[Feature: Changing Media and Journalism] Roundtable Discussion: News Today and in the Future

As digital media has developed and the media environment has shifted, I believe the changes in news production and consumption over the last decade or so, accompanying the growth of social media, have been significant.

What exactly is happening on the front lines of news creation? How are the ways of making and delivering news changing? And how are individual journalists or journalism organizations responding to these changes? Furthermore, I would like to consider with everyone today what has changed—and what has not—in how we perceive and think about news and journalism.

Additionally, how the relationship between journalism/media and society, as well as politics and democracy, is changing with digitalization as a catalyst is an important point of discussion.

First, regarding changes in how news is made: how is digitalization affecting the organizations and individual journalists who have traditionally carried Japanese journalism? I'd like to start by asking Mr. Hatta of Nikkei about the impact at the organizational level. Nikkei was quick to respond to digitalization by launching its digital edition, wasn't it?

In the mid-2000s, I was reporting on the media situation in the United States. In the U.S., it was already becoming common to view all news on the internet.

At that time, Nikkei had been running the free 'NIKKEI NET' for about ten years, but we were only distributing 30% of the articles from the print newspaper online; the rest could only be read in print. Just like in the U.S., reader demand to read all newspaper articles online was rising in Japan. On the other hand, there was a debate about whether it was okay to continue distributing everything for free if we moved it all online.

If we opened up all the news for free online according to customer needs, would the business really be viable relying solely on advertising revenue? And another point—which is more important—is that I have worked for a newspaper company and been a reporter for nearly 20 years, and information is the result of reporting that takes considerable time and cost. We wanted readers to bear a certain amount of the cost for that.

Based on that awareness, the decision at the time was to put all articles published in the newspaper online. However, we reached the conclusion that we would ask for a small contribution in the form of a subscription fee.

Currently, the Nikkei is evaluated as the most successful paid digital edition, especially at the national newspaper level. Will the future of the Nikkei involve a gradual transition from print media entirely to digital?

As for our current management policy, we have set a goal of becoming a 'Technology Media' company. This means actively incorporating new technologies to realize things that are more useful for our readers and customers.

To be honest, it is difficult to increase the circulation of print media from here on. Japan's population is also shrinking. In particular, the Nikkei has a large reader base of working professionals, and we have to think about how to keep them reading even after they retire. One answer is digital. For example, if you read the newspaper on an iPad, you can make the font quite large. By using rich graphics and videos, it might be easier for university students or new employees who are less familiar with the economy to understand. We have a sense of crisis that if we don't continue such efforts, we won't be chosen and won't survive.

In the transition from print to digital, are there any major changes in how news is produced?

Before that, I think there are things that must not change. Whether it's print or digital, I believe the role of media consists of three things: gathering information, organizing information, and delivering information. These three roles probably won't change one millimeter for the media even if it's digitalized. Among those, what we want to value most is conveying accurate facts. Sincerity—or 'integrity' in English. In other words, we will maintain strict quality assurance.

On the other hand, there are naturally parts that must change. While the three roles remain the same, I want to change the 'method' flexibly. For example, President Trump and Prime Minister Abe are meeting today; in the newspaper, we write 'Bei Trump Daitoryo' (U.S. President Trump). That's fine for a print newspaper, but when distributing online, you would normally write 'Amerika no Trump Daitoryo.' This is a big difference. Google's search engine won't pick up 'Bei.' It may seem like a small detail, but such things become important.

Article length is another example. Some people in the company think that since the internet has infinite space, we should post long articles that don't fit in print, but there is a bit of a misunderstanding there. Looking at Nikkei's reading data, the average daily reading time for the digital edition is about three minutes shorter than for print. This means readers want to know a lot of information more compactly. A hypothesis emerges that it might be better to have shorter articles for digital.

It's necessary to think about how to produce news while overlapping the characteristics of digital technology with reader needs. However, the core parts remain unchanged.

Next, I'd like to consider changes regarding individual journalists. Mr. Hatachi, you moved from the Asahi Shimbun to BuzzFeed Japan. What was the reason for that?

I left the Asahi Shimbun and moved to BuzzFeed at the beginning of my fifth year. There were two reasons. One was that, as a reporter, my articles weren't reaching people of my own generation. Even though I have many friends who are relatively sensitive to information, in four full years, I was never told 'I read your article.' Part of it might be that I was mainly writing for local editions, but I began to feel it was meaningless if my own generation wasn't reading them, and I thought it would be better to move to the online media that those people interact with.

