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  3. Three makes a trend. The Washington Post Co. Friday announced that it would look to sell its headquarters building in downtown W

Three makes a trend. The Washington Post Co. Friday announced that it would look to sell its headquarters building in downtown W

admin2022-11-25  79
问题     Three makes a trend. The Washington Post Co. Friday announced that it would look to sell its headquarters building in downtown Washington, D. C. In January, the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News announced they would put up for sale their headquarters. The same month, Frank Gannett said it will sell the building that houses the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat & Chronicle. The building was the place where Gannett started and built his vast newspaper empire.
    It’s no secret that newspapers are in crisis. Advertising revenues have fallen by half in the past decade and are back to where they were in 1983; circulation revenues are back to where they were in 1996. The digital numbers are rising, but not fast enough. Print media is hampered by high fixed costs incurred in the pre-digital era—pensions and union contracts, equipment like printing presses, large numbers of employees, and big office buildings.
    Virtually every newspaper company has engaged in drastic measures—laying off experienced employees, eliminating sections, cutting back printing from daily to a few days per week. Those efforts are all meant to lower day-to-day operating costs. But we’ve also seen newspaper companies seek onetime injections of cash by selling off non-core assets. Increasingly, the headquarters building—typically located right in the middle of town—is falling into the non-core asset category.
    Traditionalists may find these sales and the continued shrinking of newspapers’ real-estate footprints to be depressing. But it’s actually a positive development. Call it creative destruction, or adaptive reuse. In cities around the country, investors are finding better uses for properties. In lower Manhattan, Class B office buildings that used to house financial firms have been converted into expensive separate apartments. "It’s a great thing, because it drives more tax revenue to the cities. And it gives the suburbs a run for the money," said Jonathan Miller, president of appraisal company MillerSamuel.
    In D. C, the Washington Post will likely fetch an excellent price for its headquarters because Washington is a boomtown. Throughout D. C, investors are plowing cash into housing, office, and retail developments. The building that housed the organization that exposed the Watergate scandal may become the next Watergate complex.
    Of course, progress inevitably displaces the prior tenants. It’s likely the new homes that will be occupied by newspapermen and newspaperwomen in Washington, Rochester, and Detroit will be less grand, less central, and less historic than their current homes. And the sale of these properties alone won’t solve the newspapers’ financial problems. But it will buy them a very valuable commodity: time.
According to Paragraph 2, what has stood in the way of print media’s further development?
选项 A、The decline of advertising revenues.
B、The spread of digital news.
C、The over-high operating cost.
D、The large office buildings.
答案C
解析 根据题干定位到第二段。由该段第四句的Print media is hampered by high fixed costs“出版媒体深陷于高额固定成本的泥潭之中”可知，阻碍出版业发展的因素是高昂的固定成本，因此选择C项。第二段第二句说，报业的广告收入锐减，跌回1983年的水平，可见这是目前的报业现状，而非阻碍报业发展的原因，故A项错误。第三句说，数字媒体的收入虽有所上升，但仍不够迅速，文章没有说数字媒体发展阻碍报业发展，B项只是陈述事实，并没有回答题干的问题。第四句列举了养老金、工会合同、诸如印刷机等设备、庞大的员工队伍和大型办公大楼，这些都属于“高额固定成本”，D项只是其一，不如C项全面。
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