尊敬的用戶您好，這是來自FT中文網的溫馨提示：如您對更多FT中文網的內容感興趣，請在蘋果應用商店或谷歌應用市場搜尋「FT中文網」，下載FT中文網的官方應用。
On January 9 1995, a gormless 25-year-old in a bad suit started work at the Financial Times. My preparation had been a degrading four-month training course in a dead former seaside resort, where I woke up each morning feeling dumber than the day before, but work was worse. The building’s windows didn’t open. Canteen lunch was revolting. When darkness fell in mid-afternoon, I realised that some adults never experienced sunlight on winter weekdays.
1995年1月9日，一個穿著不合身西裝的25歲年輕人開始在英國《金融時報》工作。我之前的準備是一場令人沮喪的四個月培訓課程，地點在一個死氣沉沉的前海濱度假勝地，每天早上醒來時都覺得自己比前一天更愚蠢，但工作更糟糕。大樓的窗戶無法打開，食堂的午餐令人作嘔。午後不久，天就黑了，此時我意識到有些成年人在冬季工作日從未見過陽光。
The work seemed dull and incomprehensible, yet the two poor sods babysitting me were still bashing on their plastic keyboards at 7pm, when the newspaper “went to bed”. We didn’t have a website then.
這項工作看起來既枯燥又難以理解，但負責照看我的那兩個可憐傢伙仍在晚上7點敲打他們的塑膠鍵盤，那時報紙已經「收工」了。我們那時還沒有網站。
I trekked home that evening sensing I’d chosen the wrong employer. I did leave in 1998, crushed by the tedium of writing the daily currencies report, but I drifted back in 2002. This week is my 30th anniversary at the FT. To see how the paper had changed, I went to the British Library to find the edition of January 9 1995.
那天晚上，我徒步回家，感覺自己選錯了僱主。1998年，我因撰寫每日貨幣報告的單調而離開，但2002年我又回來了。本週是我在英國《金融時報》工作的30週年。爲了看看報紙的變化，我去了大英圖書館(British Library)，找到了1995年1月9日的那期報紙。
The library printed me a reader’s card with a brand-new photo. The picture confirmed that I had changed beyond recognition since 1995. I expected the FT would have too. As so often in my journalistic career, I was wrong.
圖書館爲我列印了一張帶有全新照片的讀者卡。照片顯示，自1995年以來，我已經變得面目全非。我以爲英國《金融時報》也會如此改變。然而，正如我在新聞職業生涯中常常犯的錯誤一樣，我錯了。
When I fed the microfilm into the library’s machine, a newspaper popped up that looked startlingly like today’s: in its layout, the lengths of articles and the unshowy, untrendy, understated prose, written to be comprehensible to non-native English-speakers. Several of that day’s bylines were for colleagues still writing today.
當我將微縮膠捲放入圖書館的機器時，出現了一份報紙，看起來驚人地像今天的報紙：版面佈局、文章長度以及樸實無華、不追求時尚的低調文風，旨在讓非英語母語者也能理解。那天的幾篇文章署名是今天仍在寫作的同事。
What was most spookily familiar, though, was the content. The front-page lead that morning was about infighting within Britain’s ruling Conservative party over Europe. The government was also denigrating civil servants.
然而，最令人毛骨悚然的熟悉之處在於內容。當天早上的頭版頭條是關於英國執政的保守黨(Conservative party)圍繞歐洲問題的內鬥。政府還在貶低公務員。
Another front-page story, by our Moscow bureau chief Chrystia Freeland (now potentially Canada’s next prime minister), recounted the brutal Russian invasion of Chechnya. In a photograph, demonstrators in Berlin held a sign saying, “Today Chechnya — tomorrow the whole north Caucasus.” There was “rising east-west tension over Chechnya and Moscow’s cancellation of German-Russian military manoeuvres”, but Germany’s defence minister said: “At this precise moment it would be wrong to scale down contacts.”