Another aspect is the way reporters at major media outlets work. Following issues like death from overwork, questions are being raised recently about reporters' working styles and harassment. As a worker, I was also feeling the limits of the so-called 'night attack and morning rush' reporting style, where you work without even time to sleep.

After moving to a digital-only media outlet, did your reporting methods or writing style change?

Basically, it's the same. The actions of meeting people, listening to them, reporting, and turning that into an article haven't changed at all. However, not being a member of the press club for administrative, police, or fire department reporting is quite a barrier, and there are many cases where I can't access primary sources. Due to staffing issues, the style of relying on what newspaper companies—the primary sources—have written and summarizing that in a cited format has definitely increased.

About how many reporters are there at BuzzFeed Japan?

In the news department, there are about a dozen people, including those who also serve as editors.

Does an editor check the article after you've reported and written it?

That hasn't changed either. It might differ depending on the company even in online media, but we basically have a system where it goes through a desk, which we call an editor.

Has your work-life balance changed?

When I was a junior employee at Asahi, leaving the assigned jurisdiction was basically prohibited. Working on Saturdays and Sundays was also quite frequent. Local bureaus were very short-staffed, but after changing jobs, the situation where I couldn't even take a day off has improved dramatically.

How about the reporting you want to do?

I can do that now too. Basically, I'm not given instructions. I'm not assigned to a specific beat either; it's a style where I move and write on my own. Since beats aren't divided by government agencies like at a newspaper, I'm nimble—or rather, I have relatively more freedom and can cross various themes. I don't think it's just a matter of it being online media, but I feel it's a very easy environment to report in.

Mr. Ogiue, you are well-acquainted with both the worlds of broadcasting and online digital media, and you have commented on media in various publications. What are your thoughts on the changes in journalism or news production due to digitalization?

I'm not a reporter and I don't create news myself, but I was running something that called itself a news site individually more than 10 years ago. It was 2003, the so-called 'Year One of Blogs.' At the time, there was no Twitter or Facebook, but my awareness of the problem was that while there was various interesting content in the world, there was no good 'flow.' So, I operated it individually as a volunteer to become a platform that generates such flow.

However, as time passed, content became richer, many people were able to upload easily, and SNS platforms simpler than blogs appeared. On the other hand, through things like Twitter, 'flow' began to be generated daily to an excessive degree. Also, when roles like editors—who temporarily edit existing things into a certain format, like Togetter or NAVER—could be fulfilled, there was no longer much need to introduce things in the form of a news site.

Therefore, looking at just these last dozen or so years, the internet society itself has actually changed significantly. Because of that speed of flow, or the ability to send and receive data on a larger scale than before, rich content like images and videos can 'buzz' (become a hot topic online). Now, how to gather instantaneous attention online has become a challenge for online media. Recently, there's a movement among various newspaper companies to upload viral movies to Twitter, even if just for 10 seconds, so they can be viewed without clicking.

On the other hand, the younger generation in particular doesn't search on Google or Yahoo; they search directly on individual sites like pixiv, YouTube, or Instagram. If they do that, then 'what isn't there doesn't exist' to them, so every company has to have its own version of media on those platforms. Currently, I'm telling various media outlets, 'First, you must have a YouTube channel dedicated to news and have YouTubers for each station.'

In such an environment, you have continued 'SYNODOS'.

Rather than covering the lack of flow that used to exist, I started 'SYNODOS' (then 'SYNODOS JOURNAL') because I wanted to improve the quality of 'stock.'

'SYNODOS' is basically treated like 'super slow news' written by researchers. We call it academic journalism, but instead of responding daily to news that many people might be interested in because it's a hot topic, we respond thoroughly over a longer time span, like a monthly magazine. Researchers have studied that news for 10 or 20 years, and they might be looking at it with a time span of 100, 200, or sometimes 1,000 years. I created 'SYNODOS' believing that for timely things, we dare to need a medium that is read most slowly. To deliver more reliable information, there are truths that can only be delivered with thousands or tens of thousands of characters, and I've continued with the feeling that it's important to put such things on the net so they can be searched on Google.

If you make things easy to understand and short, things like pseudoscience and pseudo-history will prevail. I had a desire to create a platform based on certain knowledge that is not like that, provide information firmly from there, and play a role in making information on the web better. For that purpose, I created 'SYNODOS' to increase 'stock' by just one article a day amidst the excess of flow.

