立志报道全球科技新闻的初创媒体 Rest of World 正在四处寻找新的归宿，否则将面临关闭的前景。
The globally-minded tech news startup Rest of World is scrambling to find a new home — or faces the prospect of shutting down.
这家成立六年的数字媒体发现，其赖以生存的社交媒体和网络搜索流量已大幅消失。这种急剧下降促使该组织的创始人兼主要资金支持者 Sophie Schmidt 为其未来寻找其他出路。
The six-year-old digital publication has seen the social and web search traffic on which it depends evaporate. This sharp decline has prompted the organization’s founder and primary financial backer, Sophie Schmidt, to explore other options for its future.
据一位知情人士透露，近几个月来，Schmidt 已与多家大型机构进行了洽谈，探讨由这些机构吸收 Rest of World 的可能性。但尽管与潜在合作伙伴的对话仍在继续，该组织也在为更糟糕的结果做准备。两位知情人士向 Semafor 透露，该组织已选定在 1 月下旬作为出版业务的停摆日期，这一应急预案旨在确保员工获得离职补偿，并给他们留出寻找新工作的时间。
In recent months, Schmidt has held conversations with what one person familiar with the situation described as several large institutions about potentially absorbing Rest of World. But while conversations with potential partners are ongoing, the organization is also preparing for a grimmer outcome. Two people familiar with the plans told Semafor that the organization has selected a wind-down date for the publication in late January, a contingency intended to ensure employees receive exit packages and to give them a chance to look for new jobs if they so choose.
据《纽约时报》报道，Schmidt 在预料到此事将被报道之际，在给捐赠者的一封邮件中写道，Rest of World 将在 1 月底“作为一个独立实体停止出版”。
Schmidt wrote in an email to donors, in anticipation of this report, that Rest of World will “cease publishing as a standalone entity” at the end of January, according to The New York Times.
Schmidt 拒绝置评。一位了解她想法的人士告诉 Semafor，虽然 Schmidt 为该组织的员工和新闻工作感到自豪，但她私下里已承认，受众的减少削弱了 Rest of World 的影响力。
Schmidt declined to comment. One person familiar with her thinking told Semafor that while Schmidt is proud of the organization’s staff and journalism, she has privately conceded that the decline in audience has lessened Rest of World’s impact.
Rest of World 于 2020 年创立，怀揣着一个雄心勃勃的目标：通过讲述主流美国新闻媒体往往忽视的全球科技故事，来改变西方视角。创立几个月后，Schmidt 曾向《华尔街日报》表示，该媒体是她的“毕生事业”，并承诺将投入 6000 万美元资金。
Rest of World launched in 2020 with an ambitious goal: to shift Western perspectives by telling global stories about technology often ignored by the mainstream US news outlets. A few months into its launch, Schmidt described the outlet as her “life’s project,” and told The Wall Street Journal that she would commit $60 million to it.
该媒体最初以非营利组织形式成立，早期资金主要来自施密特，而非广告或订阅收入——聘用了数十名记者，并建立起一个快速响应的自由职业者网络。《Rest of World》曾获得一些好评，并爆出多篇重磅报道，推动了全球政策变化，其中包括关于南非 Uber Eats 的报道，以及关于婆罗洲农村地区制图的报道。但在过去 18 个月里，其命运开始发生转折。
The outlet — initially organized as a nonprofit and funded at first largely by Schmidt, rather than advertising or subscriptions — hired dozens of journalists and built out a fast network of freelancers. Rest of World received some critical acclaim and broke several stories that prompted global policy changes, including its reporting on Uber Eats in South Africa and on mapping in rural Borneo. But over the last 18 months, its fortunes began to shift.
特朗普第二任期伊始，《Rest of World》的在线网站流量急剧下降，引发管理层担忧，并迫使其争夺留住受众。该机构将优先级转向西方读者，试图加强与最有可能付费订阅的受众群体的联系。但这些举措似乎都未能阻止该出版物读者流失的趋势。
Around the beginning of the second Trump administration, Rest of World saw a sharp decline in online web traffic, prompting concern from its leadership and a scramble to hold onto its audiences. The organization reprioritized Western readers in an attempt to sharpen its connection with the audience most likely to None of the moves seemed to stop the publication from hemorrhaging readership.
内部人士指出，这是困扰众多在线出版商的行业普遍性流量问题，包括 Meta 决定降低新闻文章链接的优先级，以及聊天机器人和 AI 摘要的兴起，这些因素重创了搜索流量。《Rest of World》也未能利用因特朗普和美国政治而带来的媒体关注度上升获益。
Insiders cited broad industry-wide online traffic problems plaguing numerous online publishers, including Meta’s decision to deprioritize links to news articles and the rise of chatbots and AI summaries, which have decimated search traffic. It also wasn’t positioned to take advantage of increases in media attention tied to Trump and US politics.
但该组织领导层也将下滑归因于科技圈内部向右的更深层文化转变。一位高级负责人表示，他们认为此前认同自由派价值观、渴望阅读全球新闻的科技新闻读者，已对新闻媒体感到幻灭，现在更倾向于以内向型播客、YouTube 节目和聊天机器人输出作为信息来源。
But the organization’s leaders also attributed the decline to a deeper cultural shift to the right within the tech community. One senior leader at the organization said they believe tech news readers who previously expressed liberal values and an appetite for consuming global journalism have grown disillusioned with the news media, and now prefer an information diet of inward-looking podcasts, YouTube shows, and chatbot outputs.
《Rest of World》的受众困境并非孤例。此前主要生产文字内容的媒体公司，发现自己正忙于适应一个由短视频和长视频消费主导的世界。许多公司的反应是收缩战线，专注于培育利基受众。
Rest of World’s audience struggles are not unique. Media companies that previously largely produced written content have found themselves scrambling to adapt to a world dominated by short- and long-form video consumption. Many have reacted by retreating, focusing on cultivating niche audiences.
这种受众碎片化在科技媒体领域表现得最为明显，该领域日益由决策者本人拥有的、在很大程度上唯唯诺诺的媒体机构所主导。新一代科技新闻消费者已背弃《连线》和 The Verge 等媒体，转而青睐自我吹捧或友好关系的播客、通讯和 X 账号。
Nowhere is this audience fragmentation clearer than in tech media, which is increasingly dominated by largely sycophantic media outlets owned by the decisionmakers themselves. A new generation of tech news consumers have turned their backs on the likes of Wired and The Verge in favor of self-congratulatory or friendly podcasts, newsletters, and X accounts.
像 Rest of World 这样依赖制作成本高昂、发布频率相对较低的深度报道的媒体机构举步维艰。然而，由前谷歌 CEO 后裔创办的新闻机构却倒在了大型科技公司给互联网带来的变革之下，这其中充满了黑色的讽刺意味。
Outlets like Rest of World, that rely on expensive-to-produce stories published somewhat infrequently, have struggled. It is, however, darkly ironic that the news organization launched by the scion of the former Google CEO has fallen victim to the changes Big Tech brought to the internet.