Our Woman returned from a day in Tokyo brandishing a surprise for Our Man. Sadly, it wasn't a morsel of overpriced Leicester cheese, it was a copy of the Daily Yomiuri. For those not in the know, the DY is the (more or less) English language version of the world's best selling newspaper (if you believe what you read in papers) - the Yomiuri Shimbun. A few factoids for you folks:
- Yomiuri is a combination of yomi (meaning read) and uri (meaning sell). This apparently is a very clever name for a newspaper.
- The gaijin editorial staff at the paper refer to it with the more accurate name Daily Gomiuri (from gomi meaning rubbish).
- The Japanese Yomiuri claims a circulation of 10 million, but, like quoted circulation figures the world over, you should divide that number by at least three. The genuine readership figures for the English language DY (stripping out library copies, freebies given out at seminars like Our Woman attended, and, er, airport lounges) are a closely guarded secret, but are probably a couple of hundred.
Anyway, yesterday's Gomiuri was full of the usual crap - a none-too-subtle blend of arse-licking for the LDP, turgidly written articles, shite headlines (the front page lead was Govt to make greater use of remote isles and the "news" that begs the questions: a) How old is this story? and b) who gives a f**k anyway? Case in point - on the front page was "Nye tipped to be next US ambassador" - a story of only limited interest, as Jun Okumura points out, ever since the role of ambassador has largely been replaced by the telephone. Besides, J-bloggers had nailed the story and sucked it dry circa January 9th.
It all makes even turgid editions of the Japan Times look positively sparkling. Shame they wouldn't do this, though.
4 comments:
If you like your journalism soft and jellylike with barely a modicum of useful information, the Yomiuri is your paper.
Unfortunately, there is no one decently complete news source here; you have to read several just to get the foggiest idea of what's really newsworthy most of the time.
Yes, naive of Our Man to even think that a newspaper should have topical things of interest or use in them. Maybe it's becoming an irrelevant issue anyway, what with the death of papers the world over.
For English readers, the Japan Times is the best of a bad bunch here, at least it attempts to put newsworthy stories in the paper. It is still dull, even by (worthy but dull) American journalistic standards. You are better served by looking at Japan Probe, Japundit and Japan Soc, but naturally they don't have the reporting wherewithal to research and break major stories- but they do frequently highlight an interesting tale or two. What do you think as a key J-blogger?
The Daily Gomiuri being the cheapest English daily in Japan, most English readers that I know subscribe to that.
Despite it being expensive and a day late, I enjoy the news and format of the IHT/Asahi. Although I must say, that the Asahi pages can be a bit sparse at times: one page of news, one page of op/ed, the TV schedule, and one page of sports. It is interesting to read the articles about Japan that make it into the IHT section, as they take an outsider's perspective.
Does Japan Times (since it is not directly affiliated with a Japanese language rag) do its own reporting, or does it buy most of its stories from somewhere?
Its mostly from Kyodo news wire, but they do seem to have their own staff of toggies and reporters. Our Man has no info on how many, but he'd hazard a guess and say they have maybe a max of 10 reporters, a handful of gaijin for doing features and sub-editing duties, a couple of toggies. In other words, they are operating a national newspaper with a local newspaper's budget. But for all that, they have a proud tradition and carry lots of stuff from the Washington Post, the Observer and so on. The football (that's soccer to colonials) column is particularly good, as it is by the bloke who does the footy for the Daily Telegraph. They seem to have virtually no adverts, so their funding is a mystery to Our Man. They don't suffer from having to kowtow to a Japanese language edition which is perhaps their greatest (only) strength.
Post a Comment