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August 2004
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Newspaper, News Agency Jobs Continue Slide
The number of people employed full-time by NSK newspaper companies and news agencies as of April was down 2.5 percent from April 2003, falling to 54,436 in a 12th straight annual decline and the largest drop in 10 years. Newspapers and news agencies have cut 14 percent of their workers, or 8,887 people, over the past decade.
The latest job data is the result of an April 1 annual survey circulated to the 104 NSK newspapers and news agencies (down from 105 last year). A total of 80 companies responded and NSK obtained the data for the other 24. The survey covered all regular employees who work full-time, on contract or on loan, as well as any staff on leaves of absence. Board members, and part-time and temporary workers were not included.
--Total employment
Employment peaked at 67,356 in 1992 and has since fallen by an average of one to two percent every year. The total fell below 60,000 in 2000.
--Gender and age
The data from 79 companies (one was excluded for lacking detailed replies) showed male workers making up 89 percent of the total. The percentage that were female rose 0.2 percentage points from the previous year, to 11 percent.
Workers aged 55 to 59 were the largest group at 16.3 percent, followed by those 35-39, at 15.4 percent, those 30-34, at 13.9 percent, those 50-54, at 13.5 percent and those 40-44, at 13.0 percent. Over the past decade, the percentage in their 30s grew the most, rising 6.3 percentage points, followed by those in their 50s, up 2.9 percentage points. Workers under 20 fell 6.1 percentage points, followed by those in their 40s, which declined in number by 3.9 percentage points.
--Staff additions, losses
A total of 1,034 new workers were hired in the year that ended on April 1, 2004. Of the new hires, 74.0 percent were men. The new staff equals just 2.2 percent of all employees, the same ratio as last year.
During the year, 2,277 men and 265 women left NSK member companies, representing a loss of 4.9 percent of the work force.
A total of 62.2 percent of those leaving quit for mandatory retirement. Another 22.1 percent left for personal reasons. A total of 315 people, up 100 from last year, were re-hired on a post-retirement basis.
| Table Newspaper Employment |
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2000 |
2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
| Total Employment |
59,117 |
57,860 |
57,105 |
55,806 |
54,436 |
| Percent Change(%) |
-1.8 |
-2.1 |
-1.3 |
-2.3 |
-2.5 |
| Note:Each year's data is provided by all NSK member newspaper companies and news agencies. |
Asahi Shimbun Spins Kyoto Factory into Action
Asahi Shimbun's new printing factory in Kyoto began full operations on July 1, becoming the paper's 20th printing facility. The Asahi Shimbun has a nationwide circulation of about 8.2 million copies for its morning edition and 3.95 million copies for its evening edition.
With a total floor space of 8,500 sq. meters, the new factory can churn out 40-page issues incorporating up to 16 color pages. It features three shaftless presses made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., that can print 180,000 copies per hour. It is the first Asahi facility to use the thermal computer-to-plate (CTP) system.
The Kyoto factory prints about 420,000 copies of the morning issue and 240,000 of the evening issue for parts of Kyoto and Osaka prefectures, as well as Ishikawa, Fukui and Shiga prefectures. It replaces printing previously done at the Osaka office and several other sites.
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NEWSPARK hosts Summer Events for Students
The Japan Newspaper Museum in Yokohama opened a special exhibition on the Olympic Games and began a museum quiz rally on July 17 as part of special summer events for elementary and junior high school students.
To mark the Athens Olympics, the museum is hosting the special exhibition, "Looking Back on the Olympic Games With Newspapers." The museum quiz rally is a joint project of NEWSPARK, in collaboration with 16 local museums in Yokohama City.
NEWSPARK plans various educational summer events for students that will build on the newspaper-in-education (NIE) campaign in schools. The aims include familiarizing children with newspapers and boosting the number of young people visiting the museum.
It is also hosting a regular historical exhibit that opened on Aug. 1 to mark the 150th anniversary of Commodore Matthew Perry's arrival in Yokohama and the conclusion of the Japan-U.S. Treaty of Peace and Amity.
The Athens Olympics exhibition features 30 items, including newspaper pages, extras and posters from the first Athens Olympics in 1904, as well as commemorative stamps. A linked exhibition on 40 years of broadcasting the Olympics from the Tokyo Games to these Athens Games is being held at the Broadcasting Library, in the Yokohama Information and Culture Center. It is the first joint effort by NEWSPARK and the Broadcasting Library.
