地方報退場 美面臨全國性危機

School board and city council meetings are going uncovered. Overstretched reporters receive promising tips about stories but have no time to follow up. Newspapers publish fewer pages or less frequently or, in hundreds of cases across the country, have shuttered completely.

學校董事會和市議會開會沒人採訪報導。忙不過來的記者們收到頗有搞頭的內幕消息，卻沒時間去追蹤。報紙減少發行張數或日數，全國更有數百家完全停刊。

All of this has added up to a crisis in local news coverage in the United States that has frayed communities and left many Americans woefully uninformed, according to a report by PEN America released last month.

根據美國筆會上個月發布的報告，這一切構成了美國地方新聞報導的危機，讓各社區感到緊張，並使許多美國人資訊嚴重不足。

“A vibrant, responsive democracy requires enlightened citizens, and without forceful local reporting they are kept in the dark,” the report said. “At a time when political polarization is increasing and fraudulent news is spreading, a shared fact-based discourse on the issues that most directly affect us is more essential and more elusive than ever.”

報告中說：「一個有活力、能反應的民主國家需要有開明的公民，少了強有力的地方新聞報導，他們會受到蒙蔽。在政治兩極分化加劇、欺騙性新聞不斷傳播的此際，針對最直接影響我們的問題，共同進行基於事實的討論，比以往任何時候更來得重要，也更難掌握。」

The report, “Losing the News: The Decimation of Local Journalism and the Search for Solutions,” paints a grim picture of the state of local news in every region of the country. The prelude is familiar to journalists: As print advertising revenue has plummeted, thousands of newspapers have been forced to cut costs, reduce their staffs or otherwise close.

這份名為《失去中的新聞：地方新聞的大量消亡與解決之策》的報告，描繪了全國各地區地方新聞嚴峻的處境，而前言對記者們來說是熟悉的，即隨著印刷廣告收入驟降，數千家報紙被迫削減成本、裁員或是關門。

And while the disruption has hampered the ability of newsrooms to fully cover communities, it also has damaged political and civic life in the United States, the report says, leaving many people without access to crucial information about where they live.

報告稱，這種情形阻礙了編輯部全面報導社區新聞的能力，同時也損傷了美國的政治和公民生活，使許多人無法獲得有關他們居住地的重要資訊。

“That first draft of history is not being written — it has completely disappeared,” said Suzanne Nossel, chief executive of PEN America, a nonprofit organization that celebrates literature and free expression. “That’s what is so chilling about this crisis.”

美國筆會是推展文學與表達自由的非營利組織，執行長蘇珊．諾塞爾說：「歷史初稿沒有在撰寫，它已經完全消失了。這就是這場危機令人不寒而慄之處。」

The authors of the report spoke to dozens of journalists, elected officials and activists, who described how cutbacks in local newsrooms have left communities in the dark and have failed to keep public and corporate officials accountable.

報告的作者群採訪了數十名新聞從業人員、民選官員及社運人士，這些人描述地方新聞媒體編輯部門的縮減，是如何使得社區無法獲知實情，無法讓公部門與民間企業的人員負起應負的責任。

In 2017, when work on the PEN project began, researchers planned to call it “News Deserts,” examining pockets of the country where local news was scarce. But the more research the group did, the more it realized that the original scope was inadequate: Since 2004, more than 1,800 local print outlets have shuttered in the United States, and at least 200 counties have no newspaper at all.

2017年，當美國筆會的計畫展開時，研究人員打算稱之為「新聞沙漠」，檢視國內那些地方新聞機構稀少的地方。但是，研究做得越多，團隊越意識到原來設定的範圍太小了：自從2004年以來，美國有1,800多家地方印刷媒體關門了，至少有200個郡根本沒有地方報紙。

“This was a national crisis,” Nossel said. “This was not about a few isolated areas that were drying up.”

Many Americans are completely unaware that local news is suffering.

許多美國人完全不知道地方新聞正遭逢苦難。根 According to a Pew survey earlier this year, 71% of Americans believe that their local news outlets are doing well financially. But, according to that report, only 14% say they have paid for or donated money to a local news source in the past year.

據今年稍早皮尤研究中心的一項調查，有71%美國人認為他們的地方新聞媒體財務狀況良好，僅14％表示過去一年曾付費或捐錢給地方新聞媒體。

※說文解字看新聞

在新媒體時代下，地方報刊撐不過報業寒冬陸續宣布停刊，而慘況在海內外皆然，是個不可阻擋的全球趨勢，而文中首段單字tip意指「內幕新聞」，並非「小費」這個一般常見之意思，又第二段單字coverage則指的是「新聞報導」，深入報導的英文說成in-depth coverage，動詞型態則為cover。

此外，除newsroom外，編輯部也可說成editorial staff、editorial office或是a copy desk，而outlet一字意指「出口、出處」，文中末段提到的local news outlet意思則跟local news source相似，均意指「地方新聞媒體」。

而片語keep someone in the dark指的是「蒙蔽某人、將某人蒙在鼓裡」，其中動詞也可用leave代替，keep someone accountable則意指「讓某人負責」，另外paint a grim picture of則用來形容某一事物的嚴峻局面。

紐約市圖擴充吳爾芙主題館藏

In 1907, Virginia Woolf sent her sister, Vanessa Bell, a mock proclamation in honor of her wedding, written by an imaginary bestiary of well-wishers named Billy, Bartholomew, Mungo and Wombat.

