Get Known. S6 E1 - Yuko Endo from TNL Mediagene, Japan

In this episode, we had the pleasure of talking with Yuko Endo from TNL Mediagene in Tokyo, Japan.  Over the years we have rarely had the chance to speak with Japanese media so it was quite a treat to talk with Yuko who is the Vice President of the group that publishes the Japanese versions of some very popular U.S. magazines including Business Insider Japan, Gizmodo Japan, and Digiday Japan.

This was Yuko’s first time at Slush so we started off by chatting about her first impressions of the conference and what she was looking to get out of it. We talked about how she got into journalism and her journey into editing and publishing. She also mentioned that the Slush model is a great example for Japan to follow in entrepreneurial business culture.  

We then spoke a bit about the differences between Japan’s media and other media around the world. Yuko and her boss represent just a few female leaders in journalism there.  We continued by talking about how to approach media in Japan and how the process of publishing stories works. In short, knowing the right people is important along with providing information in Japanese. 

 I think one of the biggest surprises for me was the similarities between Japanese and Finnish media culture. For example, embracing failure and taking risks is often still difficult. But facts and honesty are very important when reporting the news and keeping people’s trust.. 

We did also talk about how Western media gets things wrong in Japan. One way is providing pure translations of news and press which does not fly. Things need to be localized for Japanese markets and it's not easy. There is simply so much to get wrong when you don’t know the culture, mindset, or habits. I guess that is true no matter where you go.