摘要：“Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 130 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to thei
The numbers are shocking.数字令人震惊。
“Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 130 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their children,” reports the National Literacy Institute.“文盲在我们国家已经成为一个严重的问题，以至于 1.3 亿成年人现在无法给他们的孩子读一个简单的故事，”国家扫盲研究所报告说。
That is half the adult population. 这是成年人口的一半。
That same half has difficulty performing such basic tasks such as reading the labels of their prescription drugs.这一半人难以执行诸如阅读处方药标签之类的基本任务。
A little more than half of adults read below a sixth grade reading level. One in five are flat out illiterate. A majority of Americans don’t read a single book through the course of a year. Only one-in-three kids read for pleasure. Etc.略多于一半的成年人的阅读水平低于六年级的阅读水平。五分之一的人完全是文盲。大多数美国人一年内不会读过一本书。只有三分之一的孩子为了乐趣而读书。 ETC。
The list of alarming statistics goes on and on. You really need to take a look.令人震惊的统计数据不胜枚举。你真的需要看看。
Investigative Post has written about literacy problems in Western New York involving both adults and school children. Most concerning was our report in April on reading scores at the 99 school districts – urban, suburban and rural – in the eight counties of WNY. Our analysis found only 39 percent of students in grades three through five read at grade level. Thirty percent of students in grades three through eight are so far behind they’re illiterate. 《调查邮报》撰写了有关纽约州西部涉及成人和学童的识字问题的文章。最令人担忧的是我们四月份关于纽约州八个县的 99 个学区（城市、郊区和农村）的阅读分数的报告。我们的分析发现，只有 39% 的三至五年级学生能够达到年级水平的阅读能力。三到八年级的学生中有百分之三十是文盲。
A poor choice of reading curriculum in schools contributes to these numbers, both locally and nationally. Poverty does, even moreso. But there are cultural factors at play, as well. We’re preoccupied with sports, social media, our cell phones, cable TV and assorted other distractions. 无论是在当地还是在全国范围内，学校阅读课程选择不当都是造成这些数字的原因之一。贫穷更是如此。但也有文化因素在起作用。我们全神贯注于体育、社交媒体、手机、有线电视和各种其他干扰。
We’re amusing ourselves to death, as Neil Postman once put it. Or, as Carl Bernstein once wrote, embracing the idiot culture.正如尼尔·波兹曼（Neil Postman）曾经说过的那样，我们正在自娱自乐。或者，正如卡尔·伯恩斯坦曾经写道的那样，拥抱白Chi文化。
Nearly twice as many Americans watched this year’s Super Bowl than the Harris-Trump presidential debate. Justin Bieber has five times as many Twitter followers as The New York Times. The most watched cable network for political news is Fox, which isn’t even a legitimate news organization.观看今年超级碗比赛的美国人几乎是哈里斯与特朗普总统辩论的两倍。贾斯汀·比伯的 Twitter 粉丝数量是《纽约时报》的五倍。收视率最高的政治新闻有线电视网络是福克斯，它甚至不是合法的新闻机构。
All this ignorance has consequences. To make my case, I’ll point to an NBC News story in April, back when Joe Biden was still in the race.所有这些无知都会产生后果。为了说明我的观点，我将引用 NBC 新闻四月份的一篇报道，当时乔·拜登仍在竞选中。
People who turned to newspapers for political news – in order words, PEOPLE WHO READ – preferred Biden over Trump 70 to 21 percent. Biden also got the nod by people who turn to the national news networks – NBC, CBS and ABC – and digital news sites, many of them the online version of daily newspapers. 通过报纸获取政治新闻的人 — — 换句话说，阅读的人 — — 更喜欢拜登，而不是特朗普，比例为 70%：21%。拜登还得到了全国新闻网络（NBC、CBS 和 ABC）以及数字新闻网站（其中许多是日报的在线版本）的人们的认可。
At the other end of the spectrum, people who don’t follow political news favored Trump 53 to 27 percent. Trump was favored by smaller margins by those who prefer cable outlets and social media.另一方面，不关注政治新闻的人以 53% 比 27% 的比例支持特朗普。那些喜欢有线电视和社交媒体的人对特朗普的支持度较小。
The sorry state of literacy also helps to explain why newspapers – the primary source of original reporting, even in their diminished condition – are fading. A broken business model has a lot to do with it, but so does the growing number of people who simply aren’t equipped to consume their product, the printed word.令人遗憾的识字率状况也有助于解释为什么报纸——原始报道的主要来源，即使在其状况日渐衰弱的情况下——正在衰落。商业模式的失败与此有很大关系，而且越来越多的人根本没有能力消费他们的产品（印刷文字）。
Reading the aforementioned numbers from the National Literacy Institute was sobering for me as the publisher of a text-heavy news site. It confirmed for me the need for us to find multiple ways of telling our stories, not just in words, but also in videos, graphics and other easy-to-digest formats. That doesn’t mean we dumb down, but rather be creative in how we present our reporting to meet the audience where they’re at.作为一个文字较多的新闻网站的出版商，读到国家扫盲研究所的上述数字让我发人深省。它让我确信我们需要找到多种方式来讲述我们的故事，不仅仅是用文字，还包括视频、图形和其他易于理解的格式。这并不意味着我们要变得愚蠢，而是要在报道方式上发挥创意，以满足受众的需求。
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来源：250K250一点号