That's a very interesting point. Until now, the way news is made was to some extent institutionalized and patterned, and there were ways of dividing time or expanding diversity within that. Digitalization broke that once, and because of that, there are parts where the possibility of making news or practicing journalism in a different way than before is opening up.

That's right. I think the influence of existing media has actually increased because of the internet. When comparing PV (page views) as websites, sites operated by major newspaper companies are still mega-sites. However, I feel that they haven't actually been able to utilize the capital and mobility unique to such major sites yet, so I've wanted to supplement that space ourselves.

One awareness of the problem I had when I started 'SYNODOS' was that when there's an educational issue or a crime, a reporter does the reporting and writes an article, and an expert's comment is included in it. They talk for about an hour and it's summarized in one or two lines, and to be honest, there are parts where the way it's summarized makes you tilt your head from the perspective of expert knowledge.

In that case, if the flow of knowledge changes by having that expert interviewed for an hour directly on that news and turning it into a manuscript, wouldn't it be better for the expert to transmit the information? I wanted to create a medium where expert knowledge is not neglected but rather picked up.

Next, I'd like to change the perspective and think about the recipients of news. How does the relationship between news creators and recipients change with digitalization?

Mr. Hatachi, you said that your friends didn't read your articles when you were a newspaper reporter, but do you feel that the readers of your news have changed since moving to BuzzFeed?

There's a comment section, so reactions are visualized. There were articles that went online during my newspaper days, but with BuzzFeed, the URL includes my name, so if you put my name in the URL, you can see all the articles I've written online.

Using measurement tools, I can also see in numbers how much the shares have grown. Not only that, I can see what wording was used when it was shared, receive feedback from the reader's side, and connect that to the next article.

Conversely, things can go up in flames (enjo) immediately, so of course there's the fear of being attacked. Even so, I perceive the fact that I can communicate as something very positive.

Are there cases where such reader reactions trigger the next theme or reporting?

Yes, there are. I've experienced many cases where it doesn't stop at so-called information provision; there are readers who tell me 'there's an example like this,' or experts who share it saying 'I also have this view,' leading to further in-depth reporting.

Mr. Hatta, do you feel any changes in the reactions of the reader base of the Nikkei Digital Edition or the reader base itself compared to when print media was the center?

The reader profile has changed significantly. Speaking only about the digital edition, in the spring, one in four new subscribers is in their 20s. And one in four is female. It's shifting that much toward the young and toward women.

Managers and executives in their 40s to 60s are still a large reader base, but we want to face not only them but also young people and women who are the core readers of the future. If the reader profile is changing, we have to think about the information they need and write in the way they need.

Also, as Mr. Ogiue said, whether it's Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, customers won't come unless we put news there anyway, so we always put it there.

Regarding reactions, opinions like 'Don't write inaccurate things' still come in for the Nikkei brand, so I feel once again that expectations are high.

On the other hand, how do you view online-only news media specialized in the economy, such as 'NewsPicks'? Are they rivals? Or are they media developing in a different world?

We refer to things like their presentation where appropriate. I think they are indeed skillful. On the other hand, one big question we have is whether they themselves are producing news as primary producers. For example, when we send a push notification for a scoop, about five minutes later, a 'NewsPicks' push notification is sent with the headline we created. While it says it's Nikkei Shimbun news, I often wonder, 'What are these people doing without making news themselves?'

In 'NewsPicks,' the comments from various people themselves become content. Looking at it recently, it's so decentralized that quite a few people are looking only at these comments without reading the original news or commentary. To be honest, I don't really understand what can be gained from that.

By the way, how about 'Gendai Business' or 'Toyo Keizai Online'?

I'm looking at them all (laughs). You might think they are competitors, but I think it's also an ecosystem. They supplement parts that we, as a mega-site, cannot do in various places. I want to imitate the parts where they are 'skillful.' But I don't feel like I'm in a head-to-head battle with them. From the reader's perspective, I think it's a mutually complementary relationship.

Mr. Hatachi, how do you perceive the surrounding online media?

I think all media are rivals. The scale of reporters can't compete with existing media, but I'm always moving with the desire to put out news faster, from a different perspective, and sometimes with original scoops. It's no different from when I was competing with other newspaper companies and TV stations during my Asahi days.

