The devastating earthquake and tsunami, which hit Japan on 11 March 2011, caused major difficulties for several newspapers along the eastern coast of the Tohoku region, which includes the prefectures of Aomori, Akita, Iwate, Yamagata, Miyagi and Fukushima.

Newspaper companies have suffered water and fuel outages and are currently utilizing back-up electric-power generators or have reduced the number of pages to keep publishing. The newspapers Daily Tohoku in Aomori Prefecture, Iwate Nippo in Iwate Prefecture, Yamagata Shimbun in Yamagata Prefecture, Kahoku Shimpo in Miyagi Prefecture and Ibaraki-Shimbun in Ibaragi Prefecture are assisted with page makeup and printing by newspaper companies in neighbouring prefectures with whom they have set up mutual anti-disaster agreements. Four newsprint manufacturing plants in the Tohoku region have stopped operations altogether.

The electric power supply has improved since the morning after the earthquake, but electric-power companies are implementing planned outages to reduce total demand.

The editing system at the Kahoku Shimpo, the largest newspaper in the region, collapsed and therefore had to send story texts to the Niigata Nippo newspaper. Using back-up power generators, 472,000 copies were printed and sent even to places to which people had temporarily evacuated. Yamagata Shimbun was another company that Niigata Nippo greatly assisted in printing and distribution.

Iwate Nichinichi received page data via a USB memory stick delivered by a technician from the Daily Tohoku and on 12 March printed a four-page edition of 30,000 copies.

The Ibaraki-Shimbun edition of 12 March was printed in Tokyo, at one of the Yomiuri Shimbun’s satellite printing factories. Back-up electric power at Ibaraki went off later in the day and the Ibaraki became incapable of running the editing system or transmitting data to Yomiuri. They then asked help from Shimotsuke Shimbun, published in Tochigi Prefecture. The editions for both 13 and 14 March were edited and printed at Shimotsuke.

The Akita Sakigake Shimpo used their own power generator to run their printing machines and put out the 12 March edition.

Fukushima-Minpo and the Iwaki Minpo, published in Fukushima Prefecture, suffered from a water and power outages and could not run their printing facility at full capacity.

Joyo newspaper, published in Ibaragi Prefecture, could not operate their printing facilities because of an electricity outage. They used A3 copiers to produce a four-page newspaper. Some 1,000 copies were made and sent to an evacuation centre in Tsuchiura City. Some copies were distributed to readers’ households. As of 13 March, Joyo has published a four-page newspaper on their printing machines.

Hokuu Shimpo, published in Akita Prefecture, produced a one-page monochrome newspaper using printing machines for insert ads and distributing papers to readers’ households on the morning of 12 March. After the electric power came back, Hokuu printed a four-page edition for the day.

Edited by Christina Hsu (IPI).