Mainichi Shinbun Unveils New Website

Leading newspaper Mainichi Shinbun has ended its two-year relationship with Microsoft today, relocating its website from mainichi-msn.co.jp to http://mainichi.jp/ and unveiling a new site design. Mainichi’s English Edition is now located at mdn.mainichi.jp, so head on over now and update your bookmarks/RSS feeds!

The new site design is pretty looking, but I was expecting a little more. In announcement last month about the new site, it was mentioned that Mainichi would be embracing bloggers:

Much attention will also be paid to bloggers, with heavy use of social bookmarking, RSS and blog parts.

[...]

Mainichi Managing Executive Officer Atsushi Hasegawa also pledged the site will embrace all views.

“Bloggers are not amateurs,” he said. “We are prepared to list views that oppose the Mainichi’s stance.”

I looked over the English edition’s site and found nothing about blogging, and a quick skimming over the Japanese site found Yahoo bookmark and Minna no Topics vote buttons on individual article pages. Maybe the blog-related content will come at a later date?