My Vision No.54
2021.5

Can the News Media Create an Unfragmented
Public Sphere?
The expansion of the media has had a considerable influence on democracy in Japan. However, inthe past 20 years, newspaper circulation has declined significantly, and Internet news has becomea new source of information. What is the best direction for news media in the future?

About This Issue

News Media at a Turning Point– Creating an Unfragmented Public Sphere and Protecting the Soundness of Democracy
Masaki Taniguchi
President, NIRA / Professor, Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo

Keywords…The future of newspapers, news media, the true significance of journalism, the soundness of
democracy, strategies of Japan’s two major newspapers, public sphere, infrastructure for political communication

Expert Opinions

Can the News Media Create an Unfragmented Public Sphere?
What role should the news media play in democracy into the future?
And what strategies should be applied in the area of media management?

As a Reliable Media Format Offering
Breaking News, the Role of Newspapers
Will Become Increasingly ImportantPursuing a “Digital Shift,” We Are
Striving to Become an Integrated Media
Corporation That Seeks to Enrich Lives

Shoichi Oikawa

Shiro Nakamura

Representative Director, Chairman of the Board
and Senior Deputy Editor-in-Chief, International
Operations (Editor-in-Chief, The Japan News),
The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings

President and CEO of The Asahi Shimbun
Company

Keywords…Accurate conveying of events, media thatis not afraid to make a statement, newspapers forchildren and junior and senior high school students toincrease future readers, planning of digital contents,
diversification of management

Keywords…Unique digital expression, service
journalism, destruction of news market, fact
checking, integrated media corporation

Competing for the Information the
Government Officials Are Willing to Give
Is Not “Journalism”

The Media Must Regain People’s Trust
Through Investigative Journalism

Susumu Shimoyama

Masaru Seo

Author and Part-time Lecturer, Department of
Journalism, Sophia University

Director, Smart News Media Research Institute

Keywords…Democratic watchdog, maeuchi(publishing information held by administrative
agencies or the government in advance of othermedia outlets), unique coverage, producing change invoting behavior, Akita Sakigake Shimpo

Keywords…Declining trust in media, gap inawareness, crisis of democracy, investigative
journalism, a strong society that is not misled bymisinformation, media literacy education

Journalism's 21st Century Challenge:
Elitism, Disengagement and New Sourcesof Revenue in the Digital Age
Nikki Usher

Associate professor, The University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign in the College of Media's
Journalism Department
Keywords…Elite democracy, diverse news media,
disengagement with news media, gap in awareness,
the New York Times

Interview period：March,2021～April,2021
Interviewer : Masaki Shibutani (NIRA Research
Coordinator, Researcher), Shoko Omori(NIRA Research
Coordinator, Researcher)

Editor: Reiko Kanda, Maiko Sakaki, Ayumi Kitajima, Tatsuya Yamaji and Jonathan Webb. This is a translation of a paper
originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation presented here. Translated by Michael Faul.
Copyright Ⓒ 2021 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement

My Vision No.54
2021.5
About This Issue

News Media at a Turning Point– Creating an Unfragmented Public Sphere and Protecting the Soundness of Democracy
Japan is unparalleled as the world's leading newspaper
powerhouse. The Yomiuri Shimbun, The Asahi Shimbun, The
Mainichi Shimbun, and The Nihon Keizai Shimbun are among
the world’s top ten newspapers in terms of circulation. However,today there is a shadow over the future of the newspaper. As of
October 2020, newspaper circulation in Japan was approximately
35 million, representing a decline of around two-thirds in 20 years.
The shift away from newspapers is particularly marked among
Masaki Taniguchi
young people; according to a survey by the Japan Press ResearchPresident, NIRA / Professor,
Institute, less than 10% of people in their 30s or below read
Graduate Schools for Law andnewspapers every day. Criticism of newspapers on the Internet is
Politics, The University of Tokyo
severe, irrespective of their specific political orientation.
Based on the case of the United States, in which the harsh environment surrounding
newspapers has developed in advance of other nations, there is concern that this trend will go beyond
the fate of a particular industry, and will have an adverse effect on democracy. The turmoil of the 2020
presidential election highlighted the dangers of political communication via the Internet: cybercascades, echo chambers, filter bubbles, fake news, and more. How would ex-President Trump respondto Thomas Jefferson’s statement “[…] were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government
without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer
the latter”?
In this issue of My Vision, we asked five experts – two of whom are leaders of the Japanesenewspaper industry, and the others of whom possess a deep knowledge of the necessary direction forjournalism in Japan and overseas – what it will be necessary to do in order to protect the Japanese
news media and maintain the soundness of democracy in the nation.

