Results matching “can a japanese”

The Kitanippon Shimbun has closed its evening edition and will now publish a morning edition only, NSK News Bulletin reports.

Plans are in place to redesign its morning edition, including moving some content from the defunct evening edition to the morning one. The website will also get a makeover, adding more content and featuring the latest news ahead of the print edition.

Kotaro Akiyama, president of Asahi Shimbun, Japan's second-largest newspaper, reassured the Financial Times that Japanese newspapers are sitting pretty and will not experience a decline like their European and North American counterparts. 

The Wall Street Journal will launch its anticipated Japanese-language website next month, reports Media Asia. Japan.WSJ.com is expected to reproduce Japanese translations of the english WSJ edition as well as content from other Dow Jones publications.

The website, which is the result of a partnership with Japanese financial services provider SBI Holdings, will officially launch on 15 December and a preview edition was put up earlier this week.  

The Far Eastern Economic Review is to close, it was widely reported. Described by Reuters as "one of Asia's leading print publications," the 63-year-old Hong Kong-based magazine run by Dow Jones will close in December. Subscribers will be offered one-year subscriptions to the Asian Wall Street Journal website.

"The decision to cease publication of the Review is a difficult one made after a careful study of the magazine's prospects in a challenging business climate," said Todd Larsen, chief operating officer at Dow Jones Consumer Media Group. PaidContent quoted DJ spokesman Robert Christie who said that the publication was just losing too much money for its 200,000 circulation. 

After almost 30 years of existence, Houston's Spanish-language daily was forced to close August 28, the local 11 News reported. El Día provided thousands of the city's Hispanic residents with news equally from Houston and Latin America.

The Japan Times reports that Hawaii's only Japanese-language daily, Hawaii Hochi, is confronting many obstacles as it tries to makes it to its centennial year in 2012. Hawaii Hochi president Paul Yempuku admitted the paper is up against the "biggest crisis" of its 97-year existence.

Among the difficulties Hawaii Hochi faces is a drop in readership due to an aging population of immigrants and first-generation Japanese-Americans. The newspaper also must compete for its audience with the Internet. Furthermore, Hawaii Hochi's founding mission of combating the prejudices faced by Japanese-Americans is less relevant in today's society.

The Wall Street Journal's Indian homepage now hosts a new site offering a wealth of information about rural India.  The site, developed in conjunction with India Knowledge@Wharton, part of the Wharton School's online business journal, contains reporting, analysis, interviews, commentary and video. It will combine new and exclusive features with an archive of previously released material.  

"Rural India's economy is thriving despite the worldwide economic downturn, and many of India's and the world's largest companies are just beginning to realize the market's potential," said Paul Beckett, The Wall Street Journal's South Asia bureau chief. "Nevertheless, the benefits of India's economic boom have been late in arriving there, and weak governance and a lack of access to basic services remain serious problems. Business decision- makers and investors in the country and overseas require accurate, timely and independent coverage of rural India's development."

Dow Jones & Company and SBI Holdings, Inc. of Japan formalized their joint venture, Wall Street Journal Japan K.K., which will launch a Japanese-language business and financial news Web site later this year. The joint venture agreement was first announced on May 7.

Under a licensing arrangement between Wall Street Journal Japan K.K. and Dow Jones, the new site, carrying The Wall Street Journal brand, will primarily feature Japanese translations of content, including video and other multimedia, from all print and online editions of The Wall Street Journal and those of other Dow Jones publications. Wall Street Journal Japan K.K. also plans to develop mobile products and services in conjunction with the new site.

New York Times journalist Martin Fackler has written about the "failure" of the news media to press Japanese prosecutors for answers in an ongoing political scandal.

In March, Tokyo prosecutors arrested an aide to a prominent opposition political leader and sparked a damaging scandal which led to the resignation of Ichiro Ozawa, head of the opposition Democratic Party. Many Japanese have been vocal in their criticism of the prosecutors' actions, which appear politically motivated, but "you would not know that from the coverage by Japan's big newspapers and television networks," said Fackler.

