Anyone who thinks the news business is dead should look at the wire services. Privately owned Bloomberg is adding 950 staff, 100 of them journalists, an almost 10 per cent expansion. News Corp is cutting jobs at the Wall Street Journal, but adding them at Dow Jones news wires. Nor is this hiring spree mere bravura. While newspaper groups such as the New York Times and Independent News and Media are having to fight for survival, the wires are buzzing. London-listed shares of information group Thomson Reuters, for example, are at the same level as last May, when the merger of Reuters and Thomson closed. Since then, the FTSE has dropped 35 per cent.
那些認為新聞業務已衰亡的人們應該去看一看通訊社。私人持股的彭博(Bloomberg)將增聘950名員工，其中有100名記者，擴張幅度接近10%。新聞集團(News Corp)正在裁減《華爾街日報》(Wall Street Journal)的職位，但卻在道瓊斯(Dow Jones)通訊社增聘人手。這種招聘熱潮并非僅僅是炫耀勇氣。盡管《紐約時報》(New York Times)和Independent News and Media等報紙集團目前不得不為生存而掙扎，但通訊社卻蓬勃發展。例如，在倫敦上市的信息集團湯姆森路透(Thomson Reuters)目前的股價與去年5月份的水平相當，當時路透與湯姆森的合并交易剛剛完成。自那以后，富時指數(FTSE)已累計下跌35%。