Word: shimbun
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...U.S.S.R. KHRUSHCHEV DIED SURPRISINGLY AT 20:19 CENTRAL EUROPEAN TIME OF HEPHOCAPALYTIROSISES. The message was signed TASS/ASAHI BONN-an unusual signature apparently signifying that the information had come from Tass, the Russian news agency, and had been picked up by a Bonn correspondent for Tokyo's daily Asahi Shimbun. Within minutes, Khrushchev's premature obituary flashed around the world...
Booted. The most prevalent explanation was that Asahi Shimbun's Moscow correspondent, Takeo Kuba, had imperfectly translated Russian cablese KHRUSHCHEV ZAKONCHIL (has ended it), with which Tass had wound up its transmission of a Khrushchev speech. According to this theory, Kuba misread it as KHRUSHCHEV SKONCHALSIA (Khrushchev dead) and cabled the news forthwith. However, at week's end this explanation was exploded by a report from a German TV network that its Hamburg office had received a similar bogus message, save that it was signed "Britinform," cablese for the British Information Service in Bonn...
Japan's fiercely competitive big-city dailies fight for circulation with all the costly gadgetry of modern news gathering. Walkie-talkies, high-speed teleprinters, facsimile transmitters and radio-equipped cars are standard reportorial accessories. To cover a big story quickly, Tokyo's Yomiuri Shimbun (circ. 3,900,000) will throw in mobile radiophoto units, a brace of helicopters, one of its six airplanes. Beyond all that, Japanese newspapers' rooftops are equipped with some of the oddest journalistic aids in use anywhere today-flocks of carrier pigeons...
...pigeons have dovetailed nicely into less somber editorial projects. When Crown Prince Akihito sailed on his first overseas tour, Tokyo's Mainichi Shimbun (circ. 3,800,000) sent along a photographer and four birds; one brought a royal picture home from 250 miles at sea for a front-page scoop. Wings beat for Mainichi again when U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall climbed Mount Fuji in 1961. Halfway to the summit, a cameraman released two pigeons which covered the 70 air miles to Tokyo just in time for the evening edition. The Mainichi flock scored its latest coo last October...
...years ago even Tokyo's largest daily, Asahi (circ. 4,100,000), gave away its 300 birds with the announcement: "Time has come to say sayonara to Hato-san." Still, rival Mainichi keeps two trainers on its staff, spends $800 a month on a flock of 150. Yomiuri Shimbun has just completed new concrete dovecotes, plans to expand its present 20-bird flock to at least 100 in time for the Olympic Games that take place next fall, just 15 winged minutes across Tokyo-and smack in the middle of the typhoon season...