According to a recent poll just out, media employees count amongst England's heaviest drinkers.A survey carried out by the Department of Health found that media professionals drank about twice as much as the recommended allowance - an average of 44 units per week, instead of the suggested 21-28 units for men (depending on build), and 14-21 units for women. This is the equivalent of more than 4 bottles of wine or more than 19 pints of beer.

A large proportion of the discussion and innovation with regards to monetise newspapers' online content has come out of the United States, possibly unsurprisingly considering the intensity of the economic downturn there, and arguably the American entrepreneurial spirit. But the US is not alone in its contemplation of the issue, which could potentially 'save' newspapers, and the Editors Weblog took a look at the situation in France and the ideas that are emerging, based on two recent studies.

Masters student Matthieu de Vivie carried out a major research project entitled "Can online news be profitable?" in which he analysed the sectors' sources of income, along with debates that have taken place on French media blogs over the past few months. The Institute of Audio-visuals and Telecommunications in Europe (IDATE), a market analysis and consulting firm, has produced several reports on online strategies for the press.

The French situation

In France, printing and distribution costs are high, partly due to state regulation and to a very powerful printing union, meaning that print profits tend to be lower. However, papers do benefit from much public aid, and this was increased in January when president Nicolas Sarkozy offered the press a 600million euro bailout. Many media outlets are owned by groups which do not actually specialise in media, but are looking for "prestige and influence within it," according to de Vivie. He gives financial daily Les Echos as an example, which is owned by Bernard Arnault, LVMH. Groups such as Dassault which owns national daily Le Figaro, or Lagardere which owns the magazine Paris Match, Journal du Dimanche and part of Le Monde, have leaders who are friends with Sarkozy. Many journalists have protested at what they see as threats to the independence of their papers.

Related to this issue of possible government influence, the French press is suffering from a lack of reader confidence, similar to that in the US. A 2008 survey showed that 46% of people did not believe a large part of what they read in newspapers. The Internet has "done away with journalists' monopoly over the production of information," states de Vivie. The increased presence of other fonts of information and aggregators has encouraged people to look far and wide for news, as in other countries.

De Vivie concluded that today, it would be impossible for a major French newspaper to survive online-only, due to the abundance of information available online and weak advertising revenue. IDATE's reports also suggest that traditional advertising is not going to support a newspaper on its own. So what are the options for newspapers as their readers migrate online?

Charging readers

The most basic option is to charge readers for online content, as newspapers have done in print for many decades. IDATE believes that the pay wall model is extremely limited. However, leading newspaper Le Monde seems to have successfully adopted a part-paid, part-free model online. It is a rare feat for a general interest paper, at least compared to the English-speaking world, where only financial giants such as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal seem to have accomplished this. Articles are free for three days after publication, after which they go behind a pay wall. They can then be purchased individually, or basic and premium subscriptions are available, the premium option including access to digital copies of the print paper. Subscriptions represented about 35% of LeMonde.fr's revenue, while advertising accounts for 65%, according to figures obtained by de Vivie in November 2008. LeMonde.fr still has high readership, suggesting that the site's traffic has not been damaged too much by the pay wall, and that the model makes sense.

De Vivie also looks at French site Mediapart, a participatory, paid venture without advertising, launched in 2008 but Edwy Plenel, a former Le Monde editor. It is free to read other citizen participation, but a subscription gives users the right to write articles or leave comments, and to read articles from the Mediapart team. The site, however had not captured its target number of subscribers in 2008.

Alternatives to advertising?

