Meh, I say If they ever get the chance to do an Olympic opening ceremony again, they should play on their strengths. Meaning: robots.

Well, I am hoping that the Asahi imprints will start a really aggressive online presence that can maybe live on after the papers themselves collapse. I would love to see an Asahi-inspired “media for smart people” site, kind of like the new Daily Beast:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/

I think if he weren’t tied to Asahi maybe he could have done somethng like J-Cast and lost money for a few years in a long-term effort to make money.

“Returning to Japan, I was asked, ‘How was the opening ceremony?’ In a sense, I thought this was good example of what we should not do. Compared to China with its one billion-plus population, Japan, with just 130 million people, cannot easily do anything so manpower-intensive.”

As M-Bone points out, only the United States, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and Russia have significantly larger populations than Japan so the idea of not being able to manage something manpower-intensive seems a little odd.

And where else can you find any Japan media coverage of 経済学者ヌリエル・ルビーニ

Anyway, let’s face it, when most Japanese or Americans say that Japan is a “small island nation” they mean compared to the US.

Harney is fluent in Japanese according to this interview
http://globe.asahi.com/author/090112/01_02.html

re:Photos and headlines that accompany articles
I remember wt least two authors had been criticized in J-media twice.
Ian Buruma wrote a piece for NY times magazine titled “A New Japanese Nationalism”back in the ‘87 with cover phpto of Umehara Takeshi standing with Torii of Yasukuni Shrine in the back.Umehara complained this over Chuo-Koron and two made the debate for two month with Ivan.P Hall wedged in later.

Another was by Selig Harrison,former WaPo Tokyo Bureau chief in the 70’s and now director of the Asia Program for Center for International Policy.Harrison has some connection with Pyongyang and visit there periodically as some sort of a messenger.Now he wrote a piece in WaPo(I think) on potential Japanese nuclearization during the Korean nuclear crisis in ‘94 with a cartoon of a big mushroom cloud.Mainichi made an interview with the author and cross-questione what is the basis of his observation and what’s with the cloud.Mainichi only got thew usual “I-didn’t-pick-the picture-editors-did”reply.But then,we all know Harrison has been saying this out loud to elsewhere and that is partially why he has some credence from Pyongyang and thus appointed as the errand boy.