Japanese newspapers announce tie-up to combat threat of Internet

rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

[bill]

Japanese newspapers announce tie-up to combat threat of Internet [news.yahoo.com]
Three of Japan's leading newspapers said Monday they would cooperate in their online productions and distribution, joining hands to maintain clout in an industry under threat from the Internet.

The tie-up involves The Yomiuri Shimbun, which is considered the world's top-selling newspaper, along with its liberal arch-rival The Asahi Shimbun and the Nikkei business daily.

The three newspapers will set up a new website with their articles posted next to one another, partly in an attempt to lure younger readers to subscribe to their print editions.

"We want to increase the influence of newspapers in the world of the Internet," Asahi Shimbun Co. president Kotaro Akiyama told a news conference.

Nikkei Inc. president Ryoki Sugita said that most news now found online came originally from newspaper journalists.

The newspapers have quite a bit of influence in Japan and as the article indicates there are no problems with declining subscriptions to print editions. It will be interesting to note whether this will impact Japanese news distribution.

[David_M]

So to combat the internet, they are trying to woo users on the internet to go off the internet... rather than providing compelling online content...

[jeffposaka]

It will be interesting how this plays out. I think Nikkei already has a pretty good site. I wonder if they will try to combine English websites?

I rarely see anyone under 30 reading a newspaper though...

[bill]

Lots of factors at play here I think.

The Japanese media have to be well aware of the situation in the West. Many print media companies are being hit hard. Actually we don't have to go that far for examples of this. There are newspaper companies in Japan that have pulled print editions and now only live on online (ex. Mainichi Shimbun's English edition). They're circling the wagons now, but it may be too late. We're already seeing big news outlets in the West coming out of their paid-only shells. The Financial Times and the New York Times to name a few, are already cutting or eliminating fees to access their content.

I rarely see anyone under 30 reading a newspaper though...

True. It's probably the WWII baby boom generation that's keeping print in the black here in Japan. I dropped all of my newspaper subscriptions more than a decade ago. ;)