Posts Tagged ‘journalism’

Who Decides the Top Headlines on Yahoo News?

FTV visits the offices of Yahoo Japan for a behind-the-scenes look at the headlines that appear every day on the Yahoo.co.jp front page:

Most of the people who work on the Yahoo News team used to work for traditional media outlets such as newspapers and television networks, but their job at Yahoo is not to report the news. Instead, they check and select the most important headlines from the newest stories provided by the over 150 newspapers and media organizations that have contracts with Yahoo.

At any given moment, only eight headlines can appear in the “topics” widget of the front page. Television screens help them observe what the major networks are covering as top new stories, and they try to place the most important stories near the top of the eight. On the day of this report, the Senkaku island dispute with China was a major news story, so they gave it the top place. After selecting a Sankei Shimbun article as the main story, they add related story and reference links to the article page. Sometimes they dig deep and find related stories from regional newspapers .

The most difficult part of their job is writing good headlines. Space in the widget is limited, so they have to write something that is under 13 characters. The headlines must convey the main point of the article without making any strong assertions or exaggerations.

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Reporter responds to attack on article about Japanese “rent a friend” agencies

Here’s an excerpt:

There are hundreds of fascinating stories McCurry could file about Japan if he would only bother to look. But hey, why do some real work when you can spitball your way through life?

Most puzzling of all is why McCurry thinks this minor “rent-a-friend” trend in Japan is worth writing about. The journalistic puffery employed to fill column inches is apparent before one is halfway through the piece.

When posts like this pop up on the blogosphere, mainstream journalists rarely respond. This is not one of those cases.

Justin McCurry has left several comments defending his article and answering Ampontan’s attacks. Read their exchange here.

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

The graphics department must be on vacation

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Update on errors in New York Times piece

Remember our post a couple days ago about problems in a New York Times magazine piece about “2-D Love”? It looks like Lisa Katayama, the author of the article, has returned from her vacation and seen Adamu’s fact-checking post.

Unfortunately, Katayama has chosen to announce to the world via twitter that she won’t respond to it:

Update: She wrote the following on her blog.

This always happens when I write an article about Japan. People get mad and question the authenticity of my sources, and then start criticizing what kind of person I am, etc. But it’s not my job to monitor how people read into things or to divulge my sources to the world. Like all professional writers, I only use primary sources unless they’re absolutely unavailable, and I don’t write about topics I have biases about unless it’s an explicitly subjective piece. I think it’s great for people to hold opinions about my writing, but if you say something mean on my blog or elsewhere, or harass me on Twitter, I’m not gonna write back to you. The NY Times has a fact-check department, and they’ll correct anything that’s wrong.

Update 2: I have been informed that it is standard journalistic policy for writers to let newspapers handle fact-checking issues and corrections after an article has been printed. Apparently this means that the author is supposed to refer complaints to the newspaper instead of directly responding to them. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how the New York Times handles this case.

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

BBC report on Japanese love hotels

The BBC reports on how Japanese love hotels are still doing well during the economic downturn:

Foreign correspondents in Japan sure do seem lazy! This report is a recycled version of reports already made by Reuters and CNN. Like both of those news outlets, the BBC talks to Steve Mansfield, a hotel owner who feeds them PR about the great condition of his hotels and his company. It is unclear just how much this industry is “booming,” but you can be sure that these news reports are helping Mr. Mansfield find lots of investors.

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Mainichi will ‘severely punish’ employees who contributed to WaiWai column

The first notice about the shutdown of Mainichi’s WaiWai column has been updated with a lot more information and an apology to readers. Here is an excerpt about the measures Mainichi is now taking:

Following criticism of WaiWai in late May, we decided there was a problem with listing the stories on the Mainichi Daily News site, even though they were transcriptions of articles that had appeared in magazines published in Japan. Stories were withdrawn from the site and we halted access to problematic archived stories. We also asked search engines to prevent past WaiWai stories from being displayed.

We then changed WaiWai’s editorial policy and drastically altered the standards used in story selection. However, there were problems with how past stories had been presented, so to avoid similar criticism from arising, we decided that we needed to come up with a sound editorial structure. This led to a fundamental re-think about WaiWai and on June 21, the decision was made to cease publishing the corner. On the Mainichi Daily News site, we listed the following notice: Some readers pointed out that various articles published in the WaiWai column were inappropriate content for the Mainichi Daily News. We respond to this criticism by halting publication of this column.

While explaining the process in both Japanese and English and apologizing, the Mainichi is poised to severely punish the head of the Digital Media Division, which is responsible for overseeing the site, the manager responsible for the corner and the editor involved with the stories.

Mainichi Daily News, and its publisher the Mainichi Newspapers Co., sincerely accepts readers criticism and will work to provide, edit and publish reliable information.

The longer statement was probably a response to 2-channelers and Japanese bloggers that were unsatisfied with Mainichi’s decision to pull the column without an apology. They had been specifically targeting editor Ryan Connell for some time, and many of them wanted him to apologize and face punishment. I suppose it’s okay for Mainichi to apologize after offending so many of its Japanese readers, but is it really necessary for Mainichi to severely punish the three individuals directly responsible for the WaiWai column?

Are we to believe that the rest of Mainichi’s management was unaware of the popular English language column, which had been appearing for years on Mainichi’s English site? Will the punishments actually lead to improvements in Mainichi’s journalism? Or are they just aiming to satisfy the internet mob by throwing a few employees under the bus?

note: Several hours ago, close to 80% of readers opposed severe punishment. We’ve since been linked by 2-channel, and the results have predictably changed.

[hat tip to Julián Ortega Martínez]

Update 2: Kyodo news has details on the punishments. An unnamed reporter has been suspended for 3 months and four executives have been reprimanded.

Update 3: Yet another update of the waiwai page!