Mainichi Shimbun

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The Mainichi Shimbun
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Blanket (54.6 cm x 40.65 cm)

Owner	The Mainichi Newspapers Co., Ltd.
Publisher	Masato Kitamura
Founded	February 21, 1872
Language	Japanese
Price	Morning edition: 130 Yen/copy Evening edition: 50 Yen/copy Subscription: 3,925 Yen/month (Morning and evening edition)
Headquarters	Tokyo
Circulation	Morning edition: 3,945,646 Evening edition: 1,610,293 (ABC Japan, average for July-December 2005)

Website: www.mainichi.co.jp

The front-page of Mainichi Shimbun.

Newsroom at Mainichi Shimbun.

The Mainichi Shimbun (毎日新聞, Mainichi Shimbun^?, lit. "Daily News") is one of the largest newspapers in Japan, published by The Mainichi Newspapers Co., Ltd (株式会社毎日新聞社, Kabushiki-gaisha Mainichi Shinbunsha^?).

1 History
2 Partnership with MSN
3 Offices
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

The history of the Mainichi Shimbun begins with founding of two papers during the Meiji period. The Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun was founded first, in 1872. Its 135-year-long history makes the Mainichi the oldest Japanese newspaper. The Osaka Mainichi Shimbun was founded four years later, in 1876. The two papers merged in 1911, but the two companies continued to print their newspapers independently until 1943, when both editions were placed under a Mainichi Shimbun masthead. In 1966 the Tokyo office was moved from Yurakucho to Takebashi, and in 1992 the Osaka office was moved from Dojima to Nishi-Umeda.

The Mainichi has 3,200 employees working in 364 offices in Japan and 26 bureaus overseas. The Mainichi is one of Japan’s big three newspapers in terms of circulation and employee numbers, and has 79 associated companies, including Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), Mainichi Broadcasting System (MBS) and the Sports Nippon Newspaper.

Two former Mainichi Newspapers Chief Executive Officers have gone on to become prime ministers of Japan. The Mainichi is the only Japanese newspaper company to have won a Pulitzer Prize. The Japan Newspapers Association, made up of 180 news organizations, has granted the Mainichi is Grand Prix award on 21 occasions, making the Mainichi the most frequent winner of the distinguished prize since its inception in 1957.

In addition to the Mainichi Shimbun, which is printed twice a day in several local editions, Mainichi also operates an English language Web version of the defunct Mainichi Daily News, and publishes a bilingual news magazine, Mainichi Weekly. It also publishes paperbacks, books and other magazines, including a weekly news magazine, Sunday Mainichi.

Like other Japanese newspaper companies, Mainichi hosts many cultural events such as art exhibitions and sporting events. Among them, the most famous are the Sembatsu high school baseball tournament held every spring at Koshien Stadium, and the non-professional baseball tournament held every summer in the Tokyo Dome (formerly held in Korakuen Stadium).

[edit] Partnership with MSN

On 15 January 2004, Mainichi Shimbun and MSN Japan announced they were to merge their websites. The partnership has been known as MSN-Mainichi Interactive, effective since 1 April 2004^[1]. On 18 September 2007, Mainichi announced the launch of their new website, mainichi.jp, which would include "heavy use of social bookmarking, RSS and blog parts" and will "pay attention to bloggers". The new website began operations on 1 October 2007, marking the end of MSN-Mainichi Interactive, and was replaced by mainichi.jp. The English-language Mainichi Daily News also moved to the new website^[2]. MSN-Japan switched to Sankei Shimbun^[3].