Excellent article by Roy Greenslade on Japan's newspaper crisis
Japan's Newspaper Industry in Crisis
Now that's a headline I didn't expect to write. For so long Japanese newspapers appeared to be immune to the difficulties faced by the printed press in other advanced economies.
But the situation has changed, due to a 42% decline in advertising spending over the past decade, which has been exacerbated by the global downturn that has hammered the Japanese economy.
The shrinking revenues coincide with a scramble by Japanese publishers to make their online editions profitable and attract a new generation of readers in an ageing society.
"Newspapers are seeing a crisis coming," says Shinji Oi, a professor at Nihon University. "Japan has yet to see the major newspaper bankruptcies and financial troubles that we have seen in the West. But newspapers' business fundamentals are definitely deteriorating."
Overall circulation has slipped by only 6% in the 10 years to 2009, with the top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper boasting the world's biggest sale of more than 10m copies a day.
Newspapers also remain the preferred source of news in Japan, with total circulation standing at a robust 50.4m daily sales in 2009.
With home-delivery subscription strong, armies of sales staff are always on the lookout for potential new subscribers, offering inducments to new customers such as laundry detergent or tickets to sports games.
Demand for fresh news is met with constantly updated editions throughout the day, with so-called "yomawari" (night watch) reporters doorstepping senior figures until the early hours to generate fresh headlines for their morning editions.
But an apparent failure to capture a younger generation that has grown up with the internet and the concept of free, up-to-the-minute news could prove costly in a greying society.
A survey by the Japan Press Research Institute found that most people under 40 regard an average £25 monthly newspaper subscription fee as too expensive.
Meanwhile, according to Takaaki Hattori, a media law professor at Rikkyo University, a perceived deterioration of quality in pursuit of sensationalism has disappointed readers.
He said that serious journalism was costly and Japanese media had sought to cut editorial spending at the expense of quality reporting (now where have I heard that before?)
And here is yet another similarity with the situation in Britain and the US - the charging-for-content dilemma. Major Japanese newspapers have shied away from establishing full-blown net editions due to reader resistance to pay for news.
Though most publishers have adopted a wait-and-see approach to devices such as the iPad some titles, such as the Nikkei business daily and the Sankei Shimbun have launched apps.
At the vanguard is the Nikkei, which became the first major Japanese paper to launch a full-scale online edition, featuring free and paid-content sections with stories and analysis.
Since its launch in late March, it has acquired roughly 440,000 subscribers, including some 70,000 paid readers by July. But the readership is only a fraction of the print edition's 3m circulation.
Friday, 17 September 2010
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Life online! Could you do without it?
Great piece from BBC Online about a generation brought up online!
There is now a generation who do not remember the world before the internet took off, and who live out their lives in a slew of public online arenas. But there is also a growing number of people who feel their life online has spun out of control.
Someone born in 1992 will be 18 this year. And in one way or another, their entire life has been lived online.
From birth announcements to e-mails to childhood photos, and now social networks and blogs, traces of a person's whole life could be pieced together online.
For many, a limited conception of privacy is normal, but there are some people who are now having second thoughts about how much of themselves to display to the world.
Daniel Sieberg is one of them. As a television correspondent, he recognizes that social networks had taken over his life before he decided to take the jump, and disconnect.
"Me and my ego got sucked in. Big time. And my relationships suffered," he said in his Declaration of Disconnection posted on the Huffington Post.
"I allowed the passive acceptance of strangers to replace meaningful interaction with the people I know and love. I had become more interested in a wall post here or a poke there."
'Beyond privacy'
Gordan Savicic picked up on the fact that some people feel they have lost control online. He created a service to help people disconnect from social networks.
Based in the Netherlands, the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is a website that logs into your accounts and deletes all of your data, friend-by-friend and post-by-post.
There is quite a demand for the service.
People just want to get rid [of online profiles] because they noticed they spend way too much time in front of the computer
Gordan Savicic of Suicide Machine
It has had about 90,000 requests so far and there is currently a month-long backlog.
"We figured out that people have advertised so much with their online ego, that basically a kind of avatar persona has been created so actually people start talking about killing someone like it would be a real person," says Mr Savicic.
So it goes far beyond privacy. The more time we spend in the digital world, cultivating our online profiles and virtual networks, according to Mr Savicic, the less time we are spending in our real lives communicating with our real friends.
"People just want to get rid [of online profiles] because they noticed they spend way too much time in front of the computer," says Mr Savicic. "They are basically getting their analogue life back."
