A man walks by a bank in Osaka just as it erupts into flames. He pulls out a camera-equipped cell phone -- one of 10 million in use in Japan -- and snaps a photo. He e-mails it to Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest newspaper, which publishes it on the front page. Predicting few readers will ever use cell phones to cruise the Web, Asahi Shimbun builds a Web site for cell phone users in 1999 -- just in case. Today, 1 million people pay about $1 each month to access Asahi content, making wireless Web the most profitable part of Asahi's interactive division. Teddy Jimbo, Japan's first videojournalist, webcasts a controversial weekly news analysis program called "Marugeki," or "radical talk on demand," from his small television studio in Tokyo. So far, only 4,000 subscribers pay about $4.50 each month to watch "Marugeki" and Video News Network's three other regular shows. Welcome to the world of online news in Japan, in its own way as frustrating, exciting, confusing, promising, unpredictable and, overall, unprofitable, as online news in the United States and around the world. Traditional Beginnings Bottom line, asked a competitive-minded American after I returned from a nine-day reporting trip to Tokyo: Is Japan ahead of the United States in online news? Or is it behind? Well ? yes. And yes. Japan's just different. Different media culture. Different limitations. Different drivers. Most of Japan's media giants launched modest Web sites in 1995. Small staffs housed far from the newsroom updated the sites twice a day.
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"Media convergence is easier said than done," says Kojiro Shiraishi, head of Yomiuri Shimbun's digital media bureau. "It's difficult to make people change their minds." |
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Eight years later, many of Japan's newspaper Web sites update around the clock, employ dozens of staffers and boast hundreds of millions of page views every month. Most newspapers have moved their Web operations into the newsroom and draw their staffs from a pool of younger reporters.Still, many of Japan's online news pioneers fear their Web sites may harm circulation and revenues, and will sap newsgathering and production resources. "We see the Web as a danger for us," says Hiromi Ohnishi, deputy manager for planning and development in Asahi Shimbun's electronic media and broadcasting division, and one of very few women working for Japanese newspapers. "But if we don't do it, others will do it for us."
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