The day when the evening editions of newspapers will cease to exist…

The circulation of the evening edition has plummeted to one-fourth over the past 20 years!

As of August 2012, the Tokyo Shimbun ceased to deliver and sell evening editions in all areas of Tokyo except the 23 wards.

The five major national newspapers have also expanded the areas where they no longer deliver evening editions, and most of the local newspapers have also discontinued their evening editions. With the recent trend away from newspapers being talked about, is the shrinking sales of evening editions a sign of the disappearance of newspapers? We asked Yoshihiko Takao, an alumnus of the Mainichi Shimbun, about the current situation.

The price of a set of newspapers is the same as a morning edition, but the price of a set of newspapers is the same. ……

I had thought that newspapers were supposed to be a set of morning and evening editions, but it seems that many people have been subscribing to morning editions only for quite some time.

According to the circulation data published annually by the Japan Newspaper Publishers Association, there were approximately 53 million newspaper subscriptions nationwide in 2000. Of that number, the morning edition alone had a circulation of 33 million, and only about 18 million subscribed to the evening edition as a set. This shows that there have always been readers who do not read the evening editions,” said Yoshihiko Takao.

Incidentally, according to last year’s data, the circulation of morning and evening newspapers as a set has drastically decreased to 4.45 million. The price is not much different whether you get a set or just the morning edition. Even so, there are many people who cannot read the evening editions, and this trend seems to be accelerating.

If you can read an article that interests you, that’s fine. ……

Nowadays, even if you don’t read a newspaper, your smartphone will tell you the latest news on its own. You skim through the headlines that come across your screen, and if you are interested, you click on it. You can read the latest news anytime you want.

Whenever I am asked to give a lecture at a university or high school, I ask them to raise their hands and say, “Who keeps a newspaper? I think the number of people who don’t find the listability of newspapers appealing is increasing, although the rise of the Internet is probably a factor.

The tendency to read an article next to another article, and then somehow become interested in that article as well, has disappeared, and people’s thinking tends to be more narrowly focused on their own favorite topics. I think this is one of the reasons for the decline in newspaper circulation.

People are using their smartphones to pick up and read only the news they are interested in. Is that really a “good typa”?

The unique appeal of …… the evening edition, which has undergone repeated trial and error.

Many newspaper subscribers look forward to the evening edition.

It offers miscellaneous news that is not covered in the morning editions, which are mainly political and economic articles. Columns and essays by unique writers. The current evening paper contains many articles that can be read casually, but until about 10 years ago, the evening paper, like the morning paper, was news-oriented.

‘It was about 20 years ago that things changed.

About 20 years ago, we started using the third page of the paper to carry articles of a reading-oriented nature. With circulation declining, we tried to create a unique appeal for the evening edition that was different from that of the morning edition.

This is where the trial-and-error process for the evening edition began. Even though we were trying to enhance and characterize the reading material, incidents did not occur in the same way as in the morning edition.

The situation was quite difficult, and even now there is a situation in which news that is the top story in the evening edition of Paper A is barely mentioned in Paper B,” said Mr. Kikuchi.

I imagine that junior staff members are making the evening editions while worrying about how to handle the news.

From 1969, when Takao joined the Mainichi Shimbun, until recently, it was a matter of pride for the creators of the evening editions to reappear in the morning editions the next day. Nowadays, however, it is common for news to appear in the morning editions as well, with some modifications.

For those who live in areas where the evening edition has been discontinued, the morning edition is the only one they need to read in order to understand the entire news.

The number of reporters, our most valuable asset, will also have to be reduced. ……

Why was the evening edition distributed only in urban areas in the first place?

This was a difficult decision for the newspaper company. The newspaper companies no longer had the strength to distribute a set of newspapers in response to the circulation in the area, anticipating a loss.

The newspaper’s overall revenues are down substantially. We are barely managing to keep the paper afloat by using real estate income to cover losses in sales and other areas.