另一篇頭版報導由我們駐莫斯科分社社長克里斯蒂婭•弗裏蘭(Chrystia Freeland)（她現在可能成爲加拿大的下一任總理）撰寫，講述了俄羅斯對車臣的殘酷入侵。在一張照片中，柏林的示威者舉著一個標語，上面寫著：「今天是車臣——明天是整個高加索。」關於車臣問題和莫斯科取消德俄軍事演習，東西方緊張局勢加劇，但德國國防部長表示：「在這個關鍵時刻，減少接觸是錯誤的。」
There’s a saying in journalism that there are no new stories, only new reporters. Certainly, reading that newspaper, I had a sense of news as an eternal cycle of repetition with minor variations. China was “facing a looming trade war with the US over infringement of patents and copyrights”. Madrid had ordered a “corruption probe”. A French Eurosceptic was running for president.
新聞界有句俗話：沒有新的故事，只有新的記者。確實，讀那份報紙時，我感受到新聞是一個帶有細微變化的永恆循環。中國正「面臨與美國因專利和版權侵權而即將爆發的貿易戰」。馬德里下令進行「腐敗調查」。一位法國疑歐派人士正在競選總統。
One columnist assailed what’s now called “woke” language: “Being dim, for example, is called attention deficit disorder if one is working class or mild dyslexia if middle class.” Scrolling the microfilm back a few days, I saw that Labour’s leader Tony Blair wanted “to drop threat of VAT on school fees”. History definitely rhymes.
一位專欄作家抨擊了現在所謂的「覺醒」語言：「例如，愚鈍在工人階級中被稱爲注意力缺陷障礙，而在中產階級中則被稱爲輕度閱讀障礙。」 回溯幾天前的微縮膠捲，我看到工黨領袖託尼•布萊爾(Tony Blair)希望「取消對學費徵收增值稅的威脅」。歷史確實有相似之處。
There were occasional hints of the world of 2025. China was expanding currency trading “to broaden its fledgling market-style financial system”. And Europeans would need private pensions as they lived longer, or else “their social security systems will be beyond reform in the next century”.
偶爾可以看到2025年世界的影子。中國正在擴大貨幣交易，以「拓寬其新興的市場化金融體系」。隨著壽命的延長，歐洲人將需要私人養老金，否則「他們的社會保障體系將在下個世紀無法改革」。
Entirely absent from that edition, even from the section on “Media Futures”, is the internet. That May, FT.com launched. The internet would eventually devastate countless media, but the FT now has 1.4mn paying readers, which is about four times our daily circulation in 1995. Unwittingly, I had joined one of the only going concerns in journalism. I chose the right job. True, that partly reflects my lack of any alternative skillset: I wasn’t going to open the batting for England. More than that, though, I still identify with what I see as the FT’s mission: to cover economic, financial and political power. We mostly write about stuff that matters.
在那一版中，甚至在「媒體未來」這一節中，網路完全缺席。那年5月，FT.com上線。網路最終摧毀了無數媒體，但英國《金融時報》現在有140萬付費讀者，大約是1995年我們日發行量的四倍。不知不覺中，我加入了新聞業中爲數不多的持續發展的企業之一。我選擇了正確的工作。誠然，這部分反映了我缺乏其他技能：我不可能爲英格蘭隊開球。更重要的是，我仍然認同我所認爲的英國《金融時報》的使命：報導經濟、金融和政治權力。我們大多寫的是重要的事情。
Thinking back to the two people who babysat me that first day, I no longer believe they were beaten-down wage slaves who had resigned themselves to this life. I think they bashed away all day because they cared about their work. One is still at the FT. The other, the exemplary Rod Oram, put in over 40 years in journalism before dying of a heart attack in New Zealand last March, aged 73, while training to cycle from Beijing to Birmingham.
回想起第一天照看我的兩個人，我不再認爲他們是那些對生活妥協的被壓榨的工薪奴隸。我認爲他們整天辛勤工作是因爲他們關心自己的工作。其中一位仍在英國《金融時報》工作。另一位是傑出的羅德•奧拉姆(Rod Oram)，他在新聞行業工作了40多年，去年3月在紐西蘭因心臟病去世，享年73歲，當時他正在接受從北京到伯明翰的自行車訓練。
Had I known on January 9 1995 that I’d still be here 30 years later, I would have been horrified. It actually hasn’t been so bad.
如果我在1995年1月9日知道自己30年後還會在這裏，我會感到震驚。其實，這段時間並沒有那麼糟糕。
Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram
想要第一時間瞭解我們的最新故事，請在X上關注FT Weekend Magazine，並在Instagram上關注FT Weekend