How MatchaNews decides what to cover, how we verify it, and what we do when we get something wrong.
MatchaNews is an independent publication covering matcha products, news, and culture — from convenience-store releases in Japan to café openings and product launches around the world. It's currently run by a single editor rather than a newsroom, which shapes how we work: we publish less often than a larger outlet, but we hold everything we do publish to the same sourcing standard described below.
MatchaNews launched as a personal project, and the first version of this site was built quickly as a prototype using AI tools. That early build included placeholder articles, product reviews, and venue listings that were not based on real reporting — invented statistics, invented quotes, and in one case a citation to a study that does not exist. It also attached fabricated ratings and details to real, named businesses.
We caught this before the site had any real audience or published output, and removed all of it in August 2026. We're documenting it here rather than quietly deleting it, because the point of this policy is accountability, and it would be strange to write a sourcing policy without mentioning the one time we badly failed to meet it. Nothing published under a byline from this point forward was written that way.
Our scope is deliberately narrow: matcha and matcha-adjacent products, retail and café news, market data, harvest and production news from Japan, and culture pieces where matcha is genuinely the subject — not a pretext for generic lifestyle content. We're not trying to be a general tea or food publication.
Every factual claim we publish — a price, a release date, a statistic, a quote — needs to trace back to a source we can name and, wherever possible, link to: an official press release, a company's own site, a government or industry statistics release, a direct exchange with a brand or venue, or our own firsthand visit or testing.
We only publish a rating, review, or specific operational detail (hours, prices, menu items) for a real venue or product after we've actually confirmed it — by visiting, by direct contact with the business, or from the business's own current public materials. A venue we haven't been able to verify is listed as unverified or not listed at all; it does not get a placeholder rating in the meantime.
MatchaNews does not accept payment in exchange for coverage, a rating, or a listing. If we ever run sponsored content, affiliate links, or paid partnerships, they will be clearly labeled as such at the point they appear — never presented as ordinary editorial coverage.
We use AI tools as part of how MatchaNews is produced — for research organization, first-pass drafting, and translation. What that does and doesn't mean for accuracy is spelled out in our AI Policy, which should be read alongside this page.
When we get something wrong, we correct it. Factual errors are fixed as soon as we can confirm the correction, and for anything more than a typo we'll add a short note at the bottom of the article stating what changed and when. We'd rather hear about a mistake from a reader than not hear about it at all.
Have a correction, a tip, or a matcha product launch we should know about? Reach us via the contact details on our newsletter page, or through the contact link in the site footer.