No matter what the media is, it will be read more if the article is picked up by Yahoo! Japan topics first or if the news app push comes first. Regardless of whether it's online media or existing media, while they complement each other, don't they also have such a tense relationship? However, in breaking news, I'm always thinking about being as fast as possible and using a different angle as much as possible, but it's hard to compete with existing media that have reporting networks nationwide. So, we do what we call '1.5 news'—reporting ahead on themes that are likely to become hot topics or thinking of other angles. We sometimes call ourselves 'guerrilla media,' but that's how we fight.

I'd like to move the conversation a bit more toward the recipient's side. How do you think the literacy of recipients, such as readers and viewers, has changed with digitalization? I found it interesting that you presented the concept of 'horizontal literacy' in your recent book, 'All Newspapers are "Biased".'

I think media literacy theory up until the 90s was linked to civic movements, with the idea that the citizens' side should avoid being controlled by power—like 'let's not be deceived by mass media' or 'let's not be deceived by state propaganda.'

But when people share various emotions or wrong information, there's naturally a movement where residents spread it by word of mouth, like the massacre of Koreans during the Great Kanto Earthquake, and this can often happen especially on the net.

When that happens, if you're just bracing yourself to be careful of the state, it can lead to a kind of anti-intellectualism and create another form of populism. In other words, there are many cases where information flowing on the web—saying 'doubt the current monopoly of intelligence and believe this'—is wrong; it has its pros and cons.

If so, for such a flow of information, shouldn't we acquire literacy not just vertically but also horizontally? It's not something an individual can defend against alone. In other words, it's impossible to say 'don't trust your friends' or 'become an expert in other fields.' For example, to acquire literacy about the problem of pseudoscience or historical revisionism, you have to study considerably. But people are busy.

However, since it's entirely possible that the destination of a discussion flow conducted in limited time is an error, I want to change the 'cascade'—the direction of the discussion. While it's unavoidable that people go in the direction that's easy to go, we can build a dam saying 'just don't go there.' It can't be helped that rumors spread, but we can discard them one by one by saying 'that's a rumor.' I call it 'responsive journalism,' where you respond in a horizontal relationship to situations where rumors or wrong opinions are being formed, saying 'no, isn't it like this?' This is 'horizontal literacy.'

Putting out the initial news is, of course, the job of mass media and journalists, but I think the role of editors, critics, and personalities is to say, 'Let's think about how to react with everyone.'

A symbolic example is the issue of the discretionary labor system, where Mitsuko Uanishi of Hosei University pointed out problems in the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's data on Twitter, and multiple experts confirmed that was indeed the case, leading to an understanding of the problem. That is a fact seen from a certain research style, which is different from the reporting style of hitting up bureaucrats to get a statement. In other words, when people were talking about how the discretionary labor system is inhumane, if you bring in an angle from a different perspective—like 'how is it as a statistic in the first place?'—you can change the flow of the discussion.

'Horizontal literacy' raises the issue that in this era where you are a recipient and a sender at the same time, you must be conscious of literacy on both sides.

The subjects who change the flow of discussion can be people in organized journalism like newspaper companies, and it's also a role played by so-called intellectuals like Mr. Ogiue. Or more broadly, it's important for it to take root in political culture as media literacy-like know-how.

That's right. Media can connect with movements and act as an intermediary. The "#MeToo" movement is a prime example. It is certainly true that movements arise through Twitter and major media outlets, making it easier for people to raise their voices and say "No." For example, if one in four people at "Nikkei Digital" are women, then an awareness of human rights is added to the economic scale as a metric.

I believe major media outlets need to do more than just analyze what is happening on SNS; they need to constantly verify where they stand within a movement while actively disseminating information. In that sense, I think horizontal literacy is necessary everywhere.

Sites that spread fake news or those that take snippets out of context just to attack someone in a partisan manner are inevitable byproducts of democracy, but I believe the media must always be conscious of overcoming them.

In media studies, the term "frame" is often used to describe certain patterns of meaning-making and interpretation. Certain patterns emerge in the process of news production and consumption. However, since some things fall through the cracks, if social media has a role in picking those things up, it plays an important role in diversifying those frames.

On the other hand, social media also creates its own frames, where frames linked to certain movements are formed, sometimes creating a kind of binary opposition on social media platforms.