In addition, NEWSPARK is offering courses for children and parents to learn how to make scrapbooks of clippings, how to write newspaper articles, how to take news photographs, and how to lay out newspapers on computers, at the NIE National Center and the Newspaper-Composition Workshop, which are located in the Yokohama Information and Culture Center.
The Newspaper Library features a consultation desk for elementary and junior high school students to help them access any of the 160 newspapers issued across Japan. Children's books and reference materials based on newspapers are also featured to help students find clues on subjects of interest.
The exhibition that runs until Spetember 26 on Perry's visit, sponsored by NEWSPARK, the Kanagawa Shimbun, and TV Kanagawa, uses novel approaches to get its message across. The Perry exhibition, which also features hand-bill leaflets and other materials from the Yokohama Black Ships Study Group looks back at the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the historic transition of Yokohama City.
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Story of the Month>>>
Parents Rate Newspaper Use in the Classroom
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The Newspaper Museum and NIE (Newspaper-In-Education) Committee of the Newspaper Foundation for Education and Culture have announced the results of their first-ever survey on parents' appreciation of the NIE drive.
About 90 percent of the respondents said they highly appreciated the use of newspapers in classrooms, but only half could recognize the acronym NIE. The results suggest that more awareness is needed and that
"newspaper-in-education" activity should expand to life-long education.
The survey findings are in line with the call by the 2003 NIE convention for newspapers to become part of life-long education in schools, families and communities.
The survey of parents was conducted from January through March. Schoolteachers at two elementary schools and two junior high schools in each of the prefectures of Tokyo, Niigata, Osaka and Kagoshima sent out survey questionnaires to parents. A total of 1,148 parents, 605 of elementary school students, and 543 of junior high school students, responded.
Although NIE programs had already been conducted in all of the surveyed schools, only half of the parents recognized the term NIE. About 47 percent of the elementary students and 60 percent of the junior high school students knew the term.
About 70 percent of the parents said they read newspapers. That figure was the same for the parents of elementary school students and of junior high school students.
About 75 percent of the respondents said they often talk with their children about what they read in newspapers. About half of the parents said their children had raised issues that they had read about in newspapers. The topics of such conversations were mostly major news items covered in newspapers and on TV news programs, as well as the issue of bullying at school and the situation in Iraq. The findings demonstrate the complementary relationship between newspapers and TV broadcasting in which many people learn of breaking news on TV and seek the details in the newspaper. The discussions between parents and children precisely reflect the aim of "newspaper-in-education" learning in families.
Asked whether they had noted any changes in attitude on the part of their children after they took NIE classes in school, 45.5 percent of the respondent parents said their children had begun to discuss newspaper articles with family members. In addition, 31.1 percent of the parents said their children had begun reading newspapers independently, and 30.8 percent said their children had begun using newspapers as a tool to conduct independent research. Parents of elementary school students reported more changes in children's attitudes than parents of junior high school students, suggesting that NIE classes have a greater impact when started earlier.
Among the 90 percent of the parents who gave a positive assessment of the NIE concept, 85.9 percent said it gives children a greater sense of interest in society, and 43.5 percent said it promotes discussions about society in the family and among friends. Many of the parents said they see the NIE classes as a way of improving the quality and quantity of their children's communications with others.
Asked if they had any suggestions on how to improve newspapers as educational materials, 51.8 percent of the parents suggested that more definitions be given for difficult words and that the articles should take the form of easy-to-understand analysis pieces. In addition, 34.6 percent said it would be good to cover a broader range of facts, and 33.4 percent said some articles should be specifically written so that children will be able to understand them.
In particular, 28.8 percent of the parents of elementary school students said newspapers should provide the easier "kana" versions of some phrases for which children do not yet have the background to understand the standard "kanji" characters. Many parents of junior high school students also said it also would be good to provide more analytical articles, covering a broader range of subjects, to attract young readers.
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Nihon Shinbun Kyokai
The Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association
Nippon Press Center Bldg., 2-2-1 Uchisaiwai-cho, Chiyoda-ku,
Tokyo100-8543, Japan
bulletin@pressnet.or.jp
Copyright 2004 Nihon Shinbun Kyokai
All right reserved
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