Anyone who follows me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook knows a little something about my reading habits. Although I like to think I'm as proficient at and knowledgeable about social media as anyone my age -- see the feature Jessi Hempel and I recently wrote about the buzzy mobile application Snapchat -- my journalism consumption is fairly old school. I get three newspapers delivered to my doorstep, and I also subscribe to numerous magazines.

    A few comments on these "old-media" publications and how I use them.

    First, I pay for them. Second, I avidly use their web, phone, and tablet versions too, switching back and forth among media over the course of the day, depending on a wide variety of factors, including where I am (at home, in the office, in a taxi) and what I'm doing (sitting at the kitchen table, lying in bed, battling boredom at a meeting).

    I read all sorts of things, including e-mail newsletters, blogs, and other things I find on social media -- primarily Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook -- but the overwhelming majority of the articles from which I get true value are the old-media publications for which I pay. As a journalist with a public profile and a social media presence of my own, I also share what I read with people who follow me. A recent spate of items I shared perfectly illustrates my point. Over the course of one weekend I shared the outstanding series the New York Times wrote about the plight of a homeless girl in New York, the shocking reporting by the Wall Street Journal about lobotomies performed on World War II veterans in the U.S., and my own colleague Peter Elkind's exhaustive and penetrating examination in Fortune of Bloomberg LP at the precise moment its founder, departing New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, is about to return to his company.

    It's no coincidence that each of these likely prize-winning reports appeared in publications that require readers to pay. Each cost the organizations involved serious money to produce. Each built on the experience of the journalists involved and the credibility of institutions that backed them.

    Now, there is no one right way to charge for content. The Times uses a metering method, meaning that a casual, non-paying reader could view all of the Dasani series without paying. The Journal arbitrarily makes some of its journalism available for free, according to its own mysterious methodology. Fortune puts nearly all of the journalism that appears in the printed magazine behind a paywall, while it makes all its web-specific articles, including this essay, available for free. (Go figure.) Nor is there unanimity among traditional media regarding charging at all. The magazine Vanity Fair made Bethany McLean's outstanding profile of Marissa Mayer available online for free. I assume that Vanity Fair believes it can generate enough digital advertising and, more importantly, drive subscriptions to its magazine that way. It is the publication's prerogative.

    任何人只要在Twitter、商务社交网站LinkedIn或 Facebook关注我，就会多少对我的阅读习惯有所了解。尽管我自认为在同龄人中对社交媒体还是比较了解和熟识的——可以看杰西汉佩尔和我就手机软件Snapchat撰写的专稿——我的新闻消费观比较老套。我订了三份报纸，以及几本杂志。

    下面，我想对这几家“老牌媒体”出版物以及我的阅读习惯说上两句。

    首先，我是付费订阅的。第二，我经常使用这些媒体的网络、手机和平板版式内容，一天内在不同的媒体形式间来回切换，根据不同的因素和需要来定，例如身处何方（在家、在办公室或在出租车上）以及当时所做的事情（餐桌前、躺在被窝里、或开会时打发时间）。

    我阅读各类内容，包括电邮简报、博客、以及其他社交媒体上的内容（主要是Twitter、LinkedIn和Facebook）但是，绝大多数真正有实际价值的文章还是来自我付费订阅的老牌媒体。我在社交媒体上有一定的知名度，我也经常与关注好友分享所读到的内容。最近在个人空间中贴出来的东西正好说明了上述情况。一个周末，我转发了《纽约时报》（ the New York Times）上有关纽约流浪女孩的悲惨遭遇，《华尔街时报》（the Wall Street Journal）上有关美国二战老兵曾经接受的前脑叶白质切除术的恐怖报道，以及我在《财富》（Fortune）的同事彼得•艾尔金德有关离职纽约市长布隆伯格将重返其一手创办的彭博社（Bloomberg LP）的全面深度报道。

    意料之中的是，上述这些能得新闻大奖的报道也都出现在了相关的付费出版物上。这些报道耗费了新闻机构数目不小的经费。每一份报道都凝结着记者多年的经验和新闻机构的可信度。

