I have used jisho.org for quite some time now and have wondered about this. The jouyou kanji list is actually much smaller than 2500. Where does this concept of "2500 most used kanji in newspapers" come from? I mean why 2500 exactly?

Besides this I wanted to know if anyone has any idea about this other matter: The jouyou kanji list at present has 2,136 characters in it. I am using Tuttle Kanji Flash Cards (Be Alexander Kask). The 4 volumes contain a total of 1,945 characters. I was just wondering what are they missing from the present jouyou list, is there anyway to find out?

Arbitrary. You have to stop somewhere.

I think if you know 2000 kanji that's 95% of the kanji you will ever see in Japanese(most common). I think if you reach 3000+ it's like 99% (common but you will never reach 100%). I still forget basic kanji, so it's one of those things that you will just have to keep learning. Then there is names, which is like 985 kanji or so. So 4000? The thing is, this never stops. So the goal for most people is the common kanji and the rest you learn from native material.

1945 is the number in the old jouyou list (not including name kanji), if you put out the least bit of effort to research the Jouyou kanji on the web I'm sure you'd find the differences described somewhere...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jouyou_kanji

Well the Tuttle cards are not that old, I would expect the published to add the new Kanji but it has not happened yet as far as I have seen. This is what made me post the question here.

I have seen the list, thanks.

I found the 2500 list on the denshi jisho forum. Here it is:
http://www.hellodamage.com/tdr/archive/7...yfreq.html

Apparently most are in RTK 1-3. I'll do a full check later. Aren't:

2406 闊 broad
2407 藏 own
2408 浙 セツ (Chinese river)
2410 淘 select