Japan: Internet surpasses newspapers as most read news medium

Housing the third largest newspaper market in the world after China and India and the top four dailies in terms of circulation, Japan could be the envy of newspaper publishers everywhere. But a recent survey conducted by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology shows that the Japanese also have a large digital bug. 37 minutes of an average Japanese day is spent surfing the web for news, up five minutes from last year's survey, compared to 31 minutes spent with newspapers. As in most similar surveys, demographic comparisons explained the technological discrepancies between young and old, teenagers spending 23 minutes with newspapers, senior citizens spending 58. These numbers should not be discouraging for Japanese newspapers, nor newspapers in general. In surfing the Web for news, it's highly likely that readers consult their preferred daily's website if not others, ultimately increasing the "circulation" of papers, as shown in a study done by Scarborough Research and quoted by Yahoo! News (also see previous posting). It's not quite the end of print, but noting the current trends, newspapers should be investing in their websites in order to make them profitable.

Sources: Xinhuanet and Yahoo!