2020 年 96 巻 p. 47-60
Recent years have seen the emergence and continued evolution of an
unprecedented landscape of digital media products and platforms, mobile
devices, and distribution and consumption patterns. Triggered and accelerated
by digital innovation, these changes have given rise to new challenges for legacy media organizations, such as newspaper publishers. A transformation of the
newsroom has been underway in major publishers around the world. The Asahi
Shimbun, the second largest national daily in Japan, is no exception. This paper
is in the process of transforming itself into an integrated news organization( i.e.,
one that publishes in both digital and print formats). Reporters and editors are
expected to adapt their mindset and workflow and adopt new skills and roles in
line with audience-first journalism. Given this, we have set three goals: ⑴ to
serve targeted audiences with targeted content; ⑵ to publish on the platforms
used by the target audience; and ⑶ to produce and publish continuously to
meet audience needs. This requires a deeper, broader understanding of the target
audience, so the paper has developed Hotaru, a new editorial analytics dashboard
for the newsroom in 2016. An abbreviation of “in-HOuse Tool for Analyzing
and Reporting Users’ Activities,” Hotaru provides reporters and editors
with access to a rich source of real-time data, thereby helping them to develop
a better understanding of the impact of stories and the importance of audience
engagement. This new habit of looking at data is clearly helping to encourage
editorial experiments in the newsroom. For instance, if journalists want to
reach out to mothers for stories on parenting, they can strategically use LINE,
a messaging app that is popular among mothers. In this case, such stories are
shared and spread effectively through the mothers’ networks. In another successful
case, a reporter can, based on single coverage, file two types of stories
to meet the needs of two different target audience groups.