waiwai

I'm no prude, but I wonder what the Japan Times is thinking when they run two articles in the Sunday paper about porn actress awards and hostess clubs with porn stars. How are these "specials" or even relevant to a newspaper? Or is it that they miss the readership they used to get with the Tokyo Confidential column they ended not long ago?

Now we know why The Japan Times pulled its Tokyo Confidential column last year--it apparently was taking a page out of the Waiwai playbook and selling stories it did not own:

ジャパンタイムズ、朝日・読売週刊誌から無断翻訳・掲載

2009年1月6日12時4分

英字紙ジャパンタイムズや講談社インターナショナルが、朝日、読売の両新聞社発行の週刊誌の記事を無断で翻訳、掲載していたことがわかった。両社は著作権侵害を認め、コラムを中止し、単行本の在庫を廃棄した。

A little bit more on the WaiWai scandal, this time from the inside.

Adam Richards from Mutant Frog Travelogue provides a translation of an article by Toshinao Sasaki posted in August at CNET Japan about the scandal that illustrates what went on inside the newspaper.

When the WaiWai scandal exploded on the internet, the Mainichi Daily News quickly pulled the column and its archives to the chagrin of many readers.

Maybe I'm beating a dead horse now, but an article in the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan's No.1 Shimbun [PDF] completely misses the point about why people have complained about the Mainichi running the WaiWai column.

I'll throw my hat into the ring about the end of the WaiWai column. Rather than a story of an Internet mob bullying a newspaper and its foreigner writer, WaiWai is an example of a massive failure in corporate governance.