How can Yomiuri Shimbun be so successfull yet ?

7 comments

1. Do you young people have newspaper subscriptions here? Not really.

   There’s just a lot of old people. Give it a decade and I’m sure it’ll cease to exist.

2. Older people, Corporate group subscriptions, University group subscriptions – and generally a lingering culture of paper help. As of 2022, over 50% of households still held newspaper subscriptions.

   I don’t expect it will last forever however.

3. No clue, I live in Okinawa and people here almost *exclusively* read the two main local papers. They deliver 2(?) copies of each to the school I work at every day, plus the town weekly (or monthly? idk) and various other small papers. People generally flip through them in their free time, my kanji isn’t great but I pick up enough (for instance, apparently two high school players from Okinawa Shogaku were selected for the national junior team 💪🏼). I get most of my news online tho, although half of that is bc I can read English (and Spanish) much better than I can read Japanese.

4. FIL still reads the newspaper for its TV programs and some news. The older generation (75 an above) here watches a lot of TV, but don’t have a computer or access to the internet. So the only way to get information is the TV and newspapers. I agree though, that it will probably decline in the next ten years.

5. Lots of older people still buy newspapers. First thing my FIL buys everyday.

6. In addition to lots of old people, Japan is a relatively small country with a relatively large population. So it makes sense for Japan to have national newspapers in ways that doesn’t really work in the US (too geographically large) or Europe (also large but mainly language differences). Which helps explain why 3 of the top 6 newspapers in the world by circulation are Japanese.

7. lots of hard media has survived in Japan longer than elsewhere. I’m pretty sure the numbers around magazines and cd’s are still relatively good too