Earthquake and the role of the local media

1. Making the evening paper on January 17th

It was impossible to publish the evening paper on January 17th by ourselves because the Kobe Newspaper main office building totally collapsed. Fortunately we had made an agreement with the Kyoto Newspaper to help each other when an accident should happen. We gathered information about the disaster and the refugees and wrote the scripts on paper. Due to the annihilation of our editing system, we had to ask the Kyoto Newspaper to edit the newspaper transcripts by relating the contents of the articles over the telephone. Bringing the transcript to the printing facility, we were able to make and publish the evening edition in the end.

2. The role of the local media

A newspaper's roles are as follows; provide information, recording, observation and criticism for politicians and administration, and make-up of the public opinion. Under the strict restrictions for publishing newspapers, we had to choose what we should report. We tried to report more about the pressing problems for refugees and put emphasis on cheering them up. After the earthquake, the number of major central newspapers decreased. However we think local newspapers should continue with long-term reports and raise questions and problems for local people.