METI Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry of : Bimonthly PR Magazine "METI Journal" to Shift to Daily Journal

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has been issuing a series of bimonthly, electronic public relations magazines titled 'METI Journal' on its website. From FY2017, METI will change the issuance period of the Ministry's (owned media) journal from a bimonthly style to a daily release in Japanese.

METI will call for competitive bidding around February 2017 to determine a business that will edit the journal.

1. Characteristics of the current METI Journal

Characteristics of the current series of the METI Journal are as follows.

• Bimonthly electronic journal released on METI website in PDF format, free of charge
• Composed of two feature articles (ten-page article and six-page article) and four-page short report
  METI Journal Back Numbers
• Commissioned to small- and medium-size editorial businesses under contract for covering, editing and preparing articles

However, METI has been facing the following challenges in the conventional approach: [i] low frequency of issuance, [ii] insufficient approaches to raising public awareness, and [iii] less optimization in mobile web browsing, such as smartphones, and in social media.

2. Shifting to new daily style

To address this situation, METI decided to change the current magazine style to one in which articles composed of texts and pictures or diagrams will be daily updated in Japanese. This approach will enable METI to solve challenges [i] and [iii].

In addition, concerning an approach to overcoming challenge [ii], i.e., insufficient approaches to raising public awareness, METI will call for competitive bidding for businesses and select a business that has offered an outstanding proposal in a free form.

Following the determination of an editorial business, METI will start issuing a new series of the METI Journal from around spring-summer 2017.

Release date

December 27, 2016

Division in Charge

Public Relations Office, Minister's Secretariat