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The story
In a “Public Opinion Survey on Media” released in October 2026 by the Research Institute for Newspapers, Information and Society, 47.1% of respondents who subscribe to newspapers on a monthly basis cited “it’s become a habit to read it” as their reason — and the proportion was higher among older respondents. On the 5ch “Geinou/Sports News+” board, a thread discussing the survey sparked debate over the decline of newspaper readership and whether the internet or newspapers are more prone to producing biased information. Posters shared specific figures and anecdotes, from elderly readers who keep subscribing just to check the obituary section, to data on shrinking circulation numbers.
Yahoo! Original Article
Fri, Nov 6, 6:10 AM
The most common way to subscribe to a newspaper is the “monthly plan,” a household-level contract renewed and delivered every month. So what are people’s reasons for subscribing this way? Let’s look at the actual situation using the results of the “Public Opinion Survey on Media” (*) released in October 2026 by the Research Institute for Newspapers, Information and Society.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
If you only use the internet, you only go looking for info you're already interested in, so your info gets skewed
That's exactly why young people, despite being so internet-savvy, end up clueless
"That's exactly why young people, despite being so internet-savvy, end up clueless"
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Not buying it
Kids these days get taught internet literacy in school, so they're way better off than the old guys
If you only read one newspaper, you just end up skewed toward whatever that paper wants to push
Let's just accept reality: young people have way higher media literacy
at this rate a page will have like 10 characters on it lol
Definitely cutting their workload lol
In reality it's probably more like 20% or less
well, it's an era where you only take in the info you actually need anyway
and they're down to about half the page count they had in their heyday
no doubt half of them will be gone in 20 years
On this board anything's fair game except Korea-only threads, AV (adult video) threads, and other rule-breaking topics
If you don't know that, don't bother posting
Asahi: 3,059,598 copies (down 174,715)
Nikkei: 1,173,206 copies (down 115,233)
Mainichi: 1,054,237 copies (down 157,335)
Sankei: 740,939 copies (down 57,313)
There's also talk that in the US it's seniors who get fooled most easily by AI-generated videos and online scam ads
Yeah, it kind of inevitably goes that way
There was even a scene like that in a DiCaprio movie, the stereotypical old guy duking it out online
Guys who used to be newspaper recruiters are probably the same ones now hawking buy-back services or mineral water outside supermarket entrances
That's the main one, honestly
the Asahi's "Tensei Jingo" column used to show up in entrance exams sometimes
so I subscribed for just that one year as a ronin (exam retaker)
Just because it showed up on the exam
doesn't mean it actually gives you much of a hint, does it?
Background and Key Points of This Topic
The Research Institute for Newspapers, Information and Society’s “Public Opinion Survey on Media” asks every year about habits of and trust in newspapers, TV, and the internet — though it isn’t obvious from the article itself that the 47.1% figure only covers people who already subscribe to a newspaper. The thread’s debate centered on whether newspapers or the internet are more prone to producing biased information, pitting the view that reading only one paper skews your perspective against the view that younger generations simply have far higher internet literacy. Meanwhile, the social functions that keep people subscribing — like checking the obituary section or having undelivered papers serve as an early sign of a lonely death — are details the raw survey numbers don’t capture, and posters filled in those gaps with concrete anecdotes.
*This article is a summary and excerpt based on the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “‘Reading the newspaper is a habit’ for 47.1%, especially among seniors… exploring why people still take out monthly newspaper subscriptions.”
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