Risks and limits
But according to psychiatrist Dr Jerald Block, based in Portland, Oregon, "disconnecting poses some risks".
Dr Block treats patients who use the internet excessively - more than 30 or 40 hours a week.
"If you are heavily active [on the internet], by disconnecting you are losing a significant relationship. Those 30 or 40 hours of time now have to be filled with real life."
Dr Block says some people can find it very gratifying, while others find they are not capable of staying disconnected.
However, he believes the worst case scenario is when the decision to disconnect is made by a third party. "It can be a disaster and can even lead to suicide."
For 23-year-old Giorgio Pagoria, signing up on social networking websites is out of the question. Proud of not being on Facebook, he says social networking sites are too addictive.
"At the beginning you do it for contacts, friendships, event planning, but then you get into the loop and you can't just get out, you become addicted and not in a good way."
Still, Mr Pagoria acknowledges that it can be difficult to remain disconnected in his study abroad programme, called Erasmus, in the Netherlands.
"Here in Erasmus everybody uses it to organize events and if it wasn't for my roommate who is on Facebook I would miss out and I would probably have to use my phone more."
Amplified lives
There are some people who fear they are being changed by a virtual world of status updates and 140 character distillations of their lives.
Clay Shirky on the issues of privacy in social media
If we can't live in the moment without tweeting about it, or broadcasting all of our thoughts to our 2,000 Facebook friends, are we in danger of losing our sense of identity?
Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus, says the age of the internet may not be changing who we are as people, but it is altering the way we see each other.
"We are a social species, we've always shaped each other's identities.
"What's happened now, is the explicitness, the permanentness, the globalness, the searchability, all of those things have amplified a bunch of those effects."
So how do we navigate this magnified environment we are all operating in now? Mr Shirky's advice is to find balance.
"We should look at the medium and say what are its advantages and disadvantages, and how can we maximise the former and minimize the latter, based on the way the world is right now?"
There is now a generation who do not remember the world before the internet took off, and who live out their lives in a slew of public online arenas. But there is also a growing number of people who feel their life online has spun out of control.
Someone born in 1992 will be 18 this year. And in one way or another, their entire life has been lived online.
From birth announcements to e-mails to childhood photos, and now social networks and blogs, traces of a person's whole life could be pieced together online.
For many, a limited conception of privacy is normal, but there are some people who are now having second thoughts about how much of themselves to display to the world.
Daniel Sieberg is one of them. As a television correspondent, he recognizes that social networks had taken over his life before he decided to take the jump, and disconnect.
"Me and my ego got sucked in. Big time. And my relationships suffered," he said in his Declaration of Disconnection posted on the Huffington Post.
"I allowed the passive acceptance of strangers to replace meaningful interaction with the people I know and love. I had become more interested in a wall post here or a poke there."
'Beyond privacy'
Gordan Savicic picked up on the fact that some people feel they have lost control online. He created a service to help people disconnect from social networks.
Based in the Netherlands, the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is a website that logs into your accounts and deletes all of your data, friend-by-friend and post-by-post.
There is quite a demand for the service.
People just want to get rid [of online profiles] because they noticed they spend way too much time in front of the computer
Gordan Savicic of Suicide Machine
It has had about 90,000 requests so far and there is currently a month-long backlog.
"We figured out that people have advertised so much with their online ego, that basically a kind of avatar persona has been created so actually people start talking about killing someone like it would be a real person," says Mr Savicic.
So it goes far beyond privacy. The more time we spend in the digital world, cultivating our online profiles and virtual networks, according to Mr Savicic, the less time we are spending in our real lives communicating with our real friends.
"People just want to get rid [of online profiles] because they noticed they spend way too much time in front of the computer," says Mr Savicic. "They are basically getting their analogue life back."
Risks and limits
But according to psychiatrist Dr Jerald Block, based in Portland, Oregon, "disconnecting poses some risks".
Dr Block treats patients who use the internet excessively - more than 30 or 40 hours a week.
"If you are heavily active [on the internet], by disconnecting you are losing a significant relationship. Those 30 or 40 hours of time now have to be filled with real life."
Dr Block says some people can find it very gratifying, while others find they are not capable of staying disconnected.
However, he believes the worst case scenario is when the decision to disconnect is made by a third party. "It can be a disaster and can even lead to suicide."
For 23-year-old Giorgio Pagoria, signing up on social networking websites is out of the question. Proud of not being on Facebook, he says social networking sites are too addictive.