What Strategies Should News Media Adopt in the Digital Age?
As pointed out by Susumu Shimoyama, a writer known for works such as Ni-sen go-juu-nen
no media (“The Media in 2050”), Japanese newspapers, in particular their political reporters, havetraditionally found value in establishing relationships with sources such as politicians and civil
servants, receiving information from them, and publishing scoops based on this information ahead of
their competitors. However, with the development of the Internet, even in cases in which a newspaper
is excluded from receiving special information from the government, it can immediately catch up with
its competitors via digital editions. As a result, the competition over which outlet has or has not received
a scoop from the government or bureaucracy no longer has particular significance for readers. Mr.
Shimoyama emphasizes that it is precisely investigative journalism, which reveals behind-the-scenes
facts not announced by the government, that will be the path to survival for newspapers.
Masaru Seo, the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Internet news organ Gendai Business, andnow the Director of the Smart News Media Research Institute, is also of the opinion that investigative
journalism, which reveals concealed information and issues not previously visible to the public, accords
with the necessity of restoring confidence in the media and protecting democracy. As Mr. Seo informs
us, while the Internet has issues such as fake news, we must not resort to such “drastic solutions” assurveillance and censorship; rather, it will be essential to provide education in media literacy from thestage of compulsory education in order to enable people to compare and examine a variety of media
Editor: Reiko Kanda, Maiko Sakaki, Ayumi Kitajima, Tatsuya Yamaji and Jonathan Webb. This is a translation of a paper
originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation presented here. Translated by Michael Faul.
Copyright Ⓒ 2021 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement

My Vision No.54
2021.5
information and make the correct decisions on that basis.
What is the situation in the United States, which, for better or worse, is one step ahead ofJapan with regard to news media strategies for the digital era? According to scholar of communications
Nikki Usher, an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the author ofbooks including Making News at The New York Times and Interactive Journalism, while the volume
of consumption of media content and the time spent consuming that content are increasing, media arediversifying, and the number of people who do not access news via their social media feeds is also
increasing. Professor Usher tells us that in the future, it will be important for news media to utilize
digital marketing in order to attract people's attention and to find stable sources of income.

Supporting the Mission of Newspaper Journalism by Means of Diversification of theNewspaper Business
How will the leadership of Japan’s two major newspapers, The Yomiuri Shimbun and The
Asahi Shimbun, respond to the difficult situation outlined for us by the three contributors discussed
above? We can see both similarities and differences in the views of Shoichi Oikawa, Chairman of theBoard of The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings, and Shiro Nakamura, President and CEO of The Asahi
Shimbun Company.
The first point that these two executives have in common is a sense of mission: that the role ofthe news media in accurately conveying the events of the world must not be allowed to disappear andbe lost as a deluge of fake news inundates our societies. They display another point of similarity inpromoting the diversification of their businesses into such areas as real estate, entertainment, andonline and catalogue sales, thus strengthening the management foundations of their respective
companies as a means of maintaining the true purpose of journalism.
At the same time, there are very interesting differences between the two companies withregard to digitalization. While The Yomiuri Shimbun draws a line in the sand in relation to a “digitalfirst” prioritization of digital editions, and is focusing resources on encouraging a habit of reading
physical newspapers among children with its KODOMO Shimbun (“newspaper for elementary school
students”) and Chukosei Shimbun (“newspaper for junior high and high school students”), The Asahi
Shimbun does not regard the ongoing enhancement of its digital edition as competing with its paper
edition, and seeks to cultivate a new readership by means of the digital distribution of a variety ofcontent that will be useful in its readers’ daily lives.

