Above my desk hangs an engraving of an island. It depicts a still-young city in a still-young nation. Its cobblestone streets are lined with squat buildings, none taller than a church spire. No bridges or tunnels in sight, schooners and paddle-steam ferries crowd a shoreline bustling with working piers. This is New York City in 1851.
我的办公桌上方挂着一幅版画，描绘的是一座岛屿。画中呈现的是一个仍然年轻的国家里一座仍然年轻的城市。鹅卵石街道两旁是一座座低矮的建筑，没有一座高过教堂的尖顶。放眼望去，既无桥梁也无隧道，纵帆船与明轮蒸汽渡轮挤满岸边，码头上一片繁忙。这是1851年的纽约。
On Sept. 18 of that year, at the south end of the island, on Nassau Street, the newspaper we know today as The New York Times published its first issue. Put together in unfinished lofts by candlelight, it consisted of four dense, colorless pages of text. It sold for a penny.
那年9月18日，在该岛最南端的拿骚街上，一份日后我们称之为《纽约时报》的报纸发行了它的创刊号。它是在尚未完工的阁楼里借着烛光排印而成，总共四个版，密密麻麻、灰扑扑的全是字。售价一便士。
On Friday, The New York Times turns 175. Over the past several months, I’ve found myself drawn to that engraving on my office wall. How unlikely it is that a newspaper born before indoor electricity — let alone cars, radio, telephones, planes and computers — is still here. And how fortunate The Times is to have witnessed and chronicled and interrogated so much history in all those years.
周五，《纽约时报》迎来175岁生日。过去几个月，我发现自己总被办公室墙上那幅版画吸引。这份报纸诞生于室内尚未通电的时代——更遑论汽车、广播、电话、飞机和电脑——竟能延续至今，这是多么难得的事。而《纽约时报》能在这漫长岁月中见证、记录并探究如此多的历史，又是多么幸运。
At The Times, we believe the job of a newspaper is to seek the truth, to help people understand the world and to hold the powerful to account. This means equipping people with the information they need to make decisions. It means bonding our diverse communities with a fuller understanding of the lives, hopes and concerns of our neighbors. It means asking tough questions of government and business leaders on the public’s behalf. It means doing all this with an ironclad commitment to fairness, accuracy and independence — delivering the news, as our longstanding credo puts it, “impartially, without fear or favor.”
在《纽约时报》，我们相信报纸的使命在于追寻真相，帮助人们理解这个世界，并让掌权者承担责任。这意味着为人们提供做出决定所需的信息；意味着让多元社群更充分地理解邻里的生活、期望与关切，从而连接彼此；意味着代表公众向政府和商界领袖提出尖锐问题；意味着以对公平、准确和独立的坚定承诺来做这一切——正如我们那句由来已久的信条所言，报道新闻要“不偏不倚、无所畏惧、不徇私情”。
It’s fitting therefore that the 175th anniversary of The Times arrives as we celebrate a bigger milestone: America’s 250th. Truth, understanding and accountability are essential to a strong nation and a healthy democracy.
因此，当我们迎来一个更为重大的里程碑——美国建国250周年之际，《纽约时报》也迎来创刊175周年，这再合适不过了。真相、理解与问责，正是一个强大国家和一个健康民主体制不可或缺的基石。
Through 61,011 editions and some 15 million articles, the pages of The Times tell the story of America’s remarkable growth from an upstart nation of 24 million people to a global superpower of nearly 350 million. The pages announce the arrival of new technologies and track the upheavals that followed. They chronicle battles for equal rights and the expansion of who is recognized as an American. They reveal the damage inflicted by wars, economic busts and moments of tragedy — and document the triumphs, economic booms and can-do resilience of a country that usually emerges stronger.
透过61011期报纸和约1500万篇报道，《纽约时报》的版面讲述了美国从一个人口2400万的新兴国家成长为拥有近3.5亿人口的全球超级大国的非凡历程。这些版面宣告新技术的到来，并追踪随之而来的剧变。它们记录了争取平等权利的斗争，以及“谁被视为美国人”这一范围的不断扩大。它们揭示了战争、经济萧条和悲剧时刻造成的破坏，也记录这个国家所迎来的胜利、经济繁荣与百折不挠的进取精神——而这个国家往往也会因此变得更加强大。
Taken together, they’re the first draft of American history. A new volume is added daily, a report so robust and wide-ranging that, on average, it could fill a 1,000-page book. The primary authors of this work are the reporters we’ve sent out to witness the world and to share what they have seen — not just establishing the facts but also wrapping them in context and explaining why they matter.
