News Stories

[Terrestrial Dream]

Originally Posted by aohige

Anh. Japan is not USA.

You're comparing apples and oranges.

Japan is not inhabited by majority auto drivers for commute, you completely neglect the fact the vast majority of commuters in Japan use train stations. The convenience factor of kiosk is not even remotely the same.

Likewise, Japan's decrease of newspaper sales is much less than USA.

Due to the commute infrastructure of Japan, even though digital publishing does influence paper medium negatively like anywhere else in the world, there is a safe threshold of demand that it will never go below of. America (and many other nations) do not have that safety net.

I will agree with that. In Korea I believe the manga or manwha don't usually do sell well unlike the past. So these days there has been rise of webtoons in Korea though sites like Naver and Daum. Since Korea did not have a manga industry like Japan, where everything is intertwined and has strong connections, it was much easier for people to focus on the webtoons and for them to grow.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by aohige

First of all, I seriously doubt France's rail situation is anything like Japan, the biggest most used, and most complicated rail system in the WORLD. We literally have train stations apart within walking distances of each other.

So do we, if you count subway stations. (And if by "walking distance", you mean "5 minutes". If you expand it to, say, half an hour, you don't even have to count subways.)

You realize train as form of commute is the majority.
There's a HUGE difference between "a lot of people" and "vast majority".
To put it to simpler terms, if you live in a Japanese city, you use the train. Well over 99% the people do.

I could say the same about Paris. And even in smaller cities, you use buses, not a personal car.

Well, 20 years.... is a LONG time in any industry.
I don't think you can predict accurately two decades in advance, and I'm sure by then the medium difference would be vast.

I'm not discussing digital publishing twenty years from now, I'm talking about TODAY, bro.

Then I pretty much agree with you. Even if we got the tech next monday, sheer inertia means the digital conversion won't happen for a while (if at all).

[aohige]

Anh, visit Japan some time. Trust me, it's nothing like France.
Disregarding the farmlands in the country side, the ENTIRE Japan is like this.
And by walking distance I mean 10-15 min. Akihabara has two stations for example, on both ends of the street.
Umeda underground arcade stretches across like.... four stations.
I really don't think you realize just how major train is in the travel system in Japan.
There are literally thousands of experts who will tell you nowhere else in the entire world is like Japan when it comes to rail system.

I'm seriously baffled that you don't know this. The commute time insanity of Japanese rails where you feel like a rice in a bowl.
Because of the massive population of the entire city is crammed into these trains, which arrive at the stations every 3-5 minutes.
I mean, they're frigging INFAMOUS around the world. Do just like five minute research and you'll find a million stories telling you how unique it is...

And bus and train is a totally different entity.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by genjichan

I just passed by this part of the web until I stumble for another shock of our lives right after Megaupload's shutdown. Sometime ago two famous file sharing icons just removed their "file sharing thingi"


http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/23/fi...-yank-sharing/

This is what the RIAA/MPAA cabal of "IP cultists" wants, to make the environment so uncertain that even legitimate activities are squelched. People in the US shouldn't fail to notice the implications of the Grammy Award advertisements:

We *ARE* Music.

..... think about that.

[DonQuigleone]

@Aohige:

In 2010 Shonen Jump had a weekly circulation of 2.8 million.

in 1995 Shonen Jump had a weekly circulation of 6.5 million(this was Shonen Jump's peak).

Like print media everywhere, Manga magazines have seen losses in circulation, it's been declining over the last 15 years, for a variety of reasons.

I'd love to see an estimate of the combined circulation of all the manga magazines over the last 15 years. I'd say they're not too rosy for the publishers though.

So no, Japan is not unique in this respect. Like everywhere their print media is declining.

As far as I know, the only print media I'm aware of that haven't seen declines in sales is Chick lit and romantic novels. It's amazing that a genre that only really came into existence in the 70s now holds over 50% of the book market.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by aohige

...Vast chunk of income the publishing industry (and many other magazines) gets are from Kiosk stands near or on train stations.

So people going to work or school can pick up the magazines. People are NOT going to force themselves into entirely digital medium only option and abandon the perfectly working, convenient system that's already in place.

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

So no, Japan is not unique in this respect. Like everywhere their print media is declining.

With regard to the above, the following story provides interesting insight.

Newspapers in Japan defy West's media malaise

Ishinomaki, Japan (Jan 17, Tue): Printed newspapers may be in crisis in the West but circulations remain enormous in high-tech Japan — and its media will even resort to mediaeval methods to get copies to readers.