Infrastructure for Political Communication That Transcends Barriers
In Japan, the power of national newspapers remains strong, and even if users shift to theInternet as their primary source of information, the number of stakeholders is limited, given thatproviders such as Yahoo! News and LINE NEWS are more central than Facebook and other social
media platforms. The time is coming when we must take advantage of these characteristics and, inorder to resist fake news, the common enemy of the news media and democracy, design infrastructure
for the public sphere and political communication in a new era, infrastructure that transcends thedivisions between different newspaper companies with regard to political outlook, and between old andnew media. Reading the recommendations of the five experts in this issue only strengthens this feeling.
＊This NIRA project was assisted by the generous cooperation of Yoichi Serikawa, an Editorial Fellow at
Nikkei Inc. and a member of the NIRA Research Evaluation Council. We would like to take this opportunity
to express our gratitude.
Professor Taniguchi is President of NIRA, and a Professor in The University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Law and
Politics. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from The University of Tokyo, and specializes in the study of political scienceand contemporary Japanese political discourse.
Editor: Reiko Kanda, Maiko Sakaki, Ayumi Kitajima, Tatsuya Yamaji and Jonathan Webb. This is a translation of a paper
originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation presented here. Translated by Michael Faul.
Copyright Ⓒ 2021 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement

My Vision No.54
2021.5Expert Opinions

As a Reliable Media Format Offering Breaking News, theRole of Newspapers Will Become Increasingly Important

Shoichi Oikawa
Representative Director,
Chairman of the Board and Senior
Deputy Editor -in-Chief,
International Operations (Editorin-Chief, The Japan News),
The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings

Traditional news media, and newspapers in particular,
are facing difficulties. The circulation of The Yomiuri Shimbun,
which was close to 10 million in 2011, has decreased by morethan 2.5 million in 10 years. The spread of the Internet is one ofa variety of factors involved in this, but nevertheless, theInternet will not be able to replace newspapers. The role of thenewspaper as a news medium that accurately communicatesfacts regarding the events that take place in the world will not
disappear.
Another role of newspapers is the expression of opinions.
In March, The Yomiuri Shimbun created a seven-point proposal
regarding responses to COVID-19. Individuals can also express
their opinions via the Internet, but these are nothing more than
individual opinions, and their accuracy is not verified.
Newspapers are the only media that can speak out to thegovernment and society after listening to the opinions of theconcerned parties from various angles and comprehensively

