老牌政論雜誌《新共和》易主 The New Republic Is Sold
Chris Hughes, the owner of The New Republic, said on Friday that he had sold the magazine to Win McCormack, a publisher and editor based in New York and Portland, Ore., who founded the literary quarterly Tin House.
週五，《新共和》(The New Republic)的所有者克里斯·休斯(Chris Hughes)宣佈，他已經把這本雜誌賣給了溫·麥科馬克(Win McCormack)。麥科馬克是在紐約和俄勒岡州波特蘭市工作的出版人和編輯，曾創辦文學季刊《錫房子》(Tin House)。
Mr. McCormack will appoint Hamilton Fish, the publisher of The Washington Spectator and a former publisher of The Nation, to be publisher and editorial director, The New Republic said.
《新共和》稱，麥科馬克將任命《華盛頓觀察家》(The Washington Spectator)的出版人漢密爾頓·菲什(Hamilton Fish)擔任出版人和編輯部主任。菲什也是《國家》(The Nation)的前出版人。
Mr. Hughes, a Facebook founder whose tenure at the magazine was marked by turmoil, including the resignations of multiple employees protesting his decision to replace its top editor, signaled an intention to sell last month. Mr. McCormack’s and Mr. Fish’s backgrounds in journalism and progressive politics, he said, “make them uniquely qualified to lead such a historic institution. I look forward to watching their progress over the years to come.”
休斯是Facebook的創始人之一。該雜誌歸他所有期間充滿動盪，包括多名員工因抗議他更換主編的決定而辭職。上個月，他表明出售雜誌的意向。他說，麥科馬克和菲什在新聞業和進步派政治觀念方面的背景“讓他們特別適合領導這樣一個歷史悠久的機構。我期待未來看到他們的進步”。
The Washington Spectator is a nonprofit liberal publication that, its website says, reports “on the excesses of the public and private sectors that distort our politics and undermine democracy.’’
《華盛頓觀察家》的網站稱，該雜誌是一個非盈利的自由派出版物，報道“公共和私營部門曲解政治、損害民主的過分行爲”。
Mr. McCormack, an active Democratic fund-raiser, is the author of a book that details the sexual indiscretions of Republican politicians who espouse family values. Mr. Fish, who also produces documentary films, comes from a long line of Republican lawmakers. In 1988, he sought the Democratic nomination for the same Westchester County congressional seat his forbears had held, but was defeated.
麥科馬克是一位積極的民主黨募捐人，曾出版過一本書，詳細講述信奉家庭價值觀的共和黨政客們性生活的不檢點。菲什的多位先輩曾是共和黨立法者，他本人也製作紀錄片。1988年，他曾謀求獲得韋斯特切斯特縣議會的民主黨提名——他的多位先輩曾擁有該縣議會的席位——但是失敗了。
The magazine did not make Mr. McCormack, Mr. Fish or Mr. Hughes available for interviews, or disclose the terms of the sale. But Mr. McCormack said in a statement that he intended to stay true to The New Republic’s traditions and preserve “the journal as an important voice in a new debate over how the basic principles of liberalism can be reworked to meet the equally demanding challenges of our era.”
該雜誌沒有提供採訪麥科馬克、菲什或休斯的機會，也沒有透露這次出售的具體條款。但是麥科馬克在一項聲明中表示，他打算忠於《新共和》的傳統，令“這本雜誌在如何修訂自由主義的基本原則、迎接我們這個時代同樣苛刻的挑戰這一新的爭論中，始終作爲一個重要的聲音存在”。
The sale caps a troubled four years at the helm for Mr. Hughes. When he bought the magazine many hoped that the combination of his Silicon Valley experience and the storied history of the publication — which has published George Orwell, Virginia Woolf and Philip Roth, and has a reputation for producing talented editors and writers — would prove formidable.
休斯執掌這本雜誌的四年麻煩不斷，這次出售做了個了結。他買下這本雜誌時，很多人希望他的硅谷經驗和著名的出版歷史——他曾出版過喬治·奧威爾(George Orwell)、弗吉尼亞·伍爾夫(Virginia Woolf)和菲利普·羅思(Philip Roth)的書——會讓他取得巨大的成功。
Instead, a new chief executive he installed clashed with the magazine’s editor, Franklin Foer. When word got out in late 2014 that Mr. Hughes had decided to name a new top editor, Mr. Foer resigned and was followed by a dozen staff employees and dozens of contributing editors, forcing The New Republic to cancel an issue.
但實際情況是，他安排的新任首席執行官與雜誌主編富蘭克林·福爾(Franklin Foer)不和。2014年底，當休斯決定任命一位新主編的消息傳出後，福爾辭職，十幾名員工和幾十名特約編輯也跟着辭職，當期的《新共和》因此無法出版。
In a letter last month announcing his intention to sell, Mr. Hughes said that he had spent more than $20 million on the magazine, but had “underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate.”