But if papers do not succeed in persuading users to pay for their news: what are the other options? In terms of advertising, the Internet has allowed new measures to develop, as well as the CPM, pay-per-click and pay-per-action rates offer a more accurate assessment of an advertisement's effectiveness. It also allows for targeted advertising, however this is not much used in France. CPMs are also considerably lower in France than in the UK or US: according to de Vivie, a CPM of $10 is considered good in France, compared to $30 elsewhere. Part of this is due to lower investment in advertising, as well as lower Internet penetration.

IDATE's report on the future of the press considers below-the-line advertising as "essential" for a newspaper's online advertising strategy, and also recommends e-commerce as a distinct possibility: "the media now have the opportunity of developing into veritable media stores by incorporating e-commerce offers into their editorial content. IDATE suggests that newspapers form alliances with book sellers to market the books that they review, or with ticket sellers to market plays or other events. Another option is to get involved with products that target a newspapers' readership, such as the Wall Street Journal's partnership with Wine.com. The Lagardere group has signed an agreement with Sumitomo, a Japanese leader in online commerce. The firm sees advertising and e-commerce as the main revenue streams from mobile news, rather than making users or telecoms operators pay for content.

De Vivie also believes that for larger media groups, diversifying online can be profitable. He cites the example of the Washington Post's ownership of profitable education service Kaplan Inc. which he feels "is allowing the Washington Post to survive." The French Le Figaro group includes numerous commercial websites such as Evene, Sport24, Cadremploi, BazarChic ou TickeTac, which represent "an important source of revenue." LeFigaro.fr is not currently profitable but it has an important audience. One of the problems with such a strategy, however, is that it risks diluting the brand's value, which is already a fear of many papers as reading habits change online.

Potential of online-only

De Vivie is does see some potential in online-only sites, but only in certain conditions. Firstly, he believes that small "supple" organisations which offer content with significant added value, focussed on specific niches and gathering a large community, are a good approach. "This equilibrium is nonetheless precarious," he added, particularly in France where advertising brings in less revenue than in the US and it is often necessary to develop alternative sources of income.

One French success story is Rue89, which combines the skills of journalists with the knowledge of experts and the participation of citizens. Amateur contributions are checked and edited by the site's reporters. De Vivie explains that the site quickly acquired "strong journalistic credibility," offering exclusive stories and investigations. He estimates that the site could quite feasibly become profitable, especially as Rue89 does not make all of its income from advertising, but also develops websites for others, which makes up an estimated one third of its revenue. He believes that other online players also have potential to break even, due to their low fixed costs and overheads.

The impression that emerges from the studies is that online news has great potential and possibilities continue to evolve. It is therefore advisable that newspapers continue to innovate and do not resign themselves to relying on print income for as long as possible.  

As the Internet makes it possible for anybody to become a journalist, news is becoming available in all forms and opinions; it is difficult to be sure of the truth. At the World Wide Web conference in Madrid, software developers talked about their efforts in creating programs that will automatically rank Web content credibility by analysing the information presented.

The Know-Center in Austria is working on software that will rate blogs in three categories: "high credibility", "average credibility", and "little credible." It will analyse the number of times words are repeated and will compare blogs with mainstream news articles.

As US newspaper groups declare bankruptcy and some fold due to the economic recession and web competition, the printed newspaper continues to thrive in Asia. The World Press Trends 2008 by World Association of Newspapers reports that eight of the world's top ten daily newspapers with the highest circulation are printed in Asia, and the largest newspaper markets are Japan, China, and India.

According to a Time article, some media expansion in Asia corresponds with the fall of dictators as readers appreciate a freer press devoid of government propaganda. For example, Indonesia has seen a tremendous rise in the number of newspapers after the deposition of President Suharto in 1998. Though state censorship still exists in China, a press revolution is in progress as the central government reduces state subsidies for newspapers, creating a free-market that forces editors to print stories that sell.

