人理查德·布兰森(Richard Branson)拥有一家太空探索公司。甲骨文公司(Oracle Corporation)董事长劳伦斯·J·艾利森(Lawrence J. Ellison)在夏威夷拥有一座私人岛屿。

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，给图书出版业带来了天翻地覆的变化并因此累积了巨额身家的亚马逊(Amazon)首席执行官杰夫·贝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)决定收购美国历史最悠久的报纸之一——《华盛顿邮报》(The Washington Post)。不过，据他本人透露，之前从没想过自己会买下它。

“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.

周二，在纽约参加Business Insider网站主办的Ignition大会时，贝佐斯在对话环节中表示，“我对报业一无所知，所以当时我问，‘为什么我会成为邮报的潜在买主呢？’”

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.

这是自去年花费2.5亿美元（约合15.3亿元人民币）收购邮报以来，贝佐斯就该话题进行的首批敞开心扉的采访之一。他称，是时任华盛顿邮报公司(The Washington Post Company)董事长兼首席执行官的唐纳德·E·格雷厄姆(Donald E. Graham)通过中间人找到了他。除了缺乏报纸行业的经验外，贝佐斯还存在其他方面的顾虑。

“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.”

“我在决定收购邮报前跨过了好几个门槛。这份报纸还有没有希望？如果没有了的话，我可不想买，”他说。“互联网彻底颠覆了传统报纸。世界已经被完全改变，广告商有无数种可以引起地方民众注意的选择。”

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.

贝佐斯及邮报员工面临很多艰巨任务。随着数字出版的崛起，传统报业正在经历深刻的变革。邮报已经开展了多轮买断离职，最近还宣布要削减员工的退休福利。与之类似，《纽约时报》目前也在开展一轮买断离职计划。

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.

不过，贝佐斯最终确信，利用他数十年来在把亚马逊打造成一个国际性科技公司的过程中所获得的技术专长和知识，他可以把邮报带入数字时代。他将邮报称作一家全国性机构。

“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.”

“我对报业一窍不通，但我的确对互联网有所了解，”贝佐斯说。“正是因为这一点，再加上我所能提供的金融渠道，就是我买下邮报的原因。”

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.

在贝佐斯的领导下，该报已经朝这个目标迈出了最初几步。上个月，邮报推出了免费的Kindle版应用。Kindle是亚马逊打造的电子阅读器，极受欢迎。Kindle Fire用户可以用这个应用免费阅读每天的邮报，时间长达六个月；之后的订阅价为每六个月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.

贝佐斯还对邮报的技术主管沙来什·普拉卡什(Shailesh Prakash)寄予厚望。他们二人展开了密切合作，研究如何将邮报的应用与亚马逊的设备整合起来。邮报的主编马丁·巴伦(Martin Baron)表示，报社专门针对Kindle应用接连招募了15或16个人。

Ultimately, Mr. Bezos’ goal is to rework The Post into something that expands beyond the local daily newspaper, into one that reaches across borders.

贝佐斯的最终目标是通过对邮报进行改造，使之突破地方日报的局限，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.”

“作为美利坚合众国首都的报纸，邮报十分幸运，”他说，“对于成为一份全国乃至国际出版物，这是一个非常好的起点。”