Founded in 1876, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc. is one of the oldest and biggest players in Japan's newspaper industry. Its flagship newspaper, Nikkei -- also called the Nihon Keizai Shimbun -- is the world's largest financial daily. Nikkei is the Wall Street Journal of Japan, only bigger: Nikkei has a daily circulation of over 3 million. By comparison, The Wall Street Journal has a paid daily circulation of about 2.3 million worldwide. The Japanese newspaper giant also publishes four other papers, including The Nikkei Weekly, which turns 40 this year and is the only English-language business paper published in Japan. As deeply rooted as it is in print media, Nikkei is taking the Internet seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it is working to make online news services a major part of its profit structure. The company's free Web site -- Nikkei Net -- is one of the most popular Web sites in Japan. In 1999, the company launched Nikkei Net Interactive (NNI), a subscriber-based site (6,000 yen or $54 per six months) offering up-to-the minute business news, market data and stock information in English. Few, if any, Japanese sites match the sheer comprehensiveness of NNI's services. But the bottom line hasn't quite caught up yet -- NNI's operations are still bleeding red ink. Hirotsugu Koike, editor in chief of The Nikkei Weekly and NNI, has a big job on his hands: help steer the conservative, 127-year-old media behemoth into the Internet era, and turn a profit while doing so. This is a tall order for an admitted non-techie who claims to be part of the B.C. (Before Computers) generation and gets the jitters around wireless technology. But Koike's technophobe shtick belies an adapt-or-die philosophy that he has honed during his 30 years as a journalist and editor at Nikkei. His experiences as the bureau chief in Singapore and later in Washington taught him the importance of flexibility and incorporating new concepts into one's personal outlook. He says he personally learned one such lesson in flexibility from former President Bill Clinton. On the Fourth of July, 1993, Koike lucked into an interview with the president aboard Air Force One. He was told to present his questions to the president in written form, but when he did so, Clinton veered from the script. "He put the paper aside and said he would rather listen to me," says Koike. "The president of the United States said he would like to listen to me! That's the sign of a real politician." Koike is putting his ability to adapt to the test in his new post, which he took over in March this year. From the start, he set himself apart from his predecessors by spending his first few weeks on the job taking each and every employee in his department, about 50 people, out to lunch at an upscale Italian restaurant for a one-on-one meeting. Why? "I'd like to understand everyone on my staff and, likewise, be understood by them," Koike says. "One-on-one meetings enable us to learn much more about a person." The management of The Nikkei Weekly and NNI used to be separate, but the jobs were combined for the first time under Koike's leadership. This places the veteran newspaperman in a position to answer perhaps better than most a question many journalists are asking these days: Will the Internet make traditional print media yesterday's news? Speaking in excellent English polished from his years abroad, Koike discussed this and other issues -- including what efforts Nikkei and other Japanese newspapers are making to remain vital in the wired age -- in an interview with Japan Media Review. The following is an edited version of that interview. Q: What is your main role at the Weekly and NNI? A: I function much as a managing editor, overseeing the overall operations. But I am also deputy editor in chief of all five of the Nikkei newspapers, including The Nikkei Weekly. But since that is perhaps a difficult concept for non-Japanese, my business card simply says editor in chief of The Nikkei Weekly and Nikkei Net Interactive. I am in charge of not only our English-language information services, but also our Japanese publications to some extent. Q: What are your duties for the Japanese publications? A: Like many Japanese newspapers, we have several deputy editors in chief, who work on a rotational basis. Some days I'm in charge of the evening edition, others, I'm in charge of the morning edition. I do this four times a month.
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"I personally am very concerned about the tendency or trend among young people in Japan to no longer read newspapers every day ... I ask my boys to read the newspaper every day, though I don't know if they actually do." |
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Q: Do you actually choose the content and decide which stories are going to run?A: That's right. The Nikkei organization is quite big. We have about 30 departments in the editorial bureau, including the political news department, economic news department, financial news department, etc. When I am in charge, I serve as a kind of commander in chief -- I can ask other editors in charge of a department to in turn ask journalists or correspondents to write a certain type of story, or I can give them instructions about captions and so on. You could say I function as a conductor. Q: How did you become editor in chief of the Weekly and NNI? A: Frankly speaking, I would like to be just a writer, writing articles and analysis pieces. But I can't refuse instructions from my boss. But being an editor, especially one in charge of both Japanese and English publications, is quite an interesting job, because it allows me to compare how newspapers are written in Japanese and in English. It also gives me an inside look at an English news service provided over the Internet. That's exciting because there are several media that I can oversee. It's a unique position. Q: Does the Internet pose a genuine threat to traditional print journalism? A: I have a couple of interesting books on this subject. One, written by a good friend of mine who works at NEC as a public relations officer, is provocatively titled "Will the Internet Kill Newspapers?" It's an analysis of the development of the Internet and its implications for newspapers. The other book, written by a former senior managing director at The Asahi Shimbun, is called "Will Newspapers Survive?" Of course, I don't want to be killed (laughs) and I hope Nikkei survives, otherwise no one will be able to calculate the Nikkei Stock Average (laughs). But the books and other indicators point to a certain sense of crisis about the future of newspapers. Some newspaper editors in Japan are very concerned about how the Internet is affecting print journalism. Q: What are your main concerns? A: I personally am very concerned about the tendency or trend among young people in Japan to no longer read newspapers every day or subscribe to newspapers. There are a couple reasons for this. First, they can get information over the Internet for free. Second, they spend a lot of time and money communicating with their friends on mobile phones. For example, my two boys, who are 25 and 22, pay an unbelievable amount for their mobile phones, so they have no money to subscribe to newspapers. That's a very worrisome trend. I ask my boys to read the newspaper every day, though I don't know if they actually do. That trend worries a lot of newspaper editors here. Q: Are you doing anything to try to spark interest in newspapers among younger people? A: We have been working hard to establish good relations with as many high schools and universities as possible and ask them to use newspapers as reading material. The idea of "newspapers in education," or NIE, is becoming very popular among Japanese newspaper editors. If I'm not mistaken, this concept was developed by an American editor. We feel that it is very important that newspapers be used in education. Q: Is the rise of so-called new media hurting the finances of traditional newspapers? A: I've read a lot of articles about the implications of the new media for the traditional media, and how local newspapers in the U.S. have lost revenue to the Internet, especially in the area of classified ads. But so far, my understanding is that Japanese newspapers, at least Nikkei, have not lost business to the Internet. Of course, our company is developing Internet news services in both English and Japanese, but in fact the circulation of our flagship newspaper, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, has been increasing, both for the morning and evening editions. The growth is particularly strong for our evening edition, which is interesting, because the circulations of evening editions of other major newspapers here have been falling. It's quite an interesting phenomenon. My guess is that a lot of housewives are now reading our newspaper because it is carrying much more information on lifestyle or health issues, that kind of content. So newspapers are still attracting people. It is true that the Internet business is growing, not only within Nikkei but also all over Japan. But it is also true that traditional media services are not only surviving but are on the whole increasing their circulations, which is important to note. Our company is of the opinion that traditional media and new media can peacefully coexist. For example, there's no evidence that NNI is having a harmful effect on The Nikkei Weekly, a print publication. So far, both media coexist just fine.
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