More news of cutbacks and money-saving measures for local newspapers in the US.  According to an announcement from the two publications, the Star-Ledger of Newark and the Record of Hackensack are combining their statehouse bureaus.  The two are New Jersey's largest newspapers, and Star-Ledger editor Jim Willse explains, "At a time when newspapers have had to cut back news staffs, this cooperation allows us to pool resources and better serve all our readers".  The Star-Ledger and the Record have also recently teamed up with other publications to form the Northeast Consortium and enable content sharing between them.

In Indiana, the Bloomfield Free Press is moving online-only.  The publication's owner and publisher R. Michael Johnson has explained that the foreseen rise in postage costs in May is the last straw for the Free Press.  One third of the weekly newspaper's 2000 circulation is delivered by the US postal service, which is increasing the cost of mailing each paper by between 5 and 6 cents in three months time.  The cost of the Bloomfield Free Press had already been dropped by 25 cents to 75 cents due to the struggling economy, despite each copy costing $1 to post.

With many of the world's newspapers faced with plummeting circulation figures, the industry in Japan is somewhat of an anomaly.  The five big national dailies have only seen their readership slip by 3.2% in the past decade, a stark contrast to the parallel figure in the US, which sits at 15%.  Currently, it is thought that the high population of elderly people in Japan is keeping the readership figures up.

However, Japanese newspapers are not taking this situation for granted. "I am in a dying industry," said Kenichi Miyata, a senior editor and writer at the Asahi newspaper.  "Young people do not read newspapers, and our population is getting very old very rapidly."  Whilst elsewhere the survival of print seems very much focused on the innovation of individual publications, in Japan three of the big dailies are members of the Nikkei-Asahi-Yomiuri Internet Business Partnership, and have teamed up to create an iPhone application.  It is interesting to speculate on where the UK and US newspapers would be now, had they had the opportunity to create such alliances before crisis hit.

Source: ReadWriteWeb

Japan's public broadcaster NHK has announced the launch of a 24-hour news channel.  The first of its kind in the country NHK World TV will provide news in English that is focused on Asia and Japan, and will be available in 70 countries and regions via satellite, cable and the Internet.  The service will not however be available in Japan due to broadcasting laws.

NHK Vice President Yoshinori Imai has hopes that NHK World TV will "join the ranks of CNN International and BBC World Service" and hopes that it will "earn a reputation for strong coverage of Japan and Asia news."  The channel will run 30-minute news bulletins every hour, and also include documentaries and other features.  NHK World Service joins the likes of France 24 and Al Jazeera English, showing the diversifying of international news services away from US and UK based channels.

Robert Thomson, the Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal, reports that Dow Jones is planning to launch a Japanese-language website in the first half of next year.

Thomson made the statement at the Reuters Media Summit in New York yesterday.

The financial newswire is owned by News Corporation and already has a foreign exchange information service in Japan which Thomson said is the fastest-growing revenue source for the company.

Source: Press Gazette

As outlined in the first entry of this series, consumers will start using mobile electronic reading devices routinely. But will these versatile tools also become the preferred display for news and current affairs? Publishers' ability to inhabit this uncharted territory will matter greatly, but even more important is the decision of media consumers that news offered in this way best fits today's lifestyle and nicely blends in with their expectations and routines.
 
The readers' view is currently being explored and tested in several prototyping and/or pilot initiatives, although this effort is modest compared to the involvement of hardware and software engineers. Nevertheless, first results reveal the contours of what in the eyes of the digital reader will be the ideal form of electronic information delivery. Based on four recent research actions, this contribution will sketch the preconditions for successful deployment of e-readers and services, seen from the users perspective.

The eNews project, set up by Ifra, explored the consumer readiness for e-readers. Via focus groups in European and Japanese locations it was found that the use setting is different: more lean backward compared to the lean forward use of PC and print. This finding will have consequences for the kind of content that can be offered. Surprisingly, the consulted test persons appreciated the daylight readability of the e-readers, but by no means hyped it as heavily as the manufacturers themselves always do. The love for the device stems much more from its environment-friendly image.

