I am considering starting to read (general) news in Japanese for language learning purposes, but I have a lot of options. What are the the newspapers pictured known for? You can skip the ones that are only about one specific topic, like sports or the economy.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_Japan should be a great place to start
FYI, top two rows are newspapers, the bottom three are tabloids. And Daily Sports is very pro-Hanshin Tigers
If you want to try an app, Todai is pretty good as it uses furigana and highlights the JLPT level of certain words. (I have it for Android, I don’t know about the availability for iOS)
If you want to learn language, read the Nikkei. If you can understand their columns, you’re well on the way to N1.
The top two rows are close enough to what I’d call real newspapers. Asahi is left-leaning, the rest are centre to right. From the third row down is all tabloids and sports newspapers. I’m a Dragons fan so I love the Tokyo Chunichi Sports, but it’s otherwise not a particularly great paper.
Politically, Nikkei is right, Asahi is left, and Tokyo swings both ways depending on the mood.
They all looo like anime logos
Left to right, top to bottom:
*Broadsheets: first two rows*. Bear in mind that any mainstream media in Japan is gonna be slightly further towards the govt than in some other countries, kisha clubs and self-censorship are weird, I don’t really understand what goes on tbqh but that’s the impression I get of their effect.
Nikkei: Business/finance orientated. Respectable but watch its priorities leaning towards those of business and making it slightly to the right.
Asahi: Centre-left. Probably not the best one to learn JP on just cause it loves complicated vocab.
Tokyo: Generally left-leaning, a bit more investigative than the average.
Sankei: Pretty far to the right. Along with Tokyo, one of the two broadsheets that doesn’t paywall its online articles.
Mainichi: Slightly left of centre. Probably a bit easier than Asahi to comprehend.
Yomiuri: The most popular of the six. Somewhat right of centre, somewhat analogous to the UK Times.
*Sports tabloids: second two rows*. This category I honestly know very little about. But might be useful if you like sports and find it easy to pick up Japanese by reading about it, idk.
*Political tabloids: most of the bottom row*. As with shukanshi (weekly magazines that go heavy on scandalous revelations), they can be less credible than the broadsheets but there’s also a genuine chance of them being the only people with the guts to cover a real story, so yeah.
Gendai: Significantly to the left. Also un-paywalled. The tiny /r/newsokur community loves it.
Fuji: Significantly to the right. Same people as Sankei, just more shouty.
Tokyo Sports: I *think* this is another sports one but they do also write very dubious political stuff so idk.
I think that’s all of them. When I first started reading newspaper articles in JP, I used my local Kyoto Shimbun, and partly for that reason from this list I might be inclined to recommend the Tokyo Shimbun. But if someone in the comments knows I’ve made a mistake then lmk.
All I know is, Yomiuri = pro LDB, Asahi = extremely left-leaning, to the point of thinking communism isn’t so bad and we should all give it another try.
I’ve seen Nikkei described as center right or right-leaning, and that may be true for general reporting, but they regularly publish very far-right Op-eds and platform some extreme positions, so your mileage may vary.
If you want a proper left-leaning newspaper in Japan, Shimbun Akahata is the official newspaper of the JCP. And it’s shockingly not a bunch of tankies.
I thought people complain Asahi is too “leftist”. I used to read the Nikkei, but it’s expensive and their online subscription price was a joke since it was separate to their paper subscription