综合起来看，这些文字就是美国历史的初稿。每天都会新增一卷，内容如此丰富详实、包罗万象，平均而言足以填满一本1000页的书。这部作品的主要执笔者正是我们派往世界各地、见证世界并分享所见所闻的记者——他们不仅仅确认事实本身，更是将事实置于背景中，并解释这些事实为何重要。
We were there when the first shots of the Civil War rang out at Fort Sumter — our correspondent was promptly arrested as a Union spy — and then through the years of battles that followed, some of which President Abraham Lincoln’s war secretary read about in our pages before the generals could send word of them.
南北战争的第一枪在萨姆特堡打响时，我们就在现场——我们的通讯员随即被当作联邦间谍逮捕。此后数年，战事连绵，而我们始终在场。有些时候，相比比将军们送来的战情通报，林肯总统的战争部长甚至是先读到了我们的报道。
In the Roaring Twenties, our Wall Street reporting warned of recklessness in the markets, upsetting powerful financiers. After the country toppled into the Great Depression, a leading banker declared, “Our American community would have been better off today if it could have heeded that voice.”
在“咆哮的二十年代”，《纽约时报》对华尔街的报道曾对金融市场上的冒险行为发出警告，惹恼了有权有势的金融家。美国陷入大萧条后，一位银行业巨头感叹道：“如果当初美国社会能够听进去那个声音，我们今天的处境会好得多。”
Our correspondents braved the battlefields of World War II; some lost their lives and others were taken prisoner in Germany, Italy and Japan. The Times, in turn, used its scarce government-rationed paper supplies to ensure all these reports reached the American public, turning away advertisements in the process.
第二次世界大战期间，我们的记者们勇赴战场；一些人为此献出了生命，还有一些人在德国、意大利和日本沦为战俘。与此同时，《纽约时报》用政府配给的紧缺纸张确保这些战地报道能够传递给美国公众，为此甚至不惜放弃广告。
In one of the darkest moments of the civil rights movement, one of our reporters was in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel when an assassin shot Martin Luther King Jr. “Write. Write, write down everything you see,” he told himself as he took in the scene. “Get it all down.”
在民权运动最黑暗的时刻之一，我们的一位记者当时正在孟菲斯的洛林汽车旅馆，亲眼目睹刺客枪杀了马丁·路德·金。“写下来。写，把所有你看到的都写下来，”他一边观察现场，一边对自己说。“全都记下来。”
And 25 years ago this month, when others fled the collapse of the twin towers, our reporters charged toward the burning rubble. Over the next two decades, our journalists lived in Afghanistan and Iraq full time to tell the stories of the wars that followed. We continue to report from both countries today. If we don’t document the lessons and consequences of America’s longest wars, how will the country learn from them?
25年前的这个月，当双子塔轰然倒塌、旁人纷纷逃离之际，我们的记者却径直冲向那片燃烧的废墟。此后20年间，我们的记者长期驻扎在阿富汗与伊拉克，报道随后发生的战争。时至今日，我们仍在这两个国家坚持报道。倘若我们不去记录美国历史上这些最漫长的战争所留下的教训与后果，这个国家又该如何从中汲取教训？
Although our commitment to the highest journalistic standards is unsurpassed, we’ve also made mistakes, both big and small, along the way. When we err, we strive to be transparent with our audience about what went wrong and push ourselves to do better.
尽管我们对最高新闻标准的坚守无人能及，但一路走来，我们也犯过或大或小的错误。每当出错，我们都致力于坦诚面对读者，说明问题出在哪里，并鞭策自己做得更好。
This is what it means to be the country’s paper of record: a great and imperfect newspaper steadfastly chronicling a great and imperfect nation.
