Over at the Old Revolution, a fascinating look at Japan’s new blog-based journalism and its prospects:

News blogs have been the rage of late not only in the U.S. but also around the world. The incursion of blogs into public space, however, has had different impact in different countries.
In Japan, with a relatively closed system of print journalism (a legacy of the wartime propaganda machine), one would expect that blog journalism is taking a different path. (For a good overview on this topic, see Japan Media Review’s article last year on the discussion of ethics among journalist-turned bloggers).
I just encounterd a blog provacatively titled “The-Net-will-Kill-Newspapers Blog” (with the word “kusanone” 草の根, or “grassroots” in its url). Its author, Tsuruaki Yukawa, is a senior journalist at Jiji Press, a major news agency in Japan.
Fed up with the world of Japanese journalism, Yukawa began blogging last year with one simple wish: how to merge “grassroots journalism” with traditional news media.