Creating a New Kind of Japanese Journalism Jimbo's route to the Web was circuitous. He began as a print journalist, but developed video skills while putting together video clips of his rugby team. Later, he sold short video pieces to the BBC and Japanese television stations. By 1996, he was selling short segments to Japanese television. Before and after the segments, he appeared on camera with the news anchor. It was a new style for Japanese journalism. Jimbo created a news niche mostly ignored by Japan's television networks, which don't have a tradition of documentary programs that focus on what he calls "social journalism." High production costs make the television networks a "slave to ratings," says Jimbo, and make much news coverage superficial and sensational. Jimbo focuses on environmental and international reporting. He has done stories on Japanese companies illegally cutting forests, on islanders in the South Pacific leaving their homes in the face of higher sea levels caused by global warming, on the Kobe earthquake, the Aum Shinrikyo cult, on a tidal wave in Papua New Guinea, on the Johannesburg Earth Summit and on the land mine issue. Many of these stories appear on NHK, Japan's public broadcast network, which is government-funded. When Jimbo uncovers stories that involve government funding, such as a case in which the Japanese government bailed out banks with the use of public funds but didn't bring the bank officers to justice, his reports appear on commercial television stations, such as TV Asahi's popular "News Station."
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"I can see the potential of the Web. I can?t say that it will take over conventional media (but) for sure it will be a big part of the next generation?s media." |
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Sitting in a tiny studio packed with cameras, tripods, lights and shelves of tape, Jimbo seems stuck between a rock and a hard place. Japan's television networks give him a lot of money, but not a lot of freedom. The Web gives him freedom, but not a lot of money. "If Internet TV will somehow grow into a type of medium where I can maintain the freedom offered a journalist and be able to finance it, it would be great," he says.There was a moment when Jimbo thought his dream had a chance. He had founded Video News Network as part of the videojournalism movement that began in the United States. Michael Rosenblum, a former CBS reporter stationed in the Middle East, had started Video News International and was training scores of print reporters, photographers and TV producers to become independent videojournalists. In 1996, satellite TV came to Japan. Many people, including Jimbo, thought it would break the hold that traditional news organizations had on the country. In 1997, Jimbo's VNN joined forces with CNBC to obtain one channel on SkyPerfect, a satellite TV service. They operated jointly for two years, but SkyPerfect didn't get enough customers. Jimbo and CNBC merged with Nikkei (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a large financial news organization), which had an economic channel. VNN was getting lost among the giants and, more importantly, found little opportunity to do its type of storytelling. Jimbo decided to sell his spot in the satellite channel and launch his Web site. VNN faces challenges unique to the culture of Japanese journalism. The site has trouble charging users because though most Japanese have credit cards, they don't use them routinely. If they can't pay for something with cash, Japanese aren't likely to buy it. Jimbo says he can't afford to set up a billing system that mails invoices to subscribers. Second is access to information. The media oligarchy here has a lock on news sources through the restrictive press clubs that bar anyone who doesn't represent Japan's 16 top newspapers and TV stations from attending press conferences. Another problem is media literacy, says Jimbo. "Because we don't have a multichannel culture, we haven't developed a taste for other channels," he explains. The TV news culture, oriented to young girls in short skirts delivering the news, is also a barrier. "People ask me why I don't have a good-looking young lady on the show," says Jimbo. "I tell them that's entertainment, not news." There's not much of a freelance culture in Japan, partly because traditional news organizations hold a lock on access to information and partly because young journalists don't move from organization to organization once they graduate from college and snag a job. "It's unthinkable to leave and start something like this," says Jimbo. "All the talent is sucked into an internal system where the problems are integral part of the system and journalists become defenders of the system rather than reformers." Still, he sees cracks in the system. The younger generation of journalists is beginning to want something different, he says. "I get 200 to 300 resumes every year from people who want to work for me." Perhaps the biggest obstacle to Video News Network's financial success is Teddy Jimbo himself. Even though Jimbo is Japanese, he's considered an outsider. He was born and raised in Japan, but spent several years with his family in New York City, where his father taught at Columbia University's Teachers College. Jimbo went to college in Japan, but earned a master's in journalism at Columbia University. He's never worked for a Japanese news organization; instead, his resume is filled with American and Canadian companies: the Christian Science Monitor, Associated Press, the Globe and Mail and Newsday. Jimbo has fans throughout the journalism community. "I admire Mr. Jimbo," says Yomiuri Shimbun's Tadashi Matsui, a reporter who did a story about the maverick journalist. "He is the only man who established a company for videojournalists and is really independent. It is amazing! I wish I could make programs on our channel as he is, but in a big company like Yomiuri Shimbun, there are many barriers to doing so." Jimbo concedes his venture -- like most Internet news sites -- is losing money and attracts a woefully tiny audience. Since videonews.com launched in 1999, Jimbo says he has spent about $340,000 keeping it going. The site costs about $170,000 a year to run; revenues now cover about 85 percent of those expenses, Jimbo said. Income is increasing by about 5 percent a month, and Jimbo predicts the site will become profitable in about six months. "It no longer requires heavy financial support ... although I still need to put in a few thousand yen a month" to cover costs, he says. Though VNN struggles mightily for just a sliver of a percentage of the market share, Jimbo believes Internet news stations like his will eventually find a market here. "I can see the potential of the Web," he says. "I can't say that it will take over conventional media. It may affect their culture and something different may come out of it. For sure it will be a big part of the next generation's media."
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