Fish nor fowl: Kisha clubs and Japanese journalism

If you think about it, most news is quite location-bound, too. While news can take place anywhere, recurring news, the largest category of all news types, mostly happens in predictable hot spots. In Japan, those hot spots for news are the 800- plus locations where kisha clubs just happen to be located and where the clubs exert enormous turf control. The issue is not whether there is or isn’t a kisha club, the issue is who controls the turf. That’s what makes membership so critical and the clubs so powerful.