Yomiuri Shimbun, the world?s largest newspaper, occupies half a city block near the grounds of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo. The Yomiuri building is somber and staid, as befits a 129-year-old newspaper with a daily circulation of 14 million. As powerful and large as the newspaper is, its editors find themselves caught in the same dilemma as other news organizations around the world ?- how to survive this new medium called the World Wide Web. Yomiuri editors know the younger generation -- like those who flock to the bright lights of Tokyo's trendy Shibuya district instead of to the placid Imperial Palace gardens -- will be determining its future.
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"What worries Japanese newspaper publishers most is how long they will be able to enjoy the large circulations that now support their business. They fear coming generations will spend more time Net-surfing or playing games than reading printed materials." -- Yomiuri's Kojiro Shiraishi |
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And they know that most of Japan's teens and young adults are not reading newspapers.
The editors and publishers gathered at Japan's 55th National Newspaper Convention in October fretted that "an increasing number of younger people do not read newspapers and ... that reading newspapers is no longer a requirement for being considered an intellectual adult.""What worries Japanese newspaper publishers most is how long they will be able to enjoy the large circulations that now support their business," writes Yomiuri?s digital media chief Kojiro Shiraishi in a recent article for the Japan Institute of Developing Economies' report on new media. "They fear that coming generations will spend more time Net-surfing or playing electronic games than reading printed materials." Jumping in with both feet Like most of Japan's large newspapers, Yomiuri launched a Web site in 1995. In the first week, Yomiuri On-Line had only 8,961 page views. The site was updated twice a day to coincide with the paper's morning and afternoon editions. Eight years later, Yomiuri On-Line is updated around the clock with breaking news and delivers nearly 100 million page views per month. Last November, when North Korea released several Japanese citizens it had kidnapped more than 20 years ago, page views spiked to 120 million. Most of what appears in the newspaper is also posted at Yomiuri On-Line. About 20 percent of the site is original content, including a number of special-interest sites that were launched in 1999: Ohtekomachi-woman -- with news for working women -- gets 6 million page views per month; car buff site @cars gets 1 million page views per month; and financial news site @money gets 3 million page views per month. Yomiuri On-Line also has travel, homes, lifestyle, and media news sites. Under Shiraishi's leadership, Yomiuri's online team also produces wireless Web sites, cable TV, satellite TV, radio news, and electronic billboards on streets and in bullet trains. Yomiuri's digital media arm employs about 100 editors, reporters, photographers, cameramen, graphic designers and technicians. While that may seem like a lot, these 100 workers make up less than 3 percent of the media giant's editorial work force: More than 2,800 Yomiuri reporters and editors gather information in 389 offices around the world. The paper is printed at 22 printing plants and delivered by more than 2,700 trucks. The paper eats up 2,510 rolls of newsprint each day -- enough to cover seven-eighths of the Earth?s equator. The company owns seven aircraft, the wildly popular Yomiuri Giants baseball team and the 40-year-old, 80-piece Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. It is majority shareholder of Nippon TV Network Corporation, a major station in Japan. With a TV network as part of its empire, convergence would seem a natural fit, and Yomiuri was in fact doing convergence long before the buzzword began ricocheting around the world of new media. In the mid-1970s -- before most of Japan's private TV stations got into the business of covering news -- Yomiuri Shimbun provided news content to Nippon TV Network. That cooperation waned in the late '90s, when NTV and the nation's other top TV stations started producing their own news shows. Today, Yomiuri and NTV are "just beginning to talk with each other" about convergence, says Shiraishi. In Japan, television is king -- people turn to it more than any other medium for news and entertainment. NTV managers don't see the Internet as a threat, and question whether it makes sense to pour a lot of money and energy into it. While millions have signed up for a handful of wireless Web services -- cell phone delivery of sports and news alerts, for example -- most of Japan's media consumers have so far shown little interest in seriously surfing the World Wide Web. Shiraishi's decided he can't wait around forever for NTV to catch Web fever. So though Yomiuri and NTV are part of the same media empire, he's set up his own TV production shop at Yomiuri. "We do TV programs on an experimental basis," Shiraishi says. "Our budget is limited. It is questionable how far we should go."
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