examining them as an organization.
In reality, however, the number of households that do not subscribe to newspapers isincreasing, and the management of newspaper companies is, it goes without saying, becoming difficult.
Parents are busy with work, and children are spending less time at home due to attendance at cramschools and various other activities. This means that opportunities to be exposed to newspapers havedecreased. In order to encourage people to adopt the habit of reading newspapers from childhood andso increase the number of future readers, we have been publishing weekly newspapers The Yomiuri
KODOMO Shimbun (newspaper for elementary school students) and The Yomiuri Chukosei Shimbun(newspaper for junior high and high school students) in collaboration with the publishing house
Shogakukan. Rather than rewriting a regular newspaper in a simpler fashion, we create everything,from materials to writing, illustrations, and layouts, from scratch, using perspectives based onchildren’s way of thinking. The number of copies of The Yomiuri Shimbun in circulation is continuing
to decrease, but there has been no decline in the circulation of the KODOMO Shimbun, in spite of the
low birthrate.
We are advancing the digitization of newspapers. The Yomiuri Shimbun was the first to createa system in which the political news and city news editors were alternately assigned to the news
network center in order to ensure that the news we were gathering could be reported online as soon as
possible. Our digital version also provides content such as “yomiDr.” that offer ease of use and detailed
commentary, in addition to fulfilling other user needs. However, our concept is not “digital first,” in thesense of giving top priority to the digital version in all cases. It is unlikely that digital content alone, in
the absence of print newspapers, could allow us to acquire awareness, thinking ability, and culture.
On the other hand, we are also focusing our efforts on our real estate and entertainment
businesses to compensate for the decline in income from sources such as advertising, which formerly
has provided support for our operations. Our entertainment and event businesses previously sought topromote newspaper sales, but now they generate significant revenue themselves, and in this way weare expanding our management baseoperations. The acquisition of Yomiuri Lland Co., formerly aseparate company, and our redevelopment of Tokyo Dome are symbolic of our diversification.
Mr. Oikawa joined The Yomiuri Shimbun in 1964. As a front-line journalist, he covered the upheavals in politics of thetime. After serving as Political News Department writer, editorial writer and Political News Department editor, among
other posts, he has held key positions such as director and managing editor; representative director and president of The
Yomiuri Shimbun Osaka; representative director, president, and executive editor of The Yomiuri Shimbun; director andexecutive adviser to The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings, and director and owner of the Yomiuri Giants. He was appointed
representative director and chairman of the board in 2019 and is concurrently director and chairman of the Editorial
Board of The Yomiuri Shimbun. He is a graduate of Waseda University’s Faculty of Political Science and Economics.
Editor: Reiko Kanda, Maiko Sakaki, Ayumi Kitajima, Tatsuya Yamaji and Jonathan Webb. This is a translation of a paper
originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation presented here. Translated by Michael Faul.
Copyright Ⓒ 2021 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement

My Vision No.54
2021.5Expert Opinions

Pursuing a “Digital Shift,” We Are Striving to Become an
Integrated Media Corporation That Seeks to Enrich Lives
Twenty years ago, there were households that
subscribed to multiple newspapers, and the per-household
newspaper penetration rate exceeded 100%. Today, however,that rate has almost halved. The challenge for us is how toproceed with a digital shift.
It has been 10 years since the Asahi Shimbun Digitalcommenced a paid service. Through a process of trial and error,
we have come to realize a number of things. First, few readers
stopped subscribing to paper media and moved to Asahi Shimbun
Shiro Nakamura
Digital; there is no competition between paper and digital in
President and CEO of The Asahi
Asahi. In addition, simply changing vertically-arranged paperShimbun Company
media articles into horizontally-arranged digital-media articles
was not sufficient to enable us to acquire digital readers. It
became clear to us that we had to refine our use of methods unique to digital expression, such as videos
and podcasts.
We have developed a tool called“Hotaru,”which analyzes data including the gender and age
ratio of our digital readers, how they arrived at the article, and how many minutes they read it, foreach of our digital articles. Using this data, we found, for example, that the majority of users who read
Asahi news on the messenger app LINE are women in their thirties and forties. We are seeking modesof distribution that match the characteristics of the dissemination media. As the term "service
journalism" implies, taking the perspective of our users into consideration, we are trying to digitally
disseminate a variety of content that is useful in daily life, from pets to inheritance issues.
On the other hand, in the digital space, news that has been covered by mass media outlets
possessing experience and a proven track record coexists with articles cobbled together frominformation gathered from other media and fake news, which involve little to no actual research. I am
concerned that this might represent the destruction of the news market. The major role of journalism
is not only to provide accurate information, but also to monitor those in power, uncover facts, as forexample in the scoop related to the falsification of Ministry of Finance documents, and offer a diverse
expression of opinion. These values will not change, and fact checking is also becoming an importantrole.
Reliable information is not available for free. It takes a considerable amount of manpower andexpense to deliver accurate information. A stable management base is essential to making this acompany’s main business. Paradoxically, in order to protect journalism, it will be necessary to
streamline the costs of the traditional newspaper business such as printing, sales, and delivery, and to
reduce their relative share of the total. Rather than relying on a single huge tree called the newspaperindustry, we are striving to become an integrated media corporation that seeks to enrich lives. I want
us to nurture other trees such as events, real estate, education, online and catalogue sales, andintellectual property, growing leaves and branches until our business is like a forest that produces
sufficient fruit.
Mr. Nakamura joined The Asahi Shimbun Company in 1986. Following terms as a reporter in the company's Political
News Section and Chinese General Bureau, Foreign News Editor, Director of the Advertising Department, first Public
Editor, Executive Officer responsible for Editing, and General Manager and Director of the Editorial Department of theTokyo headquarters, he became Executive Vice-President in 2020. While he was Executive Vice-President, he oversaw
digital policy and vertical media business, supervising the company’s overall content business. Mr. Nakamura became
President and CEO (his current position) in April 2021, and oversaw the commencement of a new medium-term
management plan going into effect from April that seeks to build brand value for the digital age that is unique to Asahi.
He is a graduate of The University of Tokyo.
Editor: Reiko Kanda, Maiko Sakaki, Ayumi Kitajima, Tatsuya Yamaji and Jonathan Webb. This is a translation of a paper
originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation presented here. Translated by Michael Faul.
Copyright Ⓒ 2021 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement

