July 15, 2021

Let's say you open the Nikkei online edition to read a story about Softbank, Nintendo, or the Olympic games without spectators. In that case, you will see a small blue icon written "Think!" along with the article. This icon indicates that some experts have commented on the piece.

Nikkei launched this feature in December 2020 and has expanded it from its website to native apps to find a new way to engage its subscribers. The company has also increased the number of experts collaborating with it, including Kazuo Hirai, the former CEO of Sony. According to Nikkei, there are now 90 experts commenting on articles. In June, the Asahi Shimbun started a similar experiment.

The pioneer in creating the "expert commentary feature" in Japan is NewsPicks, an online media company founded in 2013. In the US, its parent company is known to have acquired Quartz in 2018 and sold it two years later.

NewsPicks, which started as a news aggregation service, has motivated people to read stories on its platform by adding expert commentary. The number of experts cooperating with NewsPicks exceeds 200, more than double the number of Nikkei and Asahi.

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This week, I obtained experts' lists from three companies' websites: Nikkei, Asahi, and NewsPicks. By analyzing these, I have discovered the possibilities and challenges of the "expert commentary feature" booming in Japanese media.

The breakdown of "experts" shows differences between the three media.  At Asahi, in-house experts account for 53% of the total. Nikkei also has 22%, unlike NewsPicks, which has only one. It reflects that traditional media have many senior reporters who have extra time to post comments instead of writing articles themselves. Since this is a new endeavor for both companies, they also aim to secure several people who can write stuff at a certain level.

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Currently, 8% of NewsPicks experts are also CEOs of companies. Since many pieces on the platform are about technology, they seem to be working with startup executives who know what's going on in the industry. While readers can expect commentary on the latest trends, they should be aware that some comments may not be neutral.

Each of the three media outlets asks professors (including associate professors) to post commentary on their articles. In particular, one in four of the experts that Nikkei works with is a professor because they have less potential for conflicts of interest. In addition, traditional reporters are skilled at writing anecdotal stories, so they expect experts to add logical explanations. If the relationship is complementary, readers may be more satisfied.