When the March 2011 tsunami struck a great swathe of the north-east coast, leaving 19,000 people dead or missing and triggering the Fukushima nuclear disaster, it also submerged the Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun's presses.

The 14,000-circulation paper had the biggest story of its 100-year existence right on its flooded doorstep, but no way of printing it.

So its reporters did what monks in European monasteries did with the Bible in the Middle Ages: they copied out their message to the people by hand. With their distribution network non-existent and no vehicles available, the reporters walked to evacuation centres where homeless victims had found refuge, and pinned up their publication.

It is an example of an intimate relationship between newspapers and readers that has long eroded in the West and means that Japan's print media have been less damaged by the havoc wreaked by new media, analysts say.

Ms Yukie Yamada, a 44-year-old female survivor, said: "All the people at the shelter flocked to the wall paper every day and stared intently at every single article. The newspaper gave us what we really needed."

Mr Hiroyuki Takeuchi, the paper's chief editor, said: "Our newspaper was being published by the victims for the victims. No matter what, we should spearhead our community. This is the social mission of a daily hit by natural disasters."

Lasting loyalty
The loyalty works both ways.

According to the World Association of Newspapers, Japan has the second-highest newspaper penetration of any country, with readership of paid dailies at 92 per cent of the population, behind only Iceland.

Japan has the planet's three biggest-selling daily newspapers, it added, led by the Yomiuri Shimbun.

The Yomiuri claims a monumental circulation of 13.5 million copies a day including its evening edition, and at 9.98 million, its morning edition alone sells more copies than all of Britain's national dailies put together.

Newspapers are standard reading fare for Japanese people on their typically lengthy train commutes to and from work, in a society that ascribes huge value to literacy and learning.

But Mr Mitsushi Akao, a lecturer on journalism at Meiji University, said the major newspapers also face less threat from Japan's relatively under-developed Internet news sites.

"Newspapers maintain higher public confidence... A majority of young people collect information from the Internet but its sources are often newspapers. If the situation continues like this, newspapers won't disappear.

"Newspapers traditionally boast networks far bigger (than other media) and have more reporters," he said, adding regional papers have a special place in their readers' hearts.

The Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association told AFP that total daily sales averaged 48.35 million last year, down only 1.97 per cent on the previous year.

"Circulation numbers declined last year in line with recent falls, but the decline was still limited," said Professor Tsutomu Kanayama, who teaches media studies at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.

Different models
The business models of Japan's newspaper publishers are different to those elsewhere in the developed world, he said.

"The Japanese newspaper industry relies heavily on its solid home-delivery system, which has long covered the entire nation minutely, which is quite different from sales at kiosks in other countries," he told AFP.

"Another factor behind the strength of the industry is their focus on securing people's trust in their newspapers. Local newspapers in particular also try to maintain a bond with their communities.

"Because of these efforts, survivors in the devastated zones flocked to newspapers and trusted their information in the aftermath of the disaster."

AFP

The observation that readers have greater trust in newspapers than TV news is echoed in other Nielsen studies of news media in Singapore, so the situation is by no means unique to Japan's. I suspect that it's probably similar in other countries as well.

Nevertheless, Japan's print media market is certainly unique in many other respects. So, yes, I agree with aohige. The print media in Japan is not directly comparable with those in the West. There is a mix of consumer loyalty and trust, tight-knit business-social relationships and economic/business structures that make the industry more resilient than those elsewhere.

[Vexx]

If I drop my newspaper, I've lost $2 at most. If I drop my pad/phone/2001monolith thingie, I'm quite likely looking at $500 down.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Vexx

If I drop my newspaper, I've lost $2 at most. If I drop my pad/phone/2001monolith thingie, I'm quite likely looking at $500 down.

I get your point, but that's not really a fair comparison. For example, how much would an annual subscription to your newspaper cost? And even if you were to get it through an online app, I imagine it would come at a price.

Also, while English-language news is widely and freely available online, the same is not quite true for Japanese-language news. It's a "niche" market, in a sense, as only Japanese news media would bother covering news — in Japanese — for this market. So, I would think that Japanese consumers do not have as many "free" online alternatives as do English-language news consumers.

[Sugetsu]

The Zeitgeist movement Israel and Peter Joseph will attempt to make an impact on the conflict with Iran through an especial event:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

PETER JOSEPH AND THE ZEITGEIST MOVEMENT ISRAEL TO CONDUCT "ZFEST" WORLD
PEACE AND SUSTAINABILITY EVENT

On February 6th 2012, The Zeitgeist Movement Israel will host a Global
Awareness Event in Tel Aviv, Israel in the context of Human Sustainability
and World Peace.