Considering this, we must take the influence of social media into account in this day and age. Mr. Tsuda, how do you view the impact of the rise of social media on journalism or democracy?

Regarding online debate, there is a situation where people preferentially consume information that matches their own worldview in the form of cyber-cascades or filter bubbles. As a result, I think we are in a situation where political dialogue becomes very difficult to establish.

For example, even with the recent Moritomo/Kake issues, if you look at the reactions on Twitter, people are interpreting things in shockingly different ways. As a result, they hurl insults at each other, but it never becomes a constructive dialogue. When such completely different worldviews exist side-by-side and only distrust increases, the sense of trust that lies at the foundation of society is not easily cultivated. Because things are categorized from the start—like "Asahi is like this" or "Sankei is like that"—even if fact-checking reports are done, we risk a situation where the fact-check itself is not believed.

However, compared to other countries, the influence of major media in Japan is very strong and the level of trust in mass media is high, so in that sense, I think we are still better off. For now, the majority of people in Japan probably don't go out of their way to check political information on the internet one by one and make political posts. The percentage of people becoming radicalized, whether on the right or the left, is likely not that high.

However, how will this move in the future? Recently, situations that would have been hard to believe in the past have been emerging, such as an active-duty Self-Defense Force officer shouting abuse at a member of the Diet, so there are parts I am very worried about.

So you mean there is a concern that an atmosphere of tolerating or letting those radical elements slide might spread.

This is something I struggle with myself. While I have a sense that the current situation is quite dangerous, on the other hand, I also have doubts that perhaps these events are just happening in succession by chance right now. It might be what is called normalcy bias. When looking at the internet, so much information comes in that my own senses are immediately relativized, making it very difficult to make judgments. So, as a personal feeling, I find myself reflexively keeping a distance.

I feel that being able to take a meta-view of that is a kind of intellectual privilege. For example, the majority of Twitter is a world where having dozens or hundreds of followers is considered a lot; basically, people living in private spaces have the consciousness that they result in a collective. As you pointed out, I think only a minority of people engage in political communication intentionally and consciously.

However, I am currently doing network analysis on racism and sexism, and indeed, the posts of a few opinion leaders are retweeted, forming the overall atmosphere and opinion. This means that even if only a very small number of people are doing it enthusiastically, if their posts are retweeted and viewed, that consciousness permeates.

You mentioned frames earlier, and as in Erving Goffman's arguments, I believe specific frames reside in the actions themselves. For example, without understanding that parliamentary democracy cannot function unless the opposition party opposes things in the first place, the frame that "the opposition party does nothing but oppose" spreads rapidly. Furthermore, the idea that saying such things as an action is the correct political reaction becomes shared.

Moreover, it is precisely the people who are not interested in political communication who learn such actions from somewhere and dismiss things with a single word like "That's just how it is." These are the people who have a high rate of infection and cause it to spread.

That is why it is necessary to deconstruct those frames and actions and provide alternative frames. To that end, we must put specialized knowledge in more accessible places on the web. At the same time, we must also release raw data as much as possible. I think this parallelism is necessary. By resetting the agenda toward the direction that something must be done about hate speech and LGBT discrimination, I believe it is necessary to keep saying that what is wrong is wrong, even if it is called a "political correctness club."

But the internet is a flat space in a sense, so things are constantly relativized, and things that shouldn't originally be placed side-by-side are immediately compared, which I find very difficult. For example, if someone raises an issue saying "This is a problem," a reaction immediately comes back like, "Well, you say that, but the side you support has these problems too."

But if you think about it, are that problem and the problem being discussed here things that should be compared? It gets swallowed up by pointing out double standards, and the discussion immediately goes in circles. Because communication on the internet is flat, irresponsible historical revisionism and the work researchers have done for decades are immediately placed on the same level.

Yes. In that case, I think one mission is to prevent the "second lap." Regarding the comfort women issue, there is a website called "Fight for Justice" established by historical researchers. For example, when a theme comes up, instead of engaging every time, you can just post a link and say, "Read this first." Creating that kind of structure is one way.

Furthermore, there are themes that originally should not be debated. For example, things like STAP cells are matters to be carefully built up academically, not things to be debated. The same goes for historical revisionism.

That is precisely where we can suppress such repetition by leaving a kind of log that says, "This point has already been verified in this way." By showing that log, I think it is possible to share a kind of "positive weariness"—the feeling that we don't need to repeat this anymore—and stop the discussion to suggest changing to a different frame.