这就是作为这个国家历史记录者的意义所在：一份伟大却并不完美的报纸，始终如一地记录着一个伟大却并不完美的国家。
The Times, and the model of independent reporting we have championed, would not have endured were it not for the abiding commitment of the United States to free inquiry and free expression. America’s bold experiment with democracy, likewise, would have stumbled long ago were it not for news organizations exercising their rights under the First Amendment. Self-governance requires citizens to have access to reliable sources of information to make informed choices and know when their leaders aren’t acting in their best interests. This is why the press is the only profession explicitly protected in the Constitution. It is, as the founders believed, “one of the great bulwarks of liberty.”
如果没有美国对自由探究和自由表达的坚定支持，《纽约时报》以及我们所倡导的独立报道模式不可能延续至今。而如果没有新闻机构行使第一修正案赋予的权利，美国民主的大胆实验也早已步履蹒跚。自治要求公民能够获得可靠的信息来源，从而做出知情选择，并知道他们的领导人何时没有以他们的最佳利益行事。这就是为什么新闻业是宪法中唯一被明确保护的职业。正如开国元勋们所相信的那样，它是“自由的伟大堡垒之一”。
Today, the future of America’s free press is uncertain. As the advertising-based business model that long supported original reporting has collapsed, the country has lost nearly 3,500 newspapers and a vast majority of local journalism jobs in just two decades. This erosion appears poised to continue as the journalism produced at great cost by news organizations is stolen and repurposed at unprecedented scale by the tech giants behind artificial intelligence. And in this financially weakened state, the press is simultaneously confronting, and sometimes buckling in the face of, the most direct political attacks on its rights and legitimacy in more than a century. All this has left fewer reporters backed by the institutional resources and institutional courage needed to do this difficult work — to witness events that might otherwise go unseen, to uncover abuses of power that have never been easier to obscure.
今天，美国自由新闻的未来充满不确定性。随着长期支撑原创报道的广告商业模式崩塌，美国在短短二十年内失去了近3500家报纸和绝大多数地方新闻工作岗位。这种侵蚀看来还将继续，因为新闻机构以巨大成本生产的新闻正被人工智能背后的科技巨头以前所未有的规模窃取和重新利用。在财务状况恶化同时，新闻界又要面临几百年来对其权利和合法性最直接的政治攻击，时常在压力下屈膝。这一切意味着，能在机构资源和勇气的支持下从事这项艰难工作的记者将越来越少，这项工作意味着去见证那些原本可能被忽视的事件，去揭露那些从未如此容易被掩盖的滥用权力行为。
Over 175 years, The Times has become well practiced in working in the face of intense pressure. My colleagues have been kidnapped, arrested and shot at in the course of their work. One survived a land mine detonating underfoot, and another survived a helicopter crash. Some have been surveilled and expelled by foreign nations. Others have been protested, investigated and dragged into court.
经过175年的磨练，《纽约时报》已经非常擅长在巨大压力下工作。我的同事们在工作中曾被绑架、逮捕和枪击。有人踩中地雷后活了下来，还有人在直升机坠毁事故中幸存。一些人曾被外国监视和驱逐。还有人面临抗议、调查并被拖上法庭。
In the 1870s, New York’s William “Boss” Tweed, whose political machine controlled just about every corner of city and state government, worked to block a Times exposé that would trigger his downfall. His associates started with threats and eventually offered a bribe worth well over $100 million today, which The Times’s publisher quickly rejected. Almost a century later, when fists, billy clubs and bullets didn’t discourage our reporters from covering the civil rights movement, segregationists weaponized the courts by filing a wave of lawsuits intended to bankrupt The Times.
