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

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问题     Three makes a trend. The Washington Post Co. Friday announced that it would look to sell its iconic 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 nearly 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 condos, "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 根据题干定位第二段。根据最后一句开头部分Print media is hampered by high fixed costs,可知阻碍出版业发展的因素在于高昂的固定成本,由此选择C项。A项和B项都在第二段中有所提及,因而首先可以用排除法去掉这两个选项,因为一道题不可能出现两个正确选项。A和B项之所以错误,他们只是目前报业遇到的困难的表现。而非难以摆脱困境的原因。D项从属于C项,是众多high fixed costs中的一种,不够全面,因而错误。
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