Yet another linker to say thanks to: Max over at The Big Electron (is that a Carlin reference?). He, along with the guy who has no life and the pissed off Canuck used my incoherent lolicon and NAMBLA rants as part of interesting discussions of their own, which is great. Here's to more of it in the future.

Just to clarify, the Mainichi Daily News (or Mainichi Shimbun as its known in Japanese) is a regular, daily newspaper over there, and not a tabloid. I think it's a well-respected paper, or at least it's well established since it's been around since the beginning of the Meiji era (circa 1870s). Its WaiWai pages are translations from other publications, and those other publications are weekly tabloid papers published in Japan.

The Mainichi has made me curious as to just how much influence American journalism has had on journalists around the world. When I read the Mainichi's front page, I usually see lots of stories about things like rape, abduction, murder, and other various crimes. It's pretty much the kind of sensationalistic journalism I expect to see here. When I look at the English version of other Japanese news sources, like The Asahi Shimbun or The Japan Times, I don't see as many of these kinds of stories. I wonder if the Mainichi has just picked up on this so-called shock-journalism, or if they just tailor their English page to that kind of reporting since they know so many Westerners will be reading it?