My Vision No.54
2021.5Expert Opinions

Competing for the Information the Government Officials
Are Willing to Give Is Not “Journalism”
In the United States, we are seeing a waning of democracyin the midst of an expansion of “news deserts.”
Is the same thing happening in Japan? Certainly, the total
circulation of Japanese newspapers, which was 53.7 million in 2000,
had dropped to 35.91million in 2020.
US newspapers have played a role as watchdogs since the
New York Times and the Washington Post exposed the Pentagon
Papers even though the U.S. government litigated the articles not
to be published. However, there is significant doubt as to whether
Susumu Shimoyama
Japanese newspapers have played a role of this type.
Author / Part-time Lecturer,
In the case of Japanese newspapers, the first thing that
Department of Journalism,
Sophia University
new reporters assigned to local bureaus are required to do is toaffiliate with the press clubs of the prefectural police and theprefectural office and report on matters announced by those organizations’ public relations offices,
visiting the homes of police officers, prefectural officials and public prosecutors in the early morningand late at night, building relationships and gathering information.
Even if these reporters return to Tokyo, they will continue to engage with central government
agencies, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, and special investigative teams from the Tokyo
District Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The publication of information held by administrative agencies or the government in advanceof other newspapers is termed "maeuchi" in Japan.
This "maeuchi" information may have had a certain value in the newspaper era, but whenplatformers such as Yahoo! News are flooded with free news, even if one newspaper gets information
faster than others, the others will soon catch up. Information is being commoditized.
Even if traditional newspapers continue to publish such information, people will not pay amonthly fee of 4,000 yen to read it. This is why the circulation of newspapers has nose dived.
In the past several years, scoops that have shaken national politics, such as the suspicions
related to former Prime Minister Abe’s cherry blossom viewing parties or the issue of buying expensive
dinner and drink of officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications by the company
who has interest on their jurisdiction, have been made by such outlets as Shimbun Akahata or Shukan
Bunshun, which are not members of press clubs of the type mentioned above.
However, we can find some exceptions even among Japanese newspapers. The Akita Sakigake
Shimpo, a regional newspaper in northern Japan, played the role of watchdog when it exposed
manipulation of data by the Ministry of Defense in its survey of suitable sites for the Aegis Ballistic
Missile Defense Base. The Akita Sakigake Shimpo revealed that the Ministry of Defense's survey was
based on predetermined conclusions. This changed people's voting behavior and resulted in thecancellation of the Aegis deployment itself.
I believe that coverage of this type, which can only be performed by reporters conducting
independent investigations, can allow newspapers to survive and help to revitalize democracy.
Mr. Shimoyama has vividly delineated the structural changes and vicissitudes of the media industry based on detailed
research, and has offered a vision of what the media should be. From 2018, as an Invited Guest Professor of Keio
University’s Faculty of Policy Management, he commenced a survey-based course on the theme of "the media in 2050."
The results of the surveys conducted in this course were presented the following year in Ni-sen go-juu-nen no media("The Media in 2050"), published by Bungei Shunju. Mr. Shimoyama completed the International Journalism programat Columbia Journalism School in 1993. He is the author of a regular column concerning the media for the Sunday
Mainichi news magazine.
Editor: Reiko Kanda, Maiko Sakaki, Ayumi Kitajima, Tatsuya Yamaji and Jonathan Webb. This is a translation of a paper
originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation presented here. Translated by Michael Faul.
Copyright Ⓒ 2021 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement

