The Mainichi desk editor Robert Sakai-Irvine is seen at The Mainichi Newspapers' head office in Tokyo. (Mainichi/Wataru Hatakeyama)

       TOKYO -- We live in an ocean of online information, with relentless competition for our attention every second our eyes are on a screen. This is news to no one, but the news -- as in traditional newspapers -- must join the digital fray to get their reporting to readers. At the Mainichi Shimbun, its online English-language edition The Mainichi is part of that effort, and one of the paper's "Campal" student reporters paid the publication a visit to discover how it defines itself in the digital space.

       The Mainichi was founded in Osaka in April 1922, on the occasion then Edward Prince of Wales's visit to Japan, and after nearly eight decades in print went exclusively online in April 2001. Despite this shift from newsprint to pixels, the mission of The Mainichi has remained the same: to get accurate news about Japan gathered by local reporters out to the world. The core of its work is to translate Mainichi Shimbun articles into English for its news site, but its staff also do their own reporting and writing on Japan-related topics.

       One of the gears in The Mainichi machine is 45-year-old desk editor Robert Sakai-Irvine, a native of Toronto, Canada, and one of those responsible for choosing, assigning, editing and proofing articles for The Mainichi site.

       "I've always loved writing," he said. "And I've had a long-running interest in Japanese culture, since watching Japanese anime and Akira Kurosawa films on TV as a kid in Canada." Sakai-Irvine arrived in Japan in 1999, and after some years as a junior high school assistant language teacher, he finished graduate school in 2008. He joined The Mainichi soon after as a staff writer.

       As a desk editor assigning articles to translate, "I mostly try to choose news that will spark global readers' interest in and deepen their understanding of Japan's politics, social issues, and culture," said Sakai-Irvine. But that doesn't mean just the stories that appear on the front pages of Japan's major dailies.

       On Aug. 29 this year, The Mainichi ran an English version of a Campal feature published online early that month about research into the culture of Japan's regional dialects, and an online service that quizzes visitors on those dialects and gives them a "prefecture affection rating." The Campal article was apparently chosen because it would be interesting to foreign readers.

       The Mainichi's pages also include articles on Japanese pop culture and, in non-coronavirus times, tourism pieces aimed at visitors to Japan.

       But turning Japanese articles into English ones is not simply a matter of direct translation. "When we translate, we essentially treat the Japanese version as source material for a new English-language article," said Sakai-Irvine. To make sure the final products are accurate and easy to read for a foreign audience, staff will contact reporters in the field to check details, and sometimes collect and include supplementary information.

       Furthermore, "We try to choose a mix of hard news, like accidents and disasters, and light reads on cultural or tourism topics, to make the entire paper approachable and interesting to read."

       The Mainichi desk editor Robert Sakai-Irvine is seen at work at The Mainichi Newspapers' head office in Tokyo. (Mainichi/Wataru Hatakeyama)

       The news that has left the biggest impression on Sakai-Irvine in his time at The Mainichi, he says, is the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster.

       "The foreign media reported on that a lot. But some of that reporting was overblown and panicky, like it was a kind of entertainment," he said. "With all that going on, it hit me hard that it was essential for us to stay cool and steady, and put out accurate news directly from Japan."

       Going forward, Sakai-Irvine said he wants to "cover Japan's immigration issues, environmental problems, and media literacy." He also had a message for Campal's student reporters: "I'd like students to read and absorb Japanese news in English. And by doing that, I'd like them to understand that the problems covered in the articles are often not Japan's alone, but issues shared across the world."

       The Mainichi will keep on sketching a timely and on-point picture of Japan for the world. And to this student reporter, that seems like an essential task for a newspaper in the digital age.

       (Japanese original by Wataru Hatakeyama, Nihon University and Campal reporter)

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       Campal

       A portmanteau of "campus" and "pal." The official name is "Mainichi Shimbun Campal Editorial Department." The first article from Campal was published on Feb. 4, 1989, and appeared every Tuesday in the Mainichi Shimbun evening edition in the area covered by the paper's Tokyo headquarters. About 20 student reporters, mainly from Tokyo metropolitan area universities, are engaged in its activities. The department's mission is "to convey things students want to know." Students do everything from planning to reporting and writing. It has expanded to nine areas nationwide.

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