????凡是關心新聞業公共服務功能的人，在聽到亞馬遜（Amazon）創始人杰夫?貝佐斯將收購《華爾街郵報》（Washington Post）的驚人消息之后，第一反應肯定是謹慎的樂觀。

????如今，整個報紙行業正面臨大規模的痛苦轉型。在這樣混亂的大背景下，執掌《華爾街郵報》80多年的格雷厄姆家族顯然已經無力繼續經營它最成功的資產。非家族性報業公司尤其如此，他們更多受惠于投資者和債權持有人。對于這些公司而言，為了取悅股東，償付債務，即使公司的收入已經跌至谷底，短期財務目標的重要性仍然遠遠高于投資未來。但報紙行業既想實現盈利，又想與時俱進，就需要對未來進行投資。

????貝佐斯此次收購《華盛頓郵報》與亞馬遜無關。貝佐斯已經證明自己是一位眼光長遠的戰略家。他將放棄眼前的利潤（這將令華爾街的許多人大失所望），以持續改善服務、獲得市場份額，同時保持消費者的忠誠度。【這宗交易將不包括Slate.com、《外交政策》（Foreign Policy）和TheRoot.com，但將包括多家地方性報紙。】

????當然，我們無從知曉貝佐斯會如何處理這家公司，但他肯定會進行投資，而不是像《論壇報》（Tribune）和先進出版公司（Advance）等其他報業公司那樣，簡單通過削減成本（和質量）獲取短期利潤。其他許多報業公司通常會打著進入報紙行業新時代的幌子，謀取短期利益。

????貝佐斯認為，沒有人知道未來五到十年報紙行業的新時代會是什么樣子。報紙行業的未來將取決于像他一樣的人。他在一份聲明中稱：

????“互聯網幾乎改變了報紙行業的方方面面：它縮短了新聞周期，侵蝕了長期可靠的收入來源，同時產生了新的競爭，而且其中許多競爭對手根本無需承擔、或只需要承擔很少的新聞采集成本。報紙行業的發展沒有路線圖，要畫出一條路來并不容易。我們需要創新，這意味著我們必須不斷嘗試。”

????而嘗試就意味著投入，同時接受更低的利潤率。報業公司大都習慣了20世紀后期和21世紀初的高利潤率。貝佐斯對此當然心知肚明——那他為什么還要來趟這潭渾水呢？

????去年，貝佐斯層對《財富》雜志（Fortune）表示：“亞馬遜堅持三個大的理念：長遠思考、客戶至上和愿意創新。”將“客戶至上”換成“讀者至上”，便是報紙行業面對高度不確定的未來時所需要堅守的理念。

????For anyone who cares about the public-service function of journalism, guarded optimism should be the first reaction to the astonishing news that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will buy the Washington Post.

????It's clear that the Graham family, which has run the Post (WPO) for 80 years, was increasingly unable to shepherd its flagship property through the chaos of the massive, wrenching transformation the newspaper industry is undergoing. This is even more true of many newspaper chains that aren't family-controlled and are more beholden to investors and debt-holders. For them, meeting short-term financial goals in order to please stockholders or pay off debts -- even as revenue is falling through the floor -- is a much bigger priority than investing in the future, which is what the industry needs to do if it is to remain not only profitable, but socially relevant.

????Bezos, who will own the Post independently from Amazon (AMZN), has proven himself to be a long-term thinker, forgoing profits today (to the dismay of many on Wall Street) in order to continually improve service, gain market share and secure the loyalty of customers. (Slate.com,Foreign Policy, and TheRoot.com aren't part of the deal, though some regional papers are.)

????Of course, it's impossible to know what Bezos might be able to do with the company, but it seems a safe bet that he's going to invest rather than simply wring it for profits in the short term by cutting costs (and quality), as other newspaper companies like Tribune and Advance have done, often under the pretense of forging ahead into the new era of newspapering.

????Bezos seems to recognize that nobody has any idea what the new era of newspapering might look like five or 10 years hence. It's up to people like him to find out. He said in a statement:

????"The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment."

????And to experiment will mean to spend money and accept much lower profit margins than the ones most newspaper publishers had gotten used to in the latter part of the 20th century and into the 21st. Bezos surely knows this -- why else would he bother?

????Last year, Bezos told Fortune: "The three big ideas at Amazon are long-term thinking, customer obsession, and willingness to invent." Replace "customer" with "reader" and those are just the ideas the newspaper industry needs to adhere to as the highly uncertain future unfolds.