Microsoft, partner in the design of the New York Times News Reader, has evaluated the user appreciation of this application in a field study. A selected group of readers worked for weeks with the NYTReader, especially while commuting, and was interviewed afterwards. Overall assessment was very positive: two-thirds, especially the serious travellers, would stick to the service. The kind of use however depended much on personal reading style: the news junkies appreciated the amount of detail, the skimmers the quickness of updates while the fun-seekers enjoyed the sophisticated layout. The synchronisation feature for permanent updating was less popular: too time-consuming and difficult to understand.
Conclusion: newspapers will have to bear in mind all these different use categories, and with an improved product.

In the Dutch MePaper project, the five participating newspapers are exploring novel journalistic formats for two types of e-readers: the e-ink devices and the mini laptops (UMPCs). New content models for mobile reading are developed in a joint design studio and these prototypes are tested in lab-based proof reading sessions. Here, it shows that there is a difference between what journalists think is important, for instance the addition of time frames to story overviews, and what the public wants (don't bother us with release hours). Also in this R&D effort, the variety of user demands is apparent. Many want both local (often hyper local) news, without loosing the global perspective. The preference can change from day to day, depending on personal circumstances and the attraction of news on offer. A definite outcome is the demand for customisation of the e-paper, ideally composed of sections, even editors from a range of different media. This result is in fact a cry-out for joint ventures between titles and across newspaper groups. Thus, e-reading will provoke unconventional business practices.
If the newspaper world manages to respond to these user requirements, there certainly is scope for a quick roll-out of the e-reading technology. In a Swedish large scale online survey (part of the UbiMedia project), 42 percent of the 3600 readers indicated to be ready for it now, and another 19 percent in the next five years.  Would these people want to change their trusted print edition for an electronic version? Two-thirds said yes, only one-third would be faithful to newsprint. The e-service however is expected to be considerably cheaper (says 58 percent), with a meagre 8 percent willing to pay extra for premium content.

The conclusion is obvious, the adoption potential for mobile electronic reading is certainly high, but it is a medium in its own right, not just another print or online edition spin-off. It needs to be well designed, fully user-driven, with convincing personalisation options. Valuable lessons in this respect are being learned by a Dutch paper, NRC. The e-reader service it launched last year based itself on simple copy streaming, and it obviously doesn't work. Disappointed users created an open forum in wiki format to voice their concerns, criticism and improvement suggestions. The company hasn't been able to respond to it adequately yet. E-reading clearly asks for special content formats, a different type of navigation architecture and innovative forms of news organisation. In the next entry, first design principles will be reviewed.

Director of the Euorpean Centre for Digital Communications and long-time journalist, Jan Bierhoff is currently conducting studies on e-reader technology and the consumer trends that will define their use. 
 

According to the Washington Post the Japanese newspaper industry is doing well for now, but doomed in the future because of its aging population and the fact that Japan's youth do not read newspapers.  In addition, Japan's population is declining; in 50 years the government estimates that Japan will have one-third the population of its 127 million today.

Although the end of newspapers in Japan is in sight, Japan's newspapers are doing very well despite all odds.  They have avoided large-scale layoffs and have retained readership figures. 

"We have committed $25 million over five years to the Knight News Challenge because we believe in media innovation through experimentation," says Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation's president and CEO. "Each winning project is an experiment with the potential to transform how we practice journalism in the digital age."

Electronic paper technology, one of the newspaper industry's most exciting innovations, could be available to newspapers as early as 2009. Ryosuke Kuwata, vice president of E Ink Corp's Asia Pacific region, revealed today in an interview that developers are getting close to unveiling the technology.

According to Kuwata, newspaper companies have made "significant moves over the past year" toward investing in the electronic newspaper. The first commercial e-paper, he says, will be tested toward the end of 2008 and launched sometime in the second half of 2009.  

Kuwata says US newspaper companies have been ahead of the game, pursuing electronic newspaper technology before Japanese companies. European papers, he says, have "just began to move."

