Jump possibly looking for a new romcom/harem (and sports too no doubt) makes me wonder how much they encourage writers to makes certain kinds of series. I know there's the story of Magazine supposedly wanting Akamatsu to make another harem series which resulted in Negima being a harem that shifted to action (don't know if it's true but that's the story people say at least).
Do we have any known situations like that in WSJ? I know they often encourage authors to put in certain types of characters but I don't know if I've heard about them pushing a creator towards a certain genre (would explain why we get shogi manga by people who don't care about shogi).
I remember earlier this year there was a page on WSJ site encouraging people to submit manga of a certain types
"western fantasy" "high school career" "sports" or something like that
I remember them using Game of Thrones as an example of a western fantasy, which people thought was weird
also back in the day, around the time Naruto and Beelzebub ended there were interviews with editors who was asked "what type of manga is jump looking for now" and they said traditional Japanese fantasy and delinquents (I'm guessing KnY was born this way? but yankees manga never actually arrived which is a shame)
so they definitely play favorite when choosing what submissions to serialize