On the heels of what appears to be an accelerating intent for military
intervention in Iran from the United States and it allies, along with the
world's major powers rapidly increasing armament developments in the midst
of growing social destabilization, resource depletion and economic
breakdown, The Zeitgeist Movement, a worldwide sustainability advocacy
group working without borders or countries will be conducting a conference
on the increasingly important issues of global cooperation and the means to
obtain peace and human prosperity for the long term.

A feature of the event will be a lecture conducted by Peter Joseph, founder
of The Zeitgeist Movement, entitled "Defining Peace". This talk will
examine the historical roots of war; its technical irrelevancy; the State's
historical psychological coercion of mass appeal; the inherent exclusive
benefits to the upper class and denigration of the lower class; the broad
inefficiency of the State itself as a diversionary/business entity and its
inherent conflict propensity; along with how the only way of achieving
lasting human peace is through the dissolving of the Market System
catalysts, the Ownership Class and the State entity itself.

This now sold out event will be streamed live online for free via Ustream:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/peter-...-israel#events

Event Website:
http://www.izm.org.il/

About:
The Zeitgeist Movement is a global sustainability activist group working to
bring the world together for the common goal of species sustainability
before it is too late. It is a social movement, not a political one, with
over 1100 chapters across nearly all countries. Divisive notions such as
nations, governments, races, political parties, religions, creeds or class
are non-operational distinctions in the view of The Movement. Rather, we
recognize the world as one system and the human species as a singular unit,
sharing a common habitat. Our overarching intent could be summarized as
“the application of the scientific method for social concern.”

[ganbaru]

IAEA team heads to Iran to seek nuclear answers
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80R0EF20120128
To be honest, it's not much likely to change anything.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Vexx

If I drop my newspaper, I've lost $2 at most. If I drop my pad/phone/2001monolith thingie, I'm quite likely looking at $500 down.

You have no idea how effective a weapon a piece of newspaper can be, both literally and unliterally.

EDIT :

Originally Posted by Sugetsu

The Zeitgeist movement Israel and Peter Joseph will attempt to make an impact on the conflict with Iran through an especial event:

<snip>

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

The observation that readers have greater trust in newspapers than TV news is echoed in other Nielsen studies of news media in Singapore, so the situation is by no means unique to Japan's. I suspect that it's probably similar in other countries as well.

Nevertheless, Japan's print media market is certainly unique in many other respects. So, yes, I agree with aohige. The print media in Japan is not directly comparable with those in the West. There is a mix of consumer loyalty and trust, tight-knit business-social relationships and economic/business structures that make the industry more resilient than those elsewhere.

Interesting about Japanese newspapers there. However, the discussion was about manga magazines, which are not doing nearly so well.



All of the magazines there saw decreases in circulation. I think Japanese print entertainment is doomed long term, unless it switches to a different model. It's also facing demographic problems.

Ken akamatsu gave an interesting riff on the manga industry here

[SeijiSensei]

From my limited understanding of the manga market, the publications in that graph all target boys and teen males (with some having healthy readerships among girls as well). How much of those trends reflect the low Japanese birth rate? Can part of these declines simply be attributed to the shrinking numbers of readers for shounen publications? By that argument readership of shoujo publications should also be on a downward trend. Do josei/seinen publications show the same declines?

As for the resilience of the JP newspaper market, TinyRedLeaf beat me to the punch. News about Japan in Japanese is a market that's not subject to competition from the online editions of the New York Times or the Guardian.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

Could I have the source of that graph?

As for the observations about demographic trends, SeijiSensei has already raised the relevant query. I referred to that article about print newspapers because alternative strategies have been mooted for delivering manga content, which I find do not account sufficiently for Japan's unique market and social conditions. Manga and newspapers may be different products, but the strong link between readership habits and print-media sustainablity in Japan should not be cursorily dismissed.

Especially in a country where online distribution is not as widespread as in many Western markets. I would think the problem is more due to a shrinking target market (the interesting question would be whether there are simply fewer young eyes, or that Japanese youth are increasingly turning to online sources) than anything the manga industry is doing "wrong", in terms of circulation.

[sa547]

^
That was from Comipress, but the article was dated... more than 4 years ago:
http://comipress.com/article/2007/05/06/1923

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

Ken akamatsu gave an interesting riff on the manga industry here

Five years, eh? That's worrying, though I can't quite believe it could die in five years.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Could I have the source of that graph?

