How Japanese Newspapers are Trying to Save Themselves
Hint: They're Using iPhone Apps
The newspaper industry is in a downward death spiral, having been severely impacted by new technologies, the ubiquity of internet access, and a rise in citizen journalism. Here in the U.S., some papers are filing for bankruptcy, others are close to doing the same, and there's even a proposal to give the newspaper industry a bailout plan of its own. Elsewhere in the world, it's more of the same. In Japan though, the country's high population of elderly citizens is keeping the papers afloat...for now, at least. But like everywhere else, they will soon have to face the future: young people don't do newsprint.
As noted by the Washington Post in October of 2008, Japan's newspaper industry is still "surprisingly spry." The country's five big national dailies have kept nearly all their readers, only slipping 3.2 percent in circulation during the last decade. Compare that with the drop of over 15 percent in the United States, for example. Still, the industry in Japan is just as worried as everyone else because they can see the future ahead of them.
"I am in a dying industry," said Kenichi Miyata, a senior editor and writer at the Asahi newspaper, a daily with a circulation of 8 million. "Young people do not read newspapers, and our population is getting very old very rapidly."
Japanese Papers Collaborate on Mobile App
In many parts of the world, individual newspaper companies are trying different things to revitalize their industry. For example, we've seen a lot of innovation from the New York Times lately, as they embrace open data and APIs. (Disclosure: The NYTimes is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb.)
However, there's still a feeling of "it's everyone for themselves" when it comes to developing new business models. In Japan, however, three of the major newspapers have decided instead to band together. The papers are all members of the Nikkei-Asahi-Yomiuri Internet Business Partnership, a group formed nearly a year ago to launch a web site that featured all their articles together in one place.
Now, those papers have once again collaborated on a new effort to bring their content to the tech-obsessed youth. Last week, the three collectively introduced an iPhone/iPod Touch application which delivers the cover stories, city news items, editorials, and pictures to the owners of Apple's smartphone.
The application is unique as it lets consumers browse and compare the coverage of news stories by the different papers all within one single interface.
Some Problems
The application is not without its faults, though. Although it sits at the top of the free apps section in the Japanese App Store, it's not very highly rated. This is because the app doesn't provide the full text of the papers, only abstracts. In order to read the complete article, users must click a link to go to the paper's main web site. That extra effort probably frustrates users, leading to its low rating of only 2 stars. In comparison, another news organization, Sankei Shimbun, has an app which does provide the full text. In time, through download counts and popularity ratings, it should become apparent how important full text is to a newspaper app's success.
At the moment, the new collective iPhone/iPod application isn't monetized, but the companies involved hope it will motivate customers to actually read the physical newspapers. We doubt that will happen, but it will certainly be interesting to follow the success or failure of this newspaper triad. Will there be safely in numbers? We don't know yet, but it's a possibility worth looking into.
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Only abastracts that rerouted me away from the app?
http://tr.im/gk8j
nice post!
How does this differ from Google Reader? I get all the app functionality already but have the added personal service of viewing news articles on topics of my choice.
I've been surprised that the NY Times has not been more progressive in this arena. Yes, they do have an iPhone app, but it's slow and can't even load certain categories of news (at least on my iphone). The Technology section won't load and the app crashes frequently.
It seems like a no-brainer for newspapers to have strong iphone apps. They could embed social features and even create off-line versions of the paper so people could read the paper on their phone on a plane. I would happily pay an annual subscription for a really good iphone app that would let me browse the paper easily.
Doesn't the iPhone's not catching on nearly as well in Japan as in the States produce another problem?
Toward the end of the article, the Sankei Shimbun is mentioned, but there is no comment on what is remarkable about the app. It downloads the entire newspaper as a series of graphic files. Headlines, articles, ads, cartoons, photos... Only a very few things are blacked out for some copyright reasons. The iPhone's allows readers to to zoom in by pinching, or to zoom out, to navigate around the page, or to go to the next page. It is surprisingly easy to use. For non-Japanese with ageing eyes, it is actually easier to read articles this way, at high magnification, than with the regular newspaper typeface. Yes, it does crash sometimes, like the NYTimes. But it gives one the feeling of reading an actual newspaper and not just selected articles.
I used live in the U.S. studying a journalism, I was gonna be in a newspaper industry. Now, I live in Japan which is where I originally born and raised, and I'm in an internet business doing far far away from writing articles.
As you've said, the concept of keeping their industry together is great.
And yes, I'd say the industry gonna die like in the U.S.
Young people don't read newspaper, They get news in SNS and Yahoo! either on PC or on mobile.
However the brand royalty on newspaper in Japan is strong.
If your family subscribes to Yomiuri, chances are you read Yomiuri at your home too.
Business people like to read Nikkei, because that's what you've recommended by your boss, and it's only one newspaper emphasized on business.
Of course, the royalty getting weaker and weaker, but very very slowly.
In my opinion, the partnership idea is not going to help keep the industry.
The Nikkei-Asahi-Yomiuri Internet Business Partnership have only noticed by few people, I didn't even know they've started iPhone apps until today, and I visit all three websites every morning and night.
Even though, I knew about their partnership and their website(http://allatanys.jp/), I visit each of their website.
Why?
The concept of comparing the article is a total failure, because they're saying same thing.
That's how they write in Japan, and they've been criticized about it over and over.
What Sankei doing is far more welcomed in young people.
They've released iPhone apps which you can read newspaper like you read real one. They just PDFed their newspaper and using a zoom capability of iPhone. They just erase advertisements the reason I don't know, so they only have to do scan newspaper. The problem is it's too slow on mobile. It's fine if you are in wireless LAN.
But iPhonize newspaper is not gonna help to keep the industry either.
Many newspapers in Japan have interesting approach to get money.
Sankei is teamed up with MSN so that people in MSN can sell advertisements on Sankei website.
Nikkei is teamed up with magazines like Marisol which is for luxury women lifestyle magazine, and for men, they've started a website with Gethe which is like Marisol for men. And Nikkei even have their own web magazine.
Yomiuri has a service called Hatsugen-komachi, which is a web forum. It is very very popular among women in age 20's to 50's. And Yomiuri also has Web Magazine called Yomimo.
Asahi has also have a web magazine for people in 50's which is one of the biggest in that category in Japan.
As you can see, they are trying to utilize their brand royalty to get targeted advertisement money.
Sure, young people don't read newspaper, but how's that gonna have impact when you're trying to get advertisement money.
They don't use money like older people.
I'm interested how can they hold up in this economy. Money on internet advertisement have been glowing like crazy.
But now, it suddenly stopped
Creating all those services and keep operating them cost money. Infrastructures on web service like server are still expensive in Japan. Engineers are always short stuffed in any web industry so keeping them gonna cost money.
If they can take them, they can survive, but not in newspaper industry.
Keeping their business doesn't exactly mean keeping newspaper industry, that's how I see it.
I love Yuya Saito's comment. I want to hear more from Yuya and more about the news consumption by younger Japanese. I want to know
The popular forum he mentions http://komachi.yomiuri.co.jp/ looks neat and I fantasize that it's like a japanese http://ask.metafilter.com
Tell us more ReadWriteWeb!
thanks.
makes sense, and you also have plenty of empirical evidence to support this. Many web startups, in fact, were founded by two or more people: Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Skype and so
its even create off-line stüdyo versions of the paper so people could read stüdyo the paper on their phone on a plane