Hugo Kelly writes:

Last month we reported that Fairfax had very quietly shut down the Financial Review‘s Tokyo Bureau – a bizarre decision given Japan’s status as a global finance centre and a regional business hub. Now we hear fears the Smage bureau is poised to follow suit. Smage Tokyo correspondent Deborah Cameron has just returned to Japan with her husband, former AFR correspondent Greg Earl, after a few weeks’ leave in Australia. During this period, Fairfax didn’t have a correspondent in Japan.

It’s astonishing that Australia’s national finance daily would turn its back on the second biggest financial centre in the world and Australia’s biggest trading partner in the name of cost savings. And this despite Fairfax enjoying a generous deal with one of the big Japanese newspapers, which allows for a swap of office space.

But surely Fairfax wouldn’t completely decamp from Japan altogether. Fin Review editor Glenn Burge decided to “suspend” his paper’s bureau for the 04-05 financial year, to save costs, after Brendan Pearson left around January last year.

It was commonly assumed the AFR would reopen its bureau last month with Earl in the job. We emailed Fairfax spin doctor Bruce C Wolpe last month, but didn’t hear from him. So we sent him this follow-up email yesterday, asking:

* Does Fairfax intend to re-open its Tokyo AFR bureau? If so, when?

* Has consideration been given to shutting the SMH/Age Tokyo bureau?

No response yet, and so far, no news is bad news for the credibility of Fairfax as a comprehensive news source in our region.