Japan: Major papers agree on mutual consignment deal · Global Voices
Chris Salzberg

Hiroyuki Fujishiro [藤代裕之] at Gatonews comments on reports [ja] that Japan's two largest dailies, the Yomiuri shimbun and the Asahi shimbun, have agreed on a mutual consignment deal that, by  2012, will consolidate the printing end of the news production process. The two papers will also assist in printing the country's major business paper, the Nikkei Keizai shimbun, in cases of sudden disasters such as earthquakes. Fujishiro writes that the move, which comes less than a year after the creation of shared news portal Aratanisu, signals a sense of impending crisis in Japan's newspaper industry.