As for the observations about demographic trends, SeijiSensei has already raised the relevant query. I referred to that article about print newspapers because alternative strategies have been mooted for delivering manga content, which I find do not account sufficiently for Japan's unique market and social conditions. Manga and newspapers may be different products, but the strong link between readership habits and print-media sustainablity in Japan should not be cursorily dismissed.

Especially in a country where online distribution is not as widespread as in many Western markets. I would think the problem is more due to a shrinking target market (the interesting question would be whether there are simply fewer young eyes, or that Japanese youth are increasingly turning to online sources) than anything the manga industry is doing "wrong", in terms of circulation.

Originally Posted by sa547

^
That was from Comipress, but the article was dated... more than 4 years ago:
http://comipress.com/article/2007/05/06/1923

Correct. I couldn't find anything more recent, alas. But Shonen Jump's circulation is currently 2.8 million (at least on Wikipedia). Generally the downward trend can be seen across the shonen magazines. I don't know how much it applies to Shojo and Josei magazines. They might be seeing high levels of success similiar to Chick lit in book publishing.

The decline of Shonen magazines is likely due to a combination of factors. For one there's the demographic problem, there's just not as many kids as there used to be. Not only that, but those young men and boys that form their core demographic have far more entertainment on hand then they did even 10 years ago. Finally, their core demographic tends to be pretty tech savvy, and so would have all the know how necessary to read manga online or pirate.

The precipitous decline that Jump saw in 1996-98 was due to Dragonball and Slam Dunk ending their serialization. Given how invested Jump is in Bleach, Naruto and One Piece now, I don't think the future for Jump is too rosy once those series (inevitably) reach their end.

The Akamatsu/Takekuma interview is interesting because it brought some key facts:
* The magazines no longer make a profit, they currently make a loss, which is only rectified by paperback (tankoubon) sales.
* People are not as interested in the "omnibus" format the magazines ascribe to. They just want to read One Piece/Naruto etc. So they buy the tankoubon and don't bother with the other titles.
* All the high selling manga is dominated by titles and artists that are fairly old. There isn't really a next generation of succesful titles to take the place of the likes of One Piece.

All this paints a bleak picture for the Manga industry as it is currently. Once the current generation of succesful titles comes to an end, will it be able to keep going?

They both thought there's a shift going on away from the major publishers, for instance in the growth of Doujins.

But from how they describe it, the (shonen) manga publishing industry is currently stagnating, their system isn't keeping pace with the times.

If you look at Shonen Jump alone, it's pretty bleak. What will they do when Naruto/One Piece/Bleach end. All 3 are 10 years old+ now, for comparison, Dragonball lasted 11 years. No series has come out in Jump for the last 10 years that could take any of their places, and no series has really come out since Death Note ended that could shift millions of copies per tankoubon.

[Dhomochevsky]

And who says this has anything to do with piracy?
If you look at the birth rates in japan, or the total number of young people, the recent part of those curves look almost exactly like the ones for shonen magazines.
It might just be, that their target population is shrinking... because it is: http://www.nationmaster.com/country/...-_distribution Keep your eye on the 3rd+4th row from bottom. That's basicly their main target audience and it shrinks from about 9.5m to 6m in just 15 years.
How can this not have an impact?

Still this does not mean that you can just extrapolate it and reach zero in 5 years. That is just nonsense.

[Anh_Minh]

It's not really "reach zero". It's "fall low enough it's not worth the trouble (expense) any more".

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

It's not really "reach zero". It's "fall low enough it's not worth the trouble (expense) any more".

Exactly. Furthermore, these magazines are not intended to be solely aimed at boys aged 9-19, they tend to have readers of ages up to 40 as well, and also female readers on top of that.

If anything, Shonen magazines have done more to chase these peripheral demographics then they used to, but it's still not enough to reverse their sales trends.

That's not to say the demographic thing isn't an issue, because it is. You have a large number of shonen magazines competing for the pocket money of a dwindling number of young men, who are also choosing to spend more of their cash on computer games.

I don't think Manga is outright doomed (it's still in much better health then American comics), but I think Manga as we know it might be. For one thing, the dominance of the young adult male demographic will probably be broken. I would already say that Shojo manga has better long term health then Shonen, even if individual series sales figures aren't nearly as impressive.

Manga is changing into something else, and that puts the old style publishers at great risk of being swept away.