To put it simply, the Yurakucho Marrion was originally the headquarters of the Asahi Shimbun, and Asahi earns rental income from it.

All newspapers, including the Mainichi, are in dire financial straits. In addition to shrinking their delivery areas, they have had to reduce the number of reporters, their most valuable asset, and without personnel, they have no choice but to downsize their news networks.

For example, the prefectural editions of the Tohoku region used to carry a lot of news for each prefecture, but now the three Tohoku prefectures share a common edition with a small number of reporters. Some readers may be dissatisfied with the lack of coverage of detailed local news.

In our days, we used to have a “stay-over shift” in the Social Affairs Department, where five to six people were always on standby at the company and would go out to cover any news that arose.

With the advent of the Internet, the reporting system itself has changed dramatically.

During Mr. Takao’s working days, it was an ironclad rule to put Tokudane in the last edition of the morning paper as much as possible and act in such a way that other newspapers would not notice it. Nowadays, however, when he gets a piece of news, he puts it out on the Internet on the spot.

If we provide it to other media, I think we can make a profit there. ……

When Google and Yahoo! came out, most of the news they carried came from newspapers, but they got off on the wrong foot and offered it at a very low price.

They started off on the wrong foot and offered it at a very low price, and then they started giving away the news they grabbed for free, and they strangled themselves. It was a complete failure of media strategy.

The starting point of a newspaper is “investigative reporting. The starting point of a newspaper is ‘investigative reporting,’ and I wonder if that kind of power is being fully demonstrated. ……

In order to keep the evening edition alive, it is imperative to attract new readers to the digital edition, but many of the paper’s readers are elderly and digitally impaired, making the transition difficult. However, many of the paper readers are elderly people who are not digitally inclined, and it is difficult for them to make the transition. ……

For example, in the case of the Mainichi Shimbun, copywriter Takashi Nakahata selects the best entries for a series of “Nakahata-style all-purpose willow” in the morning edition, which is very popular, and many readers are connected only through this series. There are many readers who are connected only through that. I would like to publish as many high-quality projects and columns as possible, and enhance the paid content as well. I would like to make more high-quality projects and columns, and to increase the number of paid contents to generate income.

Although the number of news reporters has decreased, the number of staff members to publish quality reading materials has increased, and in a sense, we are now well-equipped.

We also have articles that may or may not lead to readers, but are not published in print newspapers, but only on the Internet.

We are trying to attract new digital readers by offering not only news but also reading material. On the other hand, what can and should paper newspapers do to survive?

I don’t think they can survive in terms of getting the news out quickly. However, the origin of newspapers is “investigative reporting.

Newspapers make an effort to uncover and report facts that are hidden from the public by the authorities. I think the issue for the future is whether or not this kind of power is being fully demonstrated.

For example, the discovery of the LDP’s political contribution slush fund issue was triggered by a report in “Shimbun Aka Hata” (Red Flag). Takao recalls that it was very unfortunate that the general press did not report the story.

There are probably still many facts that people don’t want to reveal, and if we don’t create a system to properly follow up on them, the newspaper itself will lose its raison d’être.

Newspapers cannot fulfill their role simply by reporting what has happened. We must go back to the basics once again and report news with a proper intention, without being influenced by the current trends of the world.

It may sound foolish, but I want my juniors to create a newspaper with single-minded devotion. I believe that if they have that desire, they will be able to communicate it to readers.

Yoshihiko Takao joined the Mainichi Shimbun in 1969. He has been with the Mainichi Shimbun since 1969, and has served in a variety of positions, including head of the Tokyo head office’s representative office, full-time auditor, and president of Nihon Shinbun Ink Co. He is the author of “Jolly Clowns: On-site Verification of Kakuei Tanaka’s Illusions” (Shakai Shiso-sha), “Kohei Nakabo’s Catching Up” and “Kohei Nakabo’s Entering the Shura” (both Mainichi Newspaper Publishing Co., Ltd.). He self-published a collection of haiku and miscellaneous writings, “Muttering Free Love I, II, III, IV.