????“所有企業永遠保持年輕，”杰夫?貝佐斯上周三對《華盛頓郵報》（The Washington Post）的員工說。“如果客戶群跟你一起變老，你就會重蹈伍爾沃斯公司（Woolworth's）的覆轍。”

????一番簡潔有力的陳述——甚至可以說巧舌如簧。這樣說不完全錯，但也不太準確，《華盛頓郵報》不應該以此作為一項指導原則。新聞組織一再顯示，當它們嘗試著追逐“年輕人群”時，它們往往遭遇慘敗。與此同時，《華盛頓郵報》其實應該好好學習伍爾沃斯公司幾十年來的成功和創新歷程，同時當然也要避免這家零售商的最終命運。

????對于亞馬遜公司（Amazon）創始人、《華盛頓郵報》新東家貝佐斯上周三的言論，郵報員工稱贊有加，盡管這番話或許有些含糊其辭，略顯老套。在目前這個節點上，一位報社老板真情流露出的任何樂觀情緒勢必都會受到員工們的熱烈歡迎。貝佐斯似乎真的很樂觀，盡管他還欠缺具體的規劃。就目前而言，對于他來說，表達出他相信報紙業務可以被挽救這一信念就足矣。盡管他并沒有透露任何與進一步投資《華盛頓郵報》相關的意向，但他至少表明他不打算進一步裁人。

????包括貝佐斯在內，沒有人知道怎樣做才有效。報紙業務的根本問題在于，它最重要的功能（報導公共事務）自身在人們（公民，選民）為充分獲得知情權所需要的層次上并不會產生足夠的需求來支持報紙的營運。報紙從來就沒有做到過這一點。長久以來，硬新聞總是受到其他更受歡迎的報紙版面的補貼，比如漫畫、體育、房地產、咨詢欄目和優惠券等等。隨著報紙從印刷版轉移至互聯網，這種補貼正在枯竭，除非發現一些其他形式的補貼，新聞報道將繼續衰減。

????但這幾乎跟受眾的年齡分布沒有任何關系。首先，報紙必須代表整個公民群體——甚至包括那些不讀報的人。然而，從純商業的角度來看，在不逢迎他人的前提下，報紙需要抵達盡可能多的人群（迎合人是市場營銷人員、而不是記者的工作）。有一件事數年前（早在報紙陷入死亡螺旋之前）就已變得非常明朗，那就是，所有年齡段的人正在遠離報紙，轉而選擇廣播、電視和互聯網等渠道了解自己關心的世事。

????為了讓這些人回心轉意，報紙竭盡所能，幾乎采取了一切可以采取的行動。甚至完全沒有希望出現這一幕之后，它們也沒有放棄嘗試。報紙開始迎合，首先是迎合“公眾”，然后是迎合“年輕人”，在營銷部門的激勵下，它們幾乎嘗試了各種各樣可怕的愚蠢行為。在我們中間，真正具有好奇心和公民意識的過去是、現在依然是那些所剩不多、或許依然對報紙感興趣的人。但許多報紙（《華盛頓郵報》肯定是其中一員）大量粗制濫造成堆成堆的流行文化報道，以及沉悶乏味，人為“平衡”的新聞報道，從而使這群人也漸漸失去了閱讀報紙的興致。此外，報紙也一直在削減新聞報道團隊，進而使它的產品對于各個層面的讀者都越來越缺乏吸引力。同樣，所有這一切都發生在報紙發行量和收入開始以驚人的速度驟降（因為人們紛紛涌向互聯網）之前。

????順便說一句，真正具有好奇心和公民意識的往往是一些年齡較大的人，但不一定是老年人。這群人往往具有可觀的可支配收入。但他們卻也正是報紙在狂熱尋求重獲大眾和年輕人注意力的過程中決定舍棄的人。

????"All businesses need to be young forever," Jeff Bezos told Washington Post staffers on Wednesday. "If your customer base ages with you, you're Woolworth's."

????A pithy statement -- glib, even. Not entirely inaccurate, but also not quite accurate, and not anything the Post (WPO) should ever use as a guiding principle. News organizations have repeatedly shown that when they try to chase "the youth demo," they fail miserably. Meanwhile, the Post would actually do well to emulate Woolworth's many decades of success and innovation, while also, of course, avoiding that retailer's eventual fate.

????Post employees lauded Bezos, the founder of Amazon (AMZN) and the Post's incoming owner, for his remarks on Wednesday, vague and platitudinous as they might have been. Any show of genuine optimism from a newspaper owner at this point is bound to be well-received by newspaper employees. And Bezos seems to be genuinely optimistic, if short on specifics. For now, it was enough for him to say that he believes the newspaper business can be saved, and though he didn't say anything about further investments in the Post, he at least indicated that he's not planning any further cuts.

????Nobody, including Bezos, knows yet what will work. The underlying problem for the newspaper business is that its most vital function -- reporting on public affairs -- doesn't by itself generate enough demand to support it at the levels that are needed for the people (citizens, voters) to be adequately informed. It never did -- straight news has always been subsidized by the other, more-popular parts of the newspaper -- comics, sports, real estate, advice columns, coupons, etc. That subsidy is drying up as newspapers shift from print to the Internet, and unless some other form of subsidy is found, news reporting will continue to diminish.

????This has little to do with age demographics, though. First of all, newspapers must work on behalf of the citizenry as a whole -- even including the people who don't read newspapers. From a pure business perspective, though, they need to reach as many people as they can without pandering (pandering being the job of marketers, not journalists). It became clear years ago -- well before newspapers found themselves in a death spiral -- that people of all ages were increasingly turning away from newspapers, favoring radio, TV, and the Internet to keep them as informed about the world as they cared to be.

????Newspapers did everything they could to win those people back, even after it became clear that it wouldn't ever happen. They pandered -- first to the "general public" and then to "the youth demo," with all kinds of terrible, marketing-department-inspired drivel. The truly curious and civic-minded among us were, and remain, the only people left who might still be interested in newspapers, but many newspapers -- the Washington Post definitely among them -- turned them off by cranking out piles of pop-culture coverage and dull, artificially "balanced" news reports. All the while, newspapers were also cutting back on news staff and making their product less and less appealing on every level. Again, this all started before circulation and revenue started plummeting at startling speeds as people piled on to the Internet.

????The truly curious and civic-minded, by the way, tend to be older people. Not necessarily old -- older. And they tend to have disposable income. But those were just the people newspapers decided to forsake in their fevered attempts to regain the attention of the general public and the young.