While I think presenting academic findings that have been built up over time in that way is effective, a trend has recently emerged that undermines the academic world itself.

In short, it's a movement that rejects the accumulation of scholarship, saying that even researchers are ultimately very partisan and can only have a narrow perspective, so what those people have built up is basically invalid. Some Diet members are now questioning KAKENHI (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research), and I think there is a trend of steadily undermining the foundation or trust of academic things.

The movement like "Don't give KAKENHI to anti-Japanese scholars" is one thing we must be careful about from now on.

But, for example, regarding the incident where a Self-Defense Force officer shouted abuse at Diet member Konishi, "BuzzFeed" reported that there was a "Shut Up Incident" 80 years ago before the war. I thought that was wonderful.

I wrote that one. I believe one significance of internet media lies in reacting quickly to incidents like this.

Should I say it's like the work of a "firefighter"? I usually write articles with the awareness that I want the many people who are not at either the left or right extremes to know about the "somewhat strange atmosphere" drifting through the current era. I feel that preventing the spread of wrong information and ideas by performing "initial firefighting" immediately after such problems occur is a very important thing.

On the other hand, fake news still exists and is a major problem in Japan as well. What do you think is the cause of various countermeasures not functioning well?

I once interviewed a producer of fake news in Japan. It was a site called "South Korean Civilian News" (Daehan Minguk Mingan Bodo), which posted anti-Korean hoax news. However, the person doing it had no consciousness of hate at all. It was a very simple structure: they tried to earn advertising revenue by scattering articles targeting people who like such information, but it wasn't profitable. So they stopped.

There are many similar curation sites on the internet now, and I believe the reason such sites use extreme headlines to scatter news close to fake news is largely the same aspect of money-making as "South Korean Civilian News."

If that's the case, cutting off the monetization (earning revenue from free online services) of such sites becomes an important task. In other words, it's a problem of advertising. "Manga Village," which illegally provided manga for free, has been drawing attention, and this is the same. There is a problem even on the side that was placing advertisements in "Manga Village."

If you cut off the source of income, such sites will disappear. That is why it is important to inform advertisers that they are placing ads on sites that are illegal or carry hate and fakes.

Speaking of money, what concerns me is the problem of the people who go out and get primary information, which Mr. Hatta mentioned earlier. I think it's difficult for people to pay for a digital subscription to a general newspaper. When that happens, the strength of existing media will steadily weaken. I fear that the number of reporters who do the legwork, stationed at police stations or government offices to get information, will steadily decrease.

As the form of mass media becomes centered on the internet, how to maintain people who use their feet to do the legwork and pick up information is a very important point when considering a healthy democracy.

That is exactly right. The movement toward digitalization happening now is irreversible. As the environment changes significantly, I think individual newspaper companies will consider their responses through their own judgments and decision-making. Some might say they can hold out without changing. But unless they change, as you pointed out, there is a risk they will no longer be able to employ the field reporters who gather the information that is their own treasure.

To be blunt, change is painful. Within our company, there are people who say, "My job is just to listen to people and send the manuscript. Someone else thinks of the headline." We are calling on them to try using a little wisdom to think of a clever headline or attach a clever photo, saying that if they take a proactive approach, the number of people who read it will increase. The work of a journalist is changing rapidly. This is irreversible, so it can't be helped. Unless we change ourselves, we will only destroy our own foundation. That is a matter of the consciousness of each individual journalist, not just the management of each company.

Mr. Hatachi, since you jumped out, aren't you doing various tasks by yourself compared to when you were at the "Asahi Shimbun"?

Yes. The labor for an article has increased. Individual reporters are attaching headlines and thumbnails while checking the growth of numbers in real-time.

That is becoming the standard way of working for journalists today. If you ask whether it's okay for reporters at national newspapers like us to stay as we have been, the answer is definitely no.

I also think there is the issue of whether reporters for internet media like us can access information sources. The barrier that you cannot conduct interviews unless you are part of the existing media, starting with the press club system, is still large. Depending on the press conference, "internet media is prohibited from asking questions," and there are places we can't even enter in the first place. I feel that how to open those doors will also be a challenge from now on.

Skilled freelancers or people moving to web media are mostly reporters from major outlets who have quit; there are almost no people who were raised in web media from scratch. In other words, in Japan, it is difficult to grow independently.