Click here to read about electronic paper and how it could revolutionize the newspaper industry.

Source: TechOn.com through I Want Media

Oscar Westlund, doctoral student at the University of Gothenburg spoke about the dream of mobile news and if it will go beyond news addicts at the 15th World Editors Forum.

Oscar Westlund does research about media usage in Sweden. In his studies, he has found that although many Swedes own mobile phones with internet access and news functions, few actually use their phones for news. 86 percent of the Swedes make mobile phone calls every week but only 6 percent use their mobile for news at least once a week.
   Compared with Japan where the use of mobile media is high, the specific use of news with the mobile is actually similar to that in Sweden. A study in Japan asking the Japanese if they "often" use the mobile for news showed that 12 percent did in 2006 and 13 percent did in 2007.
    Westlund admitted that one of the reasons that Swedes don't use mobile news is that the prices for internet access on mobiles can be high. But more important to his studies is that most of the Swedes don't actually want to access news through their mobiles. People mostly use their mobiles for interpersonal communications. Some feel that using mobiles for news would add an element of stress to their lives. In fact, those that most use their mobiles for news are people aged 30-39 years. Westlund says that the use of mobile news services is linked to four types of characteristics; lifestyle, technology, socio-demographic factors and news habits. Users of mobile news look for mobiles with user friendliness, usability, transfer speed and battery life.
    All in all, Westlund concluded through his studies that mobile news will not be the future of news for the large majority of the population. But as people's needs are changing all the time it is very difficult to draw conclusions about the future.

The 2008 Newsroom Barometer gathered the answers of more than 700 editors and senior news executives from 120 countries, and was conducted online in March 2008.

This was a relatively big increase from the 435 senior news executives who answered the Newsroom Barometer last year.

The goal is to conduct a Newsroom Barometer every year, in order to compare and contrast the newspaper industry's trends over a longer period of time.

Here's a quick view of this year's respondents:

Job Title / others:

A near majority of the 713 respondents were editors-in-chief (320), and there were 120 managing editors. All respondents were senior news executives, there were neither journalists nor managers, as was the case in 2006.

Three quarters of respondents were male, underlining a still existent gender gap among top newspaper editorial positions. Circulation at 28% of the surveyed newspapers decreased last year, compared to 39% whose circulation increased. These numbers are both reassuring at a time of widespread doom and gloom reports, but they also reveal the transition print newspapers are going through.

Age:

There were more younger respondents (23.5% under 40) than in 2006, although senior editors (age above 50) still constituted 42% of all respondents. The split is representative of the age range of newsroom editors throughout the world.

Type of newspaper:

Compared to 2006, this year's newspapers were more representative of the industry as a whole, as two thirds of respondents came from regional or local papers, compared to a third from national or international titles.

Print circulation:

Many editors from smaller newspapers participated in this year's survey. Nearly half of respondents worked for papers with a print circulation of less than 50,000 copies. 19% of respondents worked for papers with a circulation superior to 200,000 copies.

Website traffic:

For 66% of respondents, their daily website traffic was below 200,000 unique visitors per day, which is also representative of the world press on the whole. 6% still didn't have a website, compared to 9% last year.

More about methodology

The Newsroom Barometer is a purely online survey through the Zogby website (www.zogby.com). The poll was accessible by invitation only and was conducted in eight languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian and Japanese). To avoid answers from people who were not senior news executives, a tailored email was sent to editors-in-chief using the World Editors Forum database (www.worldeditorsforum.org), which counts 7,000 senior news executives' emails.

Read Part 1: Presentation - main results, the integrated newsroom will be the norm
Read Part 2: Multimedia, multi-skilled and integrated
Read Part 3: The future of the press
Read Part 4: Who participated in the survey?
Read Part 5: Comments by John Zogby and WEF President George Brock
Read Part 6: Threats to newspapers, areas of investment, more results