19世纪70年代，纽约的“老板”威廉·特威德的政治机器几乎控制着市和州政府的每一个角落，他曾试图阻止《纽约时报》一篇将引发他倒台的揭露报道。他的同伙先是威胁，最终提出一笔按今天价值远超1亿美元的贿赂，《纽约时报》的出版人迅速拒绝。近一个世纪后，当拳头、警棍和子弹未能阻止我们的记者报道民权运动时，种族隔离主义者将法院武器化，提起一波旨在让《纽约时报》破产的诉讼。
Presidents of both parties have done their best to pressure the press and discourage reporting they haven’t liked. John F. Kennedy spied on one of our reporters. Richard Nixon tried to block the publication of the Pentagon Papers. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both used the courts to try to force Times reporters to reveal confidential sources. No president in modern history has been more hostile than Donald Trump to a press he’s dubbed “the enemy of the people.” He accuses reporters of treason, a crime punishable by death. He personally sues news organizations when their coverage displeases him. He directs his administration to use the levers of government power to investigate, subpoena and prosecute journalists for doing their jobs. But in a reminder of the press’s lasting importance, Mr. Trump, like his predecessors, still reads The Times. He still relies on us, still takes questions from us and still quotes us when convenient. Indeed, during a visit to The Times, he told my colleagues and me that he thinks of us as “a great, great American jewel, a world jewel.”
两党总统都竭力施压新闻界，打击他们不喜欢的报道。约翰·F·肯尼迪监视过我们的一名记者。理查德·尼克松试图阻止五角大楼文件的发表。乔治·W·布什和贝拉克·奥巴马都曾利用法院试图迫使《纽约时报》记者透露机密消息来源。在现代历史上，没有哪位总统比唐纳德·特朗普更敌视新闻界，他称新闻界为“人民的敌人”。他指控记者叛国，而这是可判处死刑的罪行。当新闻报道令他不悦时，他亲自起诉新闻机构。他指示其政府利用权力杠杆调查、传唤和起诉履行职责的记者。但提醒人们新闻界持久重要性的是，特朗普和他的前任一样，仍然在读《纽约时报》。他仍然依赖我们，仍然接受我们的提问，仍然在有利于他的时候引用我们。事实上，在到访《纽约时报》时，他告诉我和我的同事们，他认为我们是“一颗非常、非常伟大的美利坚宝石，一颗世界宝石”。
The mounting pressure on the free press makes this an especially opportune time to remind ourselves that our country depends on trustworthy sources of information, context and accountability as much as it ever has. Indeed perhaps more so, as the remaining news outlets committed to original, independent reporting in the public interest are overtaken by the surge of social media influencers, partisan propagandists and A.I. bots peddling fear, outrage and misinformation.
自由新闻面临的压力日益增大，这使得我们更应提醒自己：我们的国家一如既往地依赖可信的信息来源、背景和问责。事实上，也许如今更加如此，因为那些仍致力于为公共利益进行原创、独立报道的新闻机构正被社交媒体网红、党派宣传者和AI机器人推销恐惧、愤怒和虚假信息的浪潮所淹没。
Reporters are very often how we know what we know. They have not just chronicled our country’s first 250 years; they’ve also empowered the public and kept its officials honest. The current period of democratic erosion around the world offers a clear warning that when a free press is undermined, other freedoms will soon fall as well. If this sounds overstated, I challenge anyone to find a country where people are free but the press isn’t.
我们之所以知道某些事，往往正是受惠于记者。他们不仅记录了我国建国以来的250年；他们还赋权公众，并让官员保持诚实。当前全球民主受侵蚀的时期明确警告我们：当自由新闻被削弱时，其他自由很快也会倒下。如果这听起来言过其实，请找出一个人民自由但新闻不自由的国家。
The confluence of America’s and The Times’s anniversaries is a welcome reminder of this enduring connection. It contains an implicit promise of continuity: Our nation has been through a lot and will find a way through whatever comes next. But these anniversaries also remind us that our history must be recorded to be learned from. Is our moment really unprecedented? How did similar events unfold the last time? What worked? What didn’t? What comes next? As always, the lessons of our shared past and hopes for our shared future can be found in the pages of The New York Times.
美国和《纽约时报》的周年纪念在此时交汇是对这一持久联系的令人欣慰的提醒。它包含一种延续性的隐含承诺：我们的国家经历了很多，也会找到办法度过接下来的一切。但这些周年纪念也提醒我们，我们的历史必须被记录下来，才能从中学习。我们真的是在经历前所未有的时刻吗？类似事件上一次是如何展开的？哪些起了好的效果？哪些不好？接下来会发生什么？一如既往，我们共同的教训和对未来的希望都能在《纽约时报》的版面上找到。