Topic: "Future Prospects for Journalism in Japan"
My name is Tsuruaki Yukawa. I am a reporter with Jiji Press, a Japanese news wire. Including my collage years, I had been in the US for about 20 years. Since I came back to Japan in May 2000, I have realized how slow the Information Revolution is transforming the Japanese mass media companies. One would imagine that media companies which handle information would surely be most influenced by the Information Revolution, but the fact is that in many aspects of news reporting business in Japan the old fashioned methods and ideas are still very much intact today. Therefore, forecasting which way the Journalism in Japan is heading is very difficult. One way to get the sense of the direction of Journalism in Japan may be looking at what is happening to the US media. So today, I'd like to report the recent development in the US newspaper industry.
One of the developments I find interesting is the increasing popularity of Web logs. Web logs are personal web pages. The difference between Web logs and the regular web pages operated by individuals is blur, but Web logs tend to be personal journals updated almost everyday. There are software products that help even the least technologically oriented persons to set up and run Web logs easily. Web pages made by this type of software are definitely categorized as Web logs. Web loggers love links. They surf the Internet and links all the interesting information to their Web logs. They read each others' Web logs, therefore, the information many people find interesting would by linked by many Web logs, and spread across the Net very efficiently. Some say it is a new form of journalism. Web log's journalistic function came under the spotlight on September 11, 2001. As soon as the planes hit the World Trade Center in New York, many Web loggers started logging and linking information such as personal accounts and photos. When news sites run by large media companies became inaccessible due to the heavy traffic, Web logs became the number one information source for many Internet users. Since web logs are getting so popular, there is a bet going on between famous Web logger Dave Winer and New York Times Digital CEO Martin Nisenholts. Winer believes Web logs will outrank the New York Times Web site by 2007 based on a Google search of five keywords reflecting the top five news stories. Nisenholts insists otherwise. He said, "Readers need a source of information that is unbiased, accurate, and coherent. News organizations like the Times can provide that far more consistently than private parties can." The stake of the bet is $1000. I would imagine many people here agree more with Nisenholts. But, there is an interesting report came out recently in the US. According to Online News Association, 77.4% of the traditional media respondents agree to the statement "news in printed newspapers is more reliable than online news," 14.2% is neutral to the statement, and 8.4% disagree with the statement. On the other hand, 28.1% of online public agree, 37.6% is neutral, and 34.3% disagree with the statement. It turns out that only the traditional media workers believe newspaper is more reliable than online news.
Another interesting development in the US newspaper industry is that whether printed newspaper survive in the future is no longer an issue. Microsoft executive Dick Brass often asserts in his speeches that e-books will replace magazines and newspapers and predicts the last paper edition of the New York Times in the year 2018. New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. replied to the assertion with "who cares?" He said "I do not care when we print our last newsprint edition. We will do it on the Web. We will do it on television. We will do it in print." So although newspaper people in Japan still debate whether the print will survive, it seems that the US newspaper industry no longer see it as an issue or one or the other. Instead the norm of the business is and will be for the foreseeable future that newspapers will do both in print and on the Web. Therefore, it no longer doesn't matter when the last paper version will be printed. Whatever the scenario is, the newspaper companies will provide news on many platforms. So the US newspaper companies are transforming from one business model to new ones, and in order to survive, they seem to have started paying more attention to the readers' needs and wants.
So these are the latest developments in the US newspaper industry. Let's now take a look at the Japanese newspaper industry. It seems many people in the industry don't even realize we are now in a great transformation. But that doesn't matter. The transformation is already happening. The general public is gaining more power to do journalistic work themselves. The newspaper industry will be losing credibility. Newspaper companies need new business models, the ones that heed more attention to the readers' information needs. We, journalists, need to stop being arrogant and complacent. We need to think harder to find out in what ways we can assist the public gain information they need.
Topic: "In Pursuit of Online Community Media"
There has been a relative decline in the position of traditional media in society. The monopolistic power of mass media in journalism has been crumbling in the advent of the Internet. As the distribution of information is rapidly been diversified and intensified, the gap between mass media and the general public is vanishing, and the diffusion of "intelligence" is becoming more apparent. This phenomenon may best be illustrated by a recent episode about NHK Special "A Miraculous Poet."
We may be entering into the era of mass journalism, where amateurs who try to seek truth could have advantages over professional journalists who belong to mass media organizations. Here it is important to mix various information and various opinions. One way journalism should be mixed with various opinions provided by specialists' community. For example, Nikkei Digital Core intends to offer specialists' intelligence to form public opinions regarding IT issues. While such community media as "2 Channel" is increasing its popularity, we should pursue a new role of community media in journalism with responsibility and reliability to work with the general public and specialists effectively in information society.
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