上個月，休斯通過一封公開信宣佈出售意向，他說自己在這本雜誌上花費了2000多萬美元，但是“低估了在如今快速變化的時代把一個古老傳統的機構轉變成數字媒體公司的難度”。
Shortly after Mr. Hughes released that letter, the magazine’s current top editor, Gabriel Snyder, posted a message on Twitter saying that the magazine’s staff was “focused on what we do every day: trying to make great journalism.”
休斯發佈這封信之後不久，雜誌現任主編加布裏埃爾·斯奈德(Gabriel Snyder)在Twitter上發了一條消息，稱該雜誌的員工正“集中精力在做我們每天都在做的事情：努力做出偉大的新聞”。
One of Google’s driverless cars has been involved in an accident for the first time in a situation where human drivers rely on the normal social etiquette of the road to avoid scrapes, according to an accident report filed in California.
美國加州一份交通事故報告顯示，谷歌(Google)無人駕駛汽車首次捲入人類駕駛員依據避免刮蹭的常規道路交通禮儀可避免的交通事故。
The incident highlights the challenges of programming machines to deal with the sort of social situations that humans encounter every day on the roads, but which are beyond robots to resolve, experts said.
專家表示，這起事故凸顯出了智能設備在應對各類社會場景方面面臨的挑戰，這些社會場景是人類每天在路上都會遇到的，但它們卻超出了機器人的解決能力範圍。
It also threatens to cast an unflattering light on the technology at a time when Google is fighting a proposed California rule requiring autonomous vehicles to have human drivers on hand to override their controls in emergencies.
這起事故還有可能對谷歌的無人駕駛技術帶來負面影響。眼下，谷歌正在與加州的一項法規草案作鬥爭，該法規要求無人駕駛汽車必須配有人類駕駛員，以便在緊急情況下以手動方式控制汽車。
However, the company suggested that the accident would have occurred even if a human had been at the wheel, while adding that it had already adjusted its algorithms to take account of the lessons from the scrape.
但谷歌暗示，即使人類駕駛員當時接管了汽車的控制權，這起事故依然會發生。該公司還表示，已從這起剮蹭事故中吸取了教訓，並據此調整了其算法。
“There are all sorts of social clues that people abide by that are hard to program into a car,” said Jerry Kaplan, a serial technology entrepreneur and author of a recent book on robotics. “There was nothing terrible about this, no one got hurt or killed. But it will be a long time before the cars can be driven in heavily used streets and abide by the same social conventions people use.”
連續創建多家科技企業的傑裏•卡普蘭(Jerry Kaplan)表示：“人類遵循的一些形形色色的社會線索，很難被編入汽車程序。這曾經沒什麼可怕的，沒人因此受傷或死亡。不過，現在距無人駕駛汽車在繁忙的街道上行駛並遵守人類遵守的社會習俗，還有很長一段時間。”卡普蘭近期出版了一本有關機器人的著作。
In a filing with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, Google said its car had been trying to pull out into slow-moving traffic on Valentine’s Day when a bus driver did not slow to leave room, causing a minor collision.
谷歌在提交給加州機動車輛管理局(Department of Motor Vehicles)的一份文件中表示，情人節這天，當一輛谷歌無人駕駛汽車試圖變道併入緩慢移動的車流時，一名大巴司機並沒有減速留出空間，導致兩輛車發生輕微碰撞。
In a blog post on Monday, it blamed the accident on a “tricky set of circumstances” caused partly by an adjustment it had made to the car’s algorithms weeks earlier to help it drive more like a human.
在週一發表的一篇博文中，谷歌將這起事故歸咎於“一系列棘手的情況”，而這些情況在一定程度上是由幾周前谷歌對無人駕駛汽車算法做的調整導致的，那次調整旨在使其汽車的駕駛方式更像人類駕駛。
“This is a classic example of the negotiation that’s a normal part of driving — we’re all trying to predict each other’s movements,” the company said. “We clearly bear some responsibility.” However, it also said that a Google employee in the car had also believed there was room to pull out.
“這是一個關於協商的典型例子，而這種協商是駕駛的一個正常組成部分——我們都試圖在預判對方的運動。”谷歌稱，“我們顯然負有部分責任。”但它還表示，當時坐在車內的谷歌員工也相信有空間可以併線。
The car had pulled close to the side of the road to make a turn, leaving room for other vehicles that were carrying on straight ahead to pass in the same lane — a manoeuvre Google said it had programmed into the car to make it a more considerate driver.
當時爲了轉彎，這輛汽車已靠近路邊行駛，爲同一車道內仍保持直行的其他車輛讓出空間——谷歌表示，它已將這種機動動作編入汽車程序，以使其成爲一個更顧及他人的駕駛者。
After finding its path was blocked by sandbags that had been placed round a drain, the car was forced to move back out into the line of traffic, causing the accident.
在發現前方道路被一堆沙袋（堆放在一條下水道周圍）阻擋後，這輛谷歌汽車不得不駛回車流當中，由此造成了這起事故。
Google said it had already programmed lessons from the accident into its software, along with its findings from running simulations of thousands of similar situations.
谷歌表示，它已將該事故教訓寫入其軟件中，一併寫入的還有從對數千個類似情形的模擬中得出的研究發現。
