ByeBye to WaiWai
Last week, the Japanese net press started to open up a Japanese dialogue about the problems with Mainichi Daily News’ WaiWai tabloid column — probably long overdue.
Now this…
2-ch’s trumpet brings another wall crumbling!
I have had my share of criticisms against WaiWai over the years (see this), but I think the basic idea of translating non-mainstream news into English had a lot of promise. If they had only had a nickel’s worth of skepticism about junk tabloids or had not been so cynical to post every single clearly-fake titillating sex story, they would never have been such a backlash. You can’t be a news service and also offer shameless articles concerning “bestiality restaurants.”
June 22, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Yes, stop depicting japan as wacky land full of twisted perverts, bizarre forms of prostitution, and sex dolls, we at 2ch find that offensive !
Now if you excuse me, I’m off to a proper part of the internet:
http://qiufen.bbspink.com/soap/
June 23, 2008 at 12:26 am
Did WaiWai ever publish any actual “non-mainstream news”?
June 23, 2008 at 12:41 am
Too bad. WaiWai was always good for playing the “line-by-line, how many errors of journalism can I find?” game. At least I’ve still got the Daily Mail.
June 23, 2008 at 10:14 am
Good riddance, I never had respect for that section or people who read it/were associated with it. I prefer to have the Jerry Springer style entertainment quarantined off to specific sites that I can pretend don’t exist, not mixed in with self-Orientalism or whatever on more ‘serious’ news sites.
June 24, 2008 at 1:43 am
The regular stories aren’t all that much better, though. A small victory.
June 24, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I’m surprised the Mainichi pulled the plug so easily. That had to be the most (only?) profitable, ad-hit-generating part of the English website.
June 26, 2008 at 2:09 pm
You can see the archive at http://www.mainichiwaiwai.com