单选题 The sale of the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos is just the most recent episode in the decline and fall of professional journalism. By selling out to a mega-billionaire without any newspaper experience, the Graham family has put a priceless national asset at the mercy of a single outsider. Perhaps Jeff Bezos will use his new plaything responsibly; perhaps not; if not, one of the few remaining sources of serious journalism will be lost.
The crisis in the English-speaking world will turn into a catastrophe in smaller language zones. The English-speaking market is so large that advertisers will pay a lot to gain access to the tens of millions of readers who regularly click onto the New York Times or the Guardian. But the Portuguese-reading public is far too small to support serious journalism on the internet. What happens to Portuguese democracy when nobody is willing to pay for old-fashioned newspapers?
The blogosphere can't be expected to take up the {{U}}slack{{/U}}. First-class reporting on national and international affairs isn't for amateurs. It requires lots of training and lots of contacts and lots of expenses. It also requires reporters with the well-honed capacity to write for a broad audience. The modem newspaper created the right incentives, but without a comparable business model for the new technology, blogging will degenerate into a postmodern nightmare-with millions spouting off without any concern for the facts.
We can't afford to wait for the invisible hand to come up with a new way to provide economic support for serious journalism. To be sure, the financial press has proved moderately successful in persuading readers to pay for online access; and mainstream media are now trying to emulate this success. But if tens of millions of readers don't surrender to the charms of PayPal—and quickly—now is the time for some creative thinking. For starters, it would be a mistake to rely on a BBC-style solution. After all it is one thing for government to serve as a major source of news; quite another to give it a virtual monopoly on reporting.
Enter the Internet news voucher. Under our proposal, each news article on the web will end by asking readers whether it contributed to their political understanding. If so, they can click the yes-box, and send the message to a National Endowment for Journalism—which would obtain an annual appropriation from the government. This money would be distributed to news .organization s on the basis of a strict mathematical formula: the more clicks, the bigger the check from the Endowment. This way, serious journalism will succeed in gaining mass support. Common sense, as well as fundamental liberal values, counsels against any governmental effort to regulate the quality of news.
单选题 It is implied in the first two paragraphs that ______.
  • A. it was a mercy that Jeff Bezos took over the valueless Washington Post.
  • B. the decline of professional journalism has been around for a while.
  • C. the decline of English will have a huge impact on other languages.
  • D. professional journalism has been put at risk by the internet boom.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 该题为推理判断，考查开头两段的言外之意。根据第一段第1句话“……只不过是专业新闻衰落戏剧中最新的一幕而已”，可以推知专业新闻的衰落不是一天两天的事情，而是存在已久，故B项正确。 A项有两个错误：首先第一段第2句中的priceless(无价的)不同于valueless(毫无价值的)；其次mercy故意曲解，原文说“《华盛顿邮报》将任由摆布(put...at the mercy of sb．)”，选项的意思是“贝索斯的做法是仁慈的”。C项主语错误，不是英语的衰落，而是专业新闻的衰落。D项内容文中并未提及或暗示，所以排除。
单选题 The word "slack" (Line 1, Para. 3) most probably means ______.
  • A. fund shortage for journalism.
  • B. crisis in journalistic English.
  • C. decline of serious journalism.
  • D. lack of support for journalism.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 该题为词义理解，考查slack一词的特指内容。第三段第1句话说“不能指望博客圈来收拾残局”(take up the slack)，但是slack具体指代的内容实则是文章开头两段的主要内容，即：专业新闻的衰亡，所以C项正确。 A项“新闻业资金匮乏”与第二段第2句内容不符。B项主题错误，不是新闻英语的事情。D项强干扰，它只是专业新闻的衰落的一种表现，不如C项全面。
单选题 According to paragraph 3, first-class reporting is ______.
  • A. highly demanding.
  • B. for professionals only.
  • C. declining in quality.
  • D. notoriously degenerating.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 该题为事实细节，考查一流报道的特征。根据第三段第2-4句话：一流报道不是业余人士可以胜任的(isn't for amateurs)，它需要……，需要……，由此可以看出，一流的报道要求很高(highly demanding)，故选择A项。 B项“只为专业人员提供”出现常识错误，一流报道也供普罗大众阅读观看。C项“报道的质量下降”没有原文依据，不选。D项中的degenerating -词是对blogging will degenerate的误用，属于对象错误。
单选题 The author holds that the BBC-style is not a good solution because ______.
  • A. it is not as creative as it should be.
  • B. the invisible hand is not workable.
  • C. it does not appeal to all the people.
  • D. the news reporting is controlled.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 该题为事实细节，考查因果细节。根据第四段最后一句话“毕竟政府作为一个主要的新闻来源是一回事，但实质上是垄断的媒体却是另一回事”，可以看出，BBC新闻报道方式并不好，是因为新闻报道受到控制，故D项正确。 A项“不够具有创新”和B项“无形之手尚不可行”是利用原文中某个单词或词组拼凑起来的干扰项。C项的appeal to all the people在文中并未提及。
单选题 What do we know about the Internet news voucher?
  • A. It may help the public enhance political understanding.
  • B. It will be funded and thus controlled by the government.
  • C. It may be a good way to revive serious journalism.
  • D. It will spread liberal values and save serious journalism.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 该题为推理判断，考查对互联网新闻价值评判体系的理解。主要根据第五段倒数第2句“这样一来，严肃新闻将成功获得大众支持”，以及最后一句，可以知道：这种评判体系也许可以振兴严肃新闻，所以C项正确。 文章中只说到在此方案中，新闻报道结尾处会问读者是否在政见理解上得到收益，并没有给出肯定意见，不选A。B项半对半错，是由政府出资，但没有提及是否受政府控制，而且根据该段最后一句可以看出似乎不受政府控制的可能性更大。D项强干扰，文中确实提到自由价值，但是是不是这种评判体系能够传播自由价值，文中并未提及或暗示，故排除。