My Vision No.54
2021.5Expert Opinions

The Media Must Regain People’s Trust ThroughInvestigative Journalism
The greatest problem facing newspapers and other news
media is the fact that the public’s trust in the media is declining.
While this is a global phenomenon, a survey conducted by the Reuters
Institute indicates that there is a serious perception gap between the
media and the public in Japan in particular. The media views
themselves as watchdogs monitoring those in power, but the publicsees the media as a vested interest group. The lack of awareness ofJapan’s media in relation to this gap in perception is driving a loss of
public trust. If trust in the media continues to decline and news media
no longer function as a conduit of accurate information, we face theMasaru Seo
possibility of confusion in the public sphere due to the spread of fake
Director, Smart News
news and conspiracy theories. The divisions created in the UnitedMedia Research InstituteStates under the Trump administration offer us one example. If
citizens are unable to make appropriate decisions based on reliable information, we are inviting a crisisin the democratic order.
What value can the news media contribute to a democratic society? This is a question that themedia needs, precisely now, to ask itself again. Today anyone can communicate with the broader social
sphere via the Internet; this means that it is no longer necessary for the media to be fixated on breaking
news. Investigative journalism, which spends time to uncover hidden facts and problems that havepreviously been buried, and which brings new issues to people’s attention, is an important value thatthe media is able to contribute in support of democracy. However, the media business model is now
being forced to change, making it difficult to maintain former mechanisms allowing investigative
journalism. We have therefore established a subsidiary called "Slow News," which provides support toinvestigative journalism. We believe that the first step is to foster journalists with specialized
knowledge, and create an environment in which those journalists are able to write articles based on
their own investigations and the data that they gather.
A range of problems are being pointed out in relation to Internet media, making it important
to improve the ways in which we disseminate news; this would include fact checking as a preventive
measure against fake news and the creation of mechanisms for the distribution of reliable information.
That said, we should not resort to drastic solutions such as government surveillance and censorship.
The free space represented by the Internet, in which a variety of opinions can coexist and every
individual is able to state their views, has fostered diversity and brought about technological and social
progress. Unfounded rumors and false news existed before the development of the Internet, and it will
be impossible to eradicate them. Our goal should be to build a strong society in which people are not
fooled by hoaxes. To that end, it will also be necessary to conduct media literacy education from thestage of compulsory education to ensure that everyone can compare and examine the information thatthey receive in order to make the correct decisions. In an era in which everyone has become atransmitter of information, it will be essential for the media and educational institutions to accept theirsocial responsibility and make efforts to comprehensively change the environment surrounding thetransmission of news and information.
Following a period of employment at Nikkei McGraw-Hill, Inc. (now Nikkei BP), Mr. Seo joined the Kodansha publishinghouse, where he oversaw the publication of the Weekly Gendai and the Monthly Gendai, before becoming the Editor-inChief of Gendai Business. He joined Smart News in 2018, and was later appointed to the position of Director of the SmartNews Media Research Institute, in which role he conducts research on challenges facing society and the media and makes
relevant recommendations. In 2019 he established a subsidiary of Smart News called Slow News Co., Ltd., with the aimof supporting investigative journalism, and he serves as the company’s President and Representative Director. Mr. Seois the Director of the Japan Internet Media Association, and a member of the Ministry of Internal Affairs andCommunications’ Broadcasting Issues Study Group. He draws on a diverse range of experience in the media industry tofoster and support journalism in a new era. Mr. Seo is a graduate of Doshisha University.