    现在，对内容的收费方法各不相同。《时代》周刊（Times）采用的是计时器方法，非付费用户可以免费阅读所有热门的系列内容。《华尔街日报》有一套自己的想法，特立独行地将部分新闻报道贴在网上，供免费阅读。《财富》杂志则将纸质杂志上的所有内容设为付费内容，但网站上的文稿，包括这篇文章，都是免费的。传统媒体在内容收费问题上的做法各不相同。《名利场》杂志（Vanity Fair）将贝萨尼•迈克林有关玛丽莎•梅耶尔的报道免费放在网站上。我猜想《名利场》一定借此赚取足够的网络广告效应，以便能带来更多的订阅。这就是出版业的特性。

    What grates, however, is the sense I keep hearing from people of my generation and younger that they don't need to pay for journalism. They treat the paid model as somehow quaint and even chastise people like me for posting articles on social-media sites that aren't available for free. Yet what is beginning to dawn on people is that there's a sameness to what is available for free. Investor Hunter Walk captured this in a recent post about Jessica Lessin's new trade publication The Information. He praised her as much for the content she is omitting as for what she is producing. Lessin is aiming for a narrow audience, a business model as old as stock newsletters and conspiracy theorists cranking out pamphlets in their basements. The point is that she is charging for something, and she will succeed only if what she produces is unique and desirable.

    Media theorist Jeff Jarvis has become famous for saying that "should" isn't a business model (or something like that). I agree. I'm not advocating that consumers should pay for journalism out of some sense of duty. I'm saying that you're not the citizen you ought to be if you don't read the Times on homelessness and the Journal on shocking governmental behavior, even decades after the fact. And you can't possibly be the businessperson or media executive you need to be without reading Fortune's take on a key competitor. In other words, if you're unwilling to pay, you're the loser, not us.

    I recently met a senior executive at a major Silicon Valley company who doesn't read newspapers or magazines (or, I presume, books) because she doesn't have time, she said. The more I think about it, the sadder it makes me -- for her, for her company, and for our society. She thinks she only has time to read the specialized and highly germane material that flows into her inbox because she is too busy with the tasks at hand. I'm willing to bet that over the long haul her competitors who take time to broaden their horizons, to read about other kinds of people, who take seriously their responsibilities as citizens and leaders will win out over her in the end.

    I can't confidently predict what that victory will look like. But I know it won't look like the ignorance of someone who can't -- or won't -- pay to read the high-quality journalism that's all around them.

    但是，令我不安的是，我时常听到同龄人或年轻一代鼓吹不再需要掏钱订报刊了。他们认为付费的做法太过老套，完全可以通过关注我这样在社交媒体上转发那些收费内容来解决。现在出现了一个现象，免费内容越来越同质化。投资者亨特•华克最近发帖提到了杰西卡•莱辛新办的交易刊物《情报》（The Information）。他认为，她写出来的内容和隐去的内容同样重要。莱辛将出版物定位在小众人群上，商业模式有些像老套的股票简报和阴谋家在地下室里印制出来的小册子。问题的关键是她对内容收费，并且只要内容独到、观众乐见，她就能生存下去。

    媒体理论学家杰夫•贾维斯曾说过一段著名的话：商业模式（或者类似的东西）绝没有标准答案。对此，我十分同意。我并没有强求消费者要出于某种义务感一定要花钱订阅。我想说的是，如果你没有读到《时代》周刊有关无家可归者的报道，还有《华尔街日报》有关政府卑鄙行径的报道，你就算不上是一位真正意义上的公民，就算事情已经过了几十年。如果你没有读过《财富》杂志对主要竞争对手采取的行动，你就不可能成为成功的商人或媒体主管。换言之，如果你不愿意花钱订阅的话，吃亏的是你，而不是我们。

    最近，我碰见一位硅谷大公司的高级主管，她自称因为没有时间而不读报纸或杂志（我想，书她也不会读）。我越想，就越替她、她的公司和我们的社会感到悲哀。因为要疲于应付手头的工作，只有时间读邮箱里那些专业和与工作高度相关的材料。我敢打赌，这样下去，那些肯花时间拓展视野、阅读各种人写的东西、同时认真担负起作为公民和领导者的责任的竞争者，终将超越她。

    虽然不敢断言最终胜利花落谁家，但是，我知道，胜利绝不青睐那些不能够——或不愿意——掏钱阅读高质量新闻报道的人。（财富中文网）

    译者：邓婕