Parallels across the continents: The Japan Times, the Buenos Aires Herald and the struggle facing newspapers in a rapidly changing media market
Editions of the Japan Times.
TOKYO — A newspaper over a century old. Printed in English, not in the native tongue of the country in which it resides. A publication with a long history, now facing the plentiful challenges of the modern media environment, battling against websites for invaluable advertising cash while locked in a vital struggle for survival. A print outlet in a world where newspaper sales are falling, as readers migrate to online content, where they are met by the brave new world of targeted advertising.
It’s a tale that may sound familiar to you, dear reader. But this is not the Buenos Aires Herald — this is The Japan Times.
The Times, an English-language publication now in its 121st year of publishing, is based in Tokyo. And while the distance between its offices in Japan’s capital city and our own offices in the BA City barrio of San Telmo is large, the similarities in our respective situations are notable, intriguing and worth a look.
Markets
First off, let’s take a look at the competitors. Both of our publications face huge national players in our respective local print markets, which (unsurprisingly) operate with larger budgets. While in Argentina, Clarín and La Nación dominate the vast majority of daily newspaper sales, The Japan Times also has some large rivals, ones which certainly deserve the tag “heavyweight.”
First, there’s the famous Yomiuri Shiribun, said to be the most popular newspaper in the world. Aided by the country’s huge population (believed today to be over 127 million people) and an efficient home delivery service for print media in Japan, Yomiuri was shifting 9.2 million copies a day in 2014, according to Japan’s Audit Bureau of Circulations. But it’s far from the only daily that’s (ahem) big in Japan — Asahi Shimbun’s circulation in 2014 was an impressive 7.2 million, with the third-placed Mainichi Shimbun reaching 3.3 million each day. According to a tally by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, in 2011 five of the top 10 newspapers with the highest circulations were Japanese.
The Japan Times has faced and seen off a number of English-language competitors over the years. It has itself changed six or seven times over the years, incorporating other publications. The newspaper had a difficult period around the time of World War II, when it was co-opted as a voice for propaganda by the government, but nowadays, majority-owned by a subsidiary of Nifco — a leading manufacturer of plastic fasteners for the automotive and home design industries — it is viewed generally as an independent voice, perhaps even a counter to the conservative bent of the national domestic press. This is important, especially as Japan’s mainstream print environment seems to lack a major, national progressive voice, as several Japanese citizens told the Herald last week (though many noted the growing voice of the regional “block paper,” the Tokyo Shimbun daily). One member of staff described the Times personally as “well balanced.”
According to a tally by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, in 2011 five of the top 10 newspapers with the highest circulations were Japanese.
Today, the Times’ main domestic rival at least appears to the The Japan News, formerly known as The Daily Yomiuri, which — as you’ve likely guessed — is linked with the nation’s biggest daily. The Times is standing its ground admirably, its print run today tops 35,000, a healthy figure for a product aiming at a smaller share of its domestic audience.
The Herald, by comparison, has it slightly simpler, at least in terms of our immediate, domestic print rivals. Our last major print competitor in Argentina was The Standard, which folded in the 1950s. (We have, however, seen the growth of more Argentine-based English-language material online in recent years from outlets such as The Argentina Independent and The Bubble, linked to Infobae).
Latin America is known in media circles for the paucity of English-language outlets, but that’s not true everywhere in the world. Zooming out more globally for a moment, it would seem remiss not to mention the Times of India, for example, which remains the largest-selling English-language newspaper on the market, even outselling publications like The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times and the UK’s best-selling UK daily, The Sun.
In 2013, the Times of India’s circulation was estimated to be over three million copies, a staggering amount considering it is an English-language publication in a country where Hindi is the most-widely spoken tongue. A legacy of Britain’s colonial rule of India, the newspaper outdates the Herald’s own 140-year history, stretching back to 1838.
Challenges, content
There are of course major differences between the Japanese and Argentine English-speaking communities. Yet both the Tokyo-based newspaper and our own have found it difficult to compete in the modern media environment, especially as expat communities have more resources to turn to online — including their native country’s media. The challenge facing both the Herald and The Japan Times today, frankly in terms of cold hard cash and readers, is arguably more stark than those our forbearers faced in the past too.
Print advertising, for example, is in decline and while sources at the Times confirmed the majority of their income still comes from print spends, the playing-field has shifted as advertising cash moves online.
The price/payment issue is a key question for a publication in this day and age. The Times moved to tackle the problem head-on, adopting a “metered paywall” approximately two years ago as part of a major overhaul of its website. Modelling its approach on the successful, responsive designs rolled out by other publications such as the Boston Globe and New York Times, the Japanese newspaper offers different pricing levels and access, depending on whether readers are print subscribers. It has experimented too with a web-first publishing policy, web-only content and dabbled with staff blogs. The newspaper now has a dedicated social media employee, tasked with expanding the publication’s audience and drawing in readers, ensuring its readers go way beyond just the print run.
Its standing has been aided too by a partnership agreement with the New York Times, with a selection of the respected US newspaper’s content now published on a daily basis inside the print edition as part of a tie-in. The Japan Times has also looked to monetise its strengths, exploring how to use its archives and utilising its publishing division to offer products to students and those seeking to learn English.
It’s all a long way from both our origins and the tale of the Times’ early years echoes that of the Herald’s, with the initial stages of the publications based on communicating the news and information to the English-speaking immigrant community, filled with plenty of advertising as firms sought to sell their wares.
But perhaps the biggest challenge facing the Japanese newspaper and our own today is how to make an impact, beyond our initial audiences.
There are ways to approach this. While the Herald has for the past five decades published its editorials in both English and Spanish in its print edition (and has began in recent years to offer translations of some of most important articles online in Spanish), for example, The Japan Times has yet to take such steps on a regular basis. It did, however, explore such a move when it translated a series of important stories into Japanese that addressed US service members and their exposure to Agent Orange on Okinawa during the Vietnam War.
This question, of how to make an impact as something of an ‘outsider’ publication is an ongoing conversation. Both our publications, however, must decide whether to focus on our ‘core’ audience or reach for the wider world as we question our role in today’s market.
One large similarity between the two of us — and perhaps our biggest selling points — seems to be the desire to offer more informed content, not only about our respective countries but of the wider region. The Herald, for example, has sought to deepen its coverage of local politics and Latin American news in recent years, seeking to improve our offerings beyond simply using the cables of the major news agencies that dominate press coverage worldwide. The Japan Times subscribes to that idea too, seeking to produce more informed copy. When consulted, one staff member mentioned in passing a disappointment at the surface level coverage seen globally of issues such as the Fukushima disaster and the recent debate over the abdication of the Japan’s emperor, which could be attributed to a result of reporters from global outlets being “parachuted” in to cover breaking news.
That sort of coverage — journalism that probes deeper, with more insight — requires a greater understanding of local issues and, to that end, both the Times and the Herald employ a mix of native English speakers and citizens from Japan and Argentina, respectively, as reporters and editors.
Of course, with news outlets worldwide pulling down the shutters and closing up, the challenges ahead are immense and more pressing than ever, especially for publications such as ours which are drastically reducing in numbers worldwide. But hopefully by catering to our communities and offering a deeper insight and more informed reporting to the wider world, we can write ourselves into the future, as we did in the past.
To learn more about The Japan Times, visit http://www.japantimes.co.jp
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This article was originally published in the Buenos Aires Herald, on Friday, February 17, 2017.