"At the beginning you do it for contacts, friendships, event planning, but then you get into the loop and you can't just get out, you become addicted and not in a good way."
Still, Mr Pagoria acknowledges that it can be difficult to remain disconnected in his study abroad programme, called Erasmus, in the Netherlands.
"Here in Erasmus everybody uses it to organize events and if it wasn't for my roommate who is on Facebook I would miss out and I would probably have to use my phone more."
Amplified lives
There are some people who fear they are being changed by a virtual world of status updates and 140 character distillations of their lives.
Clay Shirky on the issues of privacy in social media
If we can't live in the moment without tweeting about it, or broadcasting all of our thoughts to our 2,000 Facebook friends, are we in danger of losing our sense of identity?
Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus, says the age of the internet may not be changing who we are as people, but it is altering the way we see each other.
"We are a social species, we've always shaped each other's identities.
"What's happened now, is the explicitness, the permanentness, the globalness, the searchability, all of those things have amplified a bunch of those effects."
So how do we navigate this magnified environment we are all operating in now? Mr Shirky's advice is to find balance.
"We should look at the medium and say what are its advantages and disadvantages, and how can we maximise the former and minimize the latter, based on the way the world is right now?"
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Newspaper Advertising
Media Week reveal who is advertising in the National press this week.
Who is advertising in the national press this week?
Travel companies are targeting those dismayed by the September weather forecast in today's papers with several campaigns aimed at the off-peak holiday crowd.
Tunisia's tourism board takes out full page ads in The Daily Telegraph and The Times tempting readers to visit "the jewel of the Mediterranean".
Morrisons promotes its "Let's Grow" campaign, which encourages schools to grow fruit and vegetables. The campaign has been running for more than a year but continues to be popular with shopping parents.
Charity and volunteer organisation VSO takes out a strip ads in several papers to remind readers how massive an impact volunteering can have in third world countries.
Southern Electric introduces its "iplan" to help customers save energy and money in ads across the press.
The Daily Express gives away vouchers for a free pack of Cathedral City cheddar.
This article was first published on mediaweek.co.uk
New Twitter Features
Interesting news from Media Guardian on Twitter changes.
Twitter's self-imposed - and endlessly fascinating - 140-character limit on "tweets" is being tweaked to include pictures and video, the company announced last night.
Although a number of third-party programs which access Twitter's output via its database can already link directly to pictures and videos on other sites, the site itself has so far held back from allowing anything beyond text-only hyperlinks to appear in users' streams.
But now it is following in the footsteps of the biggest social networks Facebook and MySpace, which have made themselves essential to their hundreds of millions of users by becoming a channel for multimedia content.
Twitter has already been famous as a channel for pictures: in January 2009 when a plane ditched in the Hudson river in New York, the first pictures of the plane was propogated via Twitter from Twitpic.com, one of a dozen photo-storage sites that have grown up around the microblogging service which launched in 2006.
Sharp-eyed users had noticed that Twitter tested an "inline media" option in July, apparently as part of a test: officially Twitter said then that it was "a small test of a potential... setting for inline media."
More information can be found at twitter.com/newtwitter
Twitter's self-imposed - and endlessly fascinating - 140-character limit on "tweets" is being tweaked to include pictures and video, the company announced last night.
Although a number of third-party programs which access Twitter's output via its database can already link directly to pictures and videos on other sites, the site itself has so far held back from allowing anything beyond text-only hyperlinks to appear in users' streams.
But now it is following in the footsteps of the biggest social networks Facebook and MySpace, which have made themselves essential to their hundreds of millions of users by becoming a channel for multimedia content.
Twitter has already been famous as a channel for pictures: in January 2009 when a plane ditched in the Hudson river in New York, the first pictures of the plane was propogated via Twitter from Twitpic.com, one of a dozen photo-storage sites that have grown up around the microblogging service which launched in 2006.
Sharp-eyed users had noticed that Twitter tested an "inline media" option in July, apparently as part of a test: officially Twitter said then that it was "a small test of a potential... setting for inline media."
More information can be found at twitter.com/newtwitter
Thursday, 9 September 2010
UK regional newspaper ABC's
Hell's teeth. The latest circulation figures for UK regional daily newspapers makes frightening reading. They all shed readers but some more than 10 per cent in six months. I'd say that was a hemorrhage. Some papers have shed more than 20 per cent. It will soon be all over!
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