In such a situation, if the capacity of organizations to train reporters is going to decline, I don't know if another academic institution or something like a journalism vocational school will take on the role, but a training system with a different path than before will be necessary. Honestly, the current reality is that we have no choice but to rely on major organizations.

It is currently impossible for internet media to hire 40 or 100 new graduates like major media and provide solid training to raise them. Therefore, major outlets have become like training grounds for internet media reporters.

As was the case with myself, this is not a very good thing. With the strength of newspaper companies declining and the number of students aspiring to join them decreasing, shouldn't some kind of breakthrough be necessary? For example, creating a free Juku at Keio's Media Com.

Newspaper companies don't need to aim only for mega-sites. For example, I think they can raise human resources within specialized fields, like Asahi's "Apital" or Yomiuri's "YomiDr," which are sites specialized in medical information. It's close to a kind of magazine model. Because major companies have real estate management and other businesses in the background, I think they still have the strength to maintain multiple sites as a whole even with some deficit.

In a micro-business-like form, team reporting of about 10 people for each individual theme will be more in demand—which department of the company will handle which field. For example, a Japanese version of "Nature" would be fine, and they should be able to play a kind of hub-like role.

That's exactly right (laughs).

Actually, I also feel this deeply while teaching, but I think there is a lack of understanding in society about how much cost goes into creating news and how important it is. Therefore, I think sharing the basics of how news is created within society is necessary not only in universities but more broadly in society. Listening to everyone's stories, I felt that journalism is something that needs to be nurtured within society rather than being something each organization carries alone.

One concern is that the problems of hate and fakes, which I thought were limited to the internet world, invaded the mass media last year. The "News Joshi" issue and the "Sankei Shimbun" false report about a US soldier rescue were particularly striking. Because many people believed such information, there were parties involved who were hurt. Similar cases will likely emerge in the future. At those times, I feel we should create organizations or frameworks that transcend organizations to confront such things systematically and with more solidarity, rather than just small-scale "firefighting."

Is it impossible for existing media outlets to form a scrum or cooperate with each other in that regard?

The FactCheck Initiative Japan (FIJ) was established last year, and BuzzFeed is cooperating with it. However, people from major media outlets are not participating together, and not all internet media are participating either. Although movements are emerging, they have not yet reached the point of solidarity.

I haven't particularly been conscious of it. I've heard about the FactCheck Initiative, but since fact-checking has been the basis of our work for a long time, I honestly couldn't find a reason to commit to it.

Until now, I think there was basically a pattern where some media would set the agenda and others would follow, but recently when I spoke with someone from the "Mainichi Shimbun," they said that even when they put effort into investigative reporting, others have stopped following it. While mass media has played a major role until now, I have a sense that its power is relatively declining.

I feel that the subjects of agenda-setting are also increasingly diffusing. For instance, a blog post written in Hatena's "Anonymous Diary" can suddenly spread like wildfire. Seeing a situation where you don't know what will become the spark, I think the role of the media will naturally have to change.

I think it is more necessary for the media side to clearly show that they confront things like fakes and hate. Otherwise, I fear that the invasion of fake news into the mass media, like last year, will continue. The image is like everyone building a breakwater together.

Journalism is a bearer of democracy. I believe the issue of journalism within democracy, including the consciousness of news media regarding that point and specific methods of practice, is an important theme.

Both "BuzzFeed" and "HuffPost" are Japanese versions within a global network, so they sometimes translate and post international information as-is, which becomes known as very excellent articles. Things that only NHK or news agencies could do in the past can now be done as an organization. Or, like the Panama Papers, there are attempts where journalist organizations from various countries participate as representatives.

On the other hand, even if Mainichi sets an agenda and it doesn't spread to other companies, researchers are watching that investigative reporting. They cite it in papers, saying "According to research by the Mainichi Shimbun, this data exists." NPOs engaged in social movements also use it. Diet members cite it to ask questions. In that case, the media is not the only world. It is possible for movements to be connected within democracy in such a chain-like fashion. In that sense, I feel that ways of solidarity that are not like "Now is the time for a scrum" have already been born, so let's nurture them.

Today, I was able to hear truly valuable stories from various angles. When thinking about the current state and future image of digital media and journalism, we researchers tend to look only at negative things, but hearing today's talk, I also clearly understood the future possibilities on the positive side. Thank you very much for your time despite your busy schedule.