????“我們收購了《新聞周刊》（Newsweek）！”

????IBT傳媒集團首席執行官艾蒂安?尤扎克上周末在Twitter上發布了上面這條微博。他無疑被本周一下午宣布收購《華盛頓郵報》（ Washington Post）的杰夫?貝佐斯搶了風頭。不過，不管怎么說，《新聞周刊》是美國的大牌雜志，但卻被一家大家可能從來沒有聽說過的公司收購了。然而，盡管他新收購的《新聞周刊》名頭很響，尤扎克的這條微博卻并沒有引起多大反響，只有IBT旗艦網站IBTimes.com的執行編輯忠誠地轉發了一次。

????尤扎克和他的聯合創始人喬納森?戴維斯渴望引領數字媒體革命。他們以IBTimes.com為網址的旗艦網站《國際商業時報》（International Business Times）在媒體評測與網絡分析公司Quantcast監測的1百萬個URL網址中流量排名前0.02％。這個旗艦網站聲稱在美國擁有700萬受眾，而在全球范圍內擁有1,300萬受眾。但是，我周一上午把尤扎克添加到我的Twitter關注名單中時，我發現自己只是他的第51位粉絲

????他倆居然希望挽救美國新聞行業有史以來最有名的機構之一，在華盛頓郵報公司（這家公司曾經擁有《新聞周刊》多年）、蒂娜?布朗、巴里?迪勒相繼失敗之后獲得成功。這兩個家伙究竟是何方神圣呢？

????尤扎克在8月7日剛過30歲生日，那天適逢他登上維基百科一周年。他在法國和南非長大，持法國護照，曾在倫敦經濟學院（London School of Economics）學習地理學和經濟學，他在那里開始著迷于新的全球主義論。尤扎克在接受《財富》雜志（Fortune）采訪時說：“我們花了大量的時間去討論美國和歐洲仍在持續增長，但是它們的增長速度遠不如金磚四國。我看到了一個機會，那就是為非西方國家提供大量信息。”

????他的合伙人、目前擔任IBT首席內容官的喬納森?戴維斯是美國人，現在31歲。戴維斯曾在美國加州大學洛杉磯分校（UCLA）攻讀計算機工程專業學士學位，之后在硅谷工作了多年。（戴維斯更受歡迎些，他在Twitter上擁有77名粉絲，但他在一年前退出了Twitter。），他倆在2006年利用個人儲蓄以及美國小型企業管理局（SBA）提供的銀行貸款聯合創辦了一家后來發展成為IBT傳媒集團的公司，沒有接受來自風投機構的投入，包括融資或者咨詢服務。他們表示，公司自2010年以來一直盈利。IBT傳媒集團總部設在紐約，在印度班加羅爾、中國上海和澳大利亞悉尼設有辦事處。編輯員工總人數約150人。

????一些媒體報道尤扎克和戴維斯與舊金山偉仁大學（Olivet University）創始人張在亨有私交，而且在經濟上有所關聯。張在亨是一位有爭議的人物。據福音派基督徒雜志《今日基督教》（Christianity Today）報道，他或許認為，也或許并不認為，自己是基督耶穌的第二次降臨，但他的許多追隨者顯然都堅信他是。

????尤扎克和戴維斯竭盡全力撇清他們與張在亨的關系。他們否認除了他們自己以外有其他任何人在IBT傳媒集團持有股份。他倆都通過在愛德曼國際公關公司的發言人承認與偉仁大學（Olivet University）存在一些聯系，但這種聯系一向是“非正式的，而且不涉及酬勞。IBT傳媒集團的評論都是100％獨立的，而且堅持行事的最高質量。”

????尤扎克最近接受旗下IBTimes.com的一次采訪中表示，他“希望該網站能夠呼應在紐約和倫敦已經確立地位的商業傳媒，同時成為一個全球化企業,。”這將意味著這個集團設定的業務范圍相當廣泛，同時側重于可以產生流量的那些令人興奮的新聞。它既有原創報道，比如周二早上有關CVS公司“表現出眾的第二季度財報”的重要報道；此外還有像《赫芬頓郵報》（HuffPost）那樣從其他新聞機構那里轉載的內容，包括一些商業角度不明顯的新聞報道。比如，路透社（Reuters）在2011年7月12日提供了一篇新聞報道：《加州女子割斷丈夫陰莖，說他活該》。戴維斯非常喜歡這篇報道，還在Twitter上轉發了這篇報道。

????"We acquired Newsweek!!!"

????So tweeted Etienne Uzac, CEO of IBT Media, over the weekend. He was certainly upstaged Monday afternoon when Jeff Bezos announced he was buying the Washington Post. Still, Newsweek is a big name, especially to be acquired by a company you've probably never heard of. And yet despite his new media property's high profile, Uzac's tweet was a dud, retweeted exactly once, loyally, by the managing editor of IBT's flagship website, IBTimes.com.

????Uzac and his co-founder, Johnathan Davis, aspire to leadership of the digital media revolution. Their flagship website -- International Business Times, at IBTimes.com -- is among the top 0.02% of the 1,000,000 URLs monitored by Quantcast; it claims an online audience of over 7 million in the U.S. and 13 million worldwide. But when I added Uzac to my Twitter list Monday morning, I became only his 51st follower.

????Who are these guys who hope to salvage one of the most storied institutions in American journalism, and so succeed where the Post (which owned Newsweek for years), Tina Brown, and Barry Diller failed?

????Uzac, the CEO, turns 30 on August 7, on the one-year anniversary of his Wikipedia listing. He grew up in France and South Africa, carries a French passport, and studied geography and economics at the London School of Economics, where he became entranced with the new globalism. "We talked a lot about how the U.S. and Europe were still rising but not as fast as the BRICS," Uzac tells Fortune. "I saw an opportunity to serve these non-Western countries with great information."

????His partner and IBT's chief content officer is Johnathan Davis, a 31-year-old American who studied computer engineering as an undergraduate at UCLA and did time in Silicon Valley. (Davis is more popular: He has 77 followers, but he quit tweeting a year ago.) Together they launched what became IBT Media in 2006, with personal savings, a SBA bank loan, and no input, financial or advisory, from VCs. They say they've been profitable since 2010. Headquarters are in New York, with offices in Bangalore, Shanghai, and Sidney. Total editorial employees: about 150.

????Some reports have tied Uzac and Davis, personally and financially, to David Jang, founder of San Francisco-based Olivet University. Jang is a controversial figure. He may or may not believe that he's the second coming of Christ, according to an investigation by the evangelical magazineChristianity Today, but apparently many of his followers are convinced that he is.

????Uzac and Davis take pains to distance themselves from Jang. They deny that anyone other than themselves has ever held equity in IBT Media. Both acknowledge through their spokesperson at Edelman that they have ties to Olivet University but that they've always been "informal and unpaid ... IBT Media's editorial is 100% independent and adheres to the highest quality of conduct."

????In a recent interview with his own IBTimes.com, Uzac said he "hopes the site will become a global answer to the 'established business media' in New York and London." That would be business broadly defined, with an eye for sparkly headlines that generate traffic. There is original reporting, like Tuesday morning's lead story on CVS's "seriously good second quarter." And a lot of HuffPost-style pick-ups from other news organizations, including some where the business angle is not obvious. This July 12, 2011 dispatch, for instance, courtesy of Reuters: "California Woman Cuts off Husband's Penis, Says He Deserved it." Davis liked that story so much he tweeted it.?