The July 27, 2005 front page of The News Journal |
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Gannett Company |
| Publisher | Howard Griffin |
| Editor | David Ledford |
| Founded | 1785 (as the Delaware Gazette) |
| Headquarters | 950 West Basin Road New Castle, Delaware 19720 United States |
| Circulation | Morning: 114,435 Sunday: 131,796[1] |
| ISSN | 1042-4121 |
| OCLC number | 16073699 |
| Official website | delawareonline.com |
The News Journal is a newspaper in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near New Castle,[2] owned by Gannett.
Contents |
For most of the 20th century, the Du Pont family owned two Delaware newspapers, The Morning News and The Evening Journal. Ownership of both papers was consolidated in 1919 when feuding factions of the family reconciled, forming the News Journal Company.
DuPont decided to sell The News Journal Company in 1978. Gannett won the bidding war, beating the Hearst Corporation and The Washington Post Company. Gannett paid $60 million for the two Delaware papers and merged them in 1989 to form one paper, The News Journal.[3]
In 2010, The News Journal Company became The News Journal Media Group in an effort to collectively identify their extensive product portfolio of print, digital, video and new media.
The News Journal covers New Castle County most in-depth, but also offers considerable coverage of the Delaware General Assembly and the Delaware beaches. The paper also offers limited coverage of northeast Maryland and southeast Pennsylvania, mostly by means of short news briefs. The paper publishes national and international articles from wire services.
The News Journal also maintains a Washington, D.C. bureau, mainly for covering Delaware's congressional delegation.
The News Journal Media Group entered the Internet age in the late 1990s with the launch of Delaware Online. The website features an online edition of all local content in the paper, as well as job listings and classified ads. DelawareOnline.com was cited in a 2008 Wilkerson and Associates study as the site Delawarean's visit first for news and entertainment. More than one million unique visitors are recorded each month.
The paper began offering an online news update weekdays at 4:30 pm. The once-daily update has evolved into as-it-happens online news coverage that often results in a couple dozen news updates per day.
DelawareOnline.Com was the first newspaper in the country to offer a morning and afternoon online newscast with anchor Patty Petite. The daily newscasts have been replaced with more of a breaking news feel instead of fixed broadcast times.
In order to increase its younger readership, The News Journal Media Group began publishing Spark, a weekly entertainment publication geared toward young adults. Spark, which focuses on concerts, movies, dining, night life, and other entertainment, is distributed free at nearly 1000 area businesses. The publication enjoys readership nearly three times it's distribution quantities from pass along readership.
In the summer of 2007, The News Journal Media Group charged three summer interns with the task of finding a way to further increase youth readership. The result was Unami, media-rich website with short articles, some of which are original reports for Unami, and others which are condensed versions of articles that appeared in the News Journal. Unami, which gets its name from a Lenape (Delaware) Indian language, is described as "a user-friendly format, catering to the ‘skimmers’ as well as those who Google search every new concept they come across".[4]
Besides Spark, The News Journal Media Group is responsible for several other publications:
The News Journal continues to participate in the acclaimed Newspapers for Education program, which provides free newspapers for area schools. On Fridays during the school year, the paper publishes an informational feature for school children, in the form of colorful, pull-out, double truck page in the Life section.
In 2006, The News Journal provided Glasgow High School with a $10,000 grant to assist the school's newspaper, The Dragon Fire. The News Journal also sent editors to Glasgow to assist the Dragon Fire with page layout and web design.
The News Journal Company also runs the Needy Family Fund, which partners with local charities to assist family in need of food and clothing. Each Christmas season, The News Journal asks readers to donate to the fund, and publishes a list of those who do.
To date, The News Journal Media Group has partnered with nearly half of the registered not-