1907年，維吉尼亞．吳爾芙送給胞姐凡妮莎．貝爾一份紀念她婚禮的打油啟事，發文者是名為比利、巴薩羅謬、蒙戈和翁巴特（袋熊） 的虛構寓言動物。

“We the undersigned three Apes and a Wombat wish to make known to you our great grief and joy at the news you intend to marry,” they wrote, before going on to celebrate the discovery of a new kind of ape “who can both talk and marry you.”

牠們寫道：「簽名於後的我們這三隻猿猴和一隻袋熊，想要對您打算結婚的消息深致悲傷和喜悅之情，」並接著慶賀發現了一種「能說話並娶妳」的新猿類。

“We have examined his fur and find it of fine quality, red and golden at the tips, with an undergrowth of soft down, excellent for winter,” they declared. “We find him clean, merry and sagacious, a wasteful eater and fond of fossils.”

牠們宣稱：「我們檢查了牠的皮毛並發現質地良好，毛端呈紅色與金色，下層生有軟絨，極宜過冬。我們發現他乾淨、快樂和聰明，是浪費食物的人並喜歡化石。」

The letter is part of a private collection of 153 Woolf-related items assembled over several decades by collector William Beekman. Now, it has landed at the New York Public Library, where it will join some 3,700 other Woolf materials in the library’s Berg Collection of English and American Literature.

這封信原屬收藏家威廉·比克曼，是他數十年來153件跟吳爾芙有關私人收藏品中的一件。現在，它已歸屬紐約公共圖書館，將加入該館伯格英美文學館另外3700件左右吳爾芙資料的行列。

Carolyn Vega, the curator at the Berg, called the acquisition a milestone, if not quite a capstone, which gives the library plausible bragging rights to having the world’s most complete and important collection of Woolf materials.

伯格英美文學館館長卡洛琳．維加表示，此一收購即使不能完全稱為合頂石，也具里程碑意義，讓圖書館足以誇稱擁有世上最完整與最重要的吳爾芙資料收藏。

“At about 150 pieces, it isn’t giant,” she said of the newly acquired trove. “But there is something unique or exceptional about everything in the collection. There is no filler here.”

她談到新收購的藏品時說：「約有150件，不算太多，但件件都有獨特不凡之處，沒有一件是拿來充數的。」

The library’s Woolf collection began in 1958, when it acquired her diaries directly from her husband, Leonard. Today, it includes draft materials of all her works of fiction, as well as some 3,000 pieces of correspondence.

該館的吳爾芙收藏始於1958年，當時直接從她的丈夫李歐納德處取得她的日記。時至今日，已藏有它她所有小說作品的原稿，以及約3000封信。

The new acquisition, whose price the library is not disclosing, adds roughly 100 letters to that count, including eight from Leonard and Vanessa to Vita Sackville-West, Woolf’s friend and sometime lover, regarding her disappearance and suicide on March 28, 1941. (Not all of those letters have been fully published, Vega said.)

這次未透露價格的新收購，約使圖書館增加了100封信，包括李歐納德跟凡妮莎所寫，寄給吳爾芙的朋友且曾為其情人的薇塔·薩維爾威斯特的8封信，談到有關她的失蹤以及1941年3月28日的自殺。（維加表示，並非所有信件都已完整發表。）

There are also previously unpublished photographs and ephemera, like Woolf’s passport, and first editions of her books, some of them inscribed to friends and family.

另外還有未曾發表過的照片，吳爾芙的護照等僅供一時所需的物件，以及她的初版作品，其中有些題贈給親友。

The Berg already owns the walking stick Woolf carried the day she drowned, which it acquired in 2002. But the new material also includes records of lighthearted moments, like an unpublished photograph showing a smiling Woolf and her brother-in-law, Clive Bell, on a beach in 1910.

伯格英美文學館已擁有吳爾芙溺死當天所持拐杖，於2002年取得。而新資料還包括輕鬆時刻的記錄，像是一張吳爾芙跟姐夫克萊夫．貝爾1910年在海灘上留下的微笑照片。

“It shows a side of her we don’t necessarily first go to, when we think of this great modernist writer,” Vega said. “It brings out a dynamic picture of who Virginia Woolf was.”

維加說：「它展示另一面向，這是我們想到這位偉大現代主義作家時，未必會立刻浮現的，展示了維吉尼亞．吳爾芙的動態樣貌。」