Editor: Reiko Kanda, Maiko Sakaki, Ayumi Kitajima, Tatsuya Yamaji and Jonathan Webb. This is a translation of a paper
originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation presented here. Translated by Michael Faul.
Copyright Ⓒ 2021 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement

My Vision No.54
2021.5Expert Opinions

Journalism's 21st Century Challenge: Elitism, Disengagement
and New Sources of Revenue in the Digital Age
In the United States, we are increasingly heading
towards becoming an “elite democracy,” where people can vote andsay what they want to say, but those with the best access to
information and whose concerns matter in the media are elites. In
a democratic system, the media and politics naturally influence
one another, and therefore it could be said that the media is areflection of the kind of democracy that people want. If we truly
desire a democracy that equitably reflects diverse viewpoints, andresists the trend toward “elite democracy,” then we need a
Nikki Usher
powerful, financially robust and diverse news media, ranging from
Associate professor, The
small, independent filmmakers to broadcast media.
University of Illinois UrbanaHowever, this will be difficult given the increasing
Champaign in the College ofMedia's Journalism Department
number of people becoming disengaged from the news. While it is
not unusual for people to be more interested in sports results thanpolitics or social issues, many now actively avoid news to shield themselves and their family frommurder, COVID-19, and other unpleasantness. Compounding this, is the general decline in newspaper
subscriptions, and businesses, including Starbucks no longer selling newspapers. That, along with theincreasing digitalization of news media, has led to a particularly pronounced disengagement amongst
people of lower socioeconomic status, who now encounter less news while going about their daily lives,
and whose social media networks are thus less likely to actively engage with the news.
Nonetheless, an opportunity exists in the ever-increasing consumption of and time spent on
digital media content. However, people’s content consumption patterns are also diversifying and thus
their attention is becoming more fragmented. As a result, news organizations need to think carefully
about how to use the increasingly fleeting moments in which they are able to fully command theiraudience’s attention. Journalists must ask themselves how they can best present information to both
hold their audience’s interest and allow them to learn something.
However, a major hurdle exits in that many journalists misunderstand their relationship with
their audience. There is a large gap between those journalists who feel called to “educate the masses,”
and the kind of content their audience actually wants to see. Whether this gap can be bridged, andpeople’s opinion of the news media improved depends on the news media’s effective use of digitalmarketing to realign news content and audience desires.
In this regard, The New York Times is at the forefront, having undergone a successful digitaltransformation. The difficult lesson for other institutions is that technological adaptation takes timeand is not as simple as merely creating a department to oversee it. Even in the case of the New YorkTimes, it took ten years to become a truly digital native institution. The key is learning how to profit
within the digital marketplace, identifying and securing stable sources of income. From thatperspective, the exclusive control over the profits of digital advertising held by Internet platformers isundoubtedly a major problem for the future of journalism.
Dr. Nikki Usher specializes in media sociology and political communication. Her publication Making News at The New
York Times (University of Michigan Press, 2014), which looked at the response of the New York Times to digitalization,
won the Tankard Book Award. Dr. Usher’s other publications include Interactive Journalism: Hackers, Data, and Code
(University of Illinois Press, 2016), which focuses on the rise of programming and data journalism in the media. She
holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Prior
to taking up her current position, she was an Associate Professor in George Washington University’s School of Media &Public Affairs. Her new book, News for the Rich, White, and Blue: What the Decline of Journalism Means for America,
which served as the background for this interview, will be published by Columbia University Press in June of this year.

Editor: Reiko Kanda, Maiko Sakaki, Ayumi Kitajima, Tatsuya Yamaji and Jonathan Webb. This is a translation of a paper
originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation presented here. Translated by Michael Faul.
Copyright Ⓒ 2021 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement