While Japan’s long economic stagnation has prompted a slow dismantling of the nation’s postwar order, punctuated by a historic change of government last year, one pillar of that order, the news media, has so far been left relatively untouched. The new government has taken the initial steps to open up some of the exclusive press clubs that dominate coverage at Tokyo’s powerful central ministries, but it has yet to follow through with more sweeping changes.

For a variety of reasons, cultural as well as economic, the digital revolution has yet to wreak the same havoc on the news media here that it has in the United States and most other advanced countries. The media landscape is still dominated by the same handful of behemoths that have held sway for decades, like the Yomiuri Shimbun, the world’s largest newspaper, with daily circulation of more than 10 million.

Personal blogs thrive in Japan, as do shopping sites and chat rooms appealing to groups from pet lovers to angry nationalists. But sites dedicated to news have found only a small foothold, and most of those are run by major news organizations, which often treat them as sideshows.

Most glaringly, there have been few of the alternative news blogs and news sites that have appeared in other countries, like The Huffington Post in the United States. The handful of sites that have drawn attention, like J-Cast News and The Journal, have failed to garner large numbers of readers.

Citizen journalism sites have earned the most attention here, largely for taking the lead in challenging media taboos and criticizing Japan’s press clubs. But they are far from prosperous. Before JanJan, a well-financed startup from South Korea, OhmyNews Japan, shut down two years ago and Tsukasa Net closed last November. Another, PJ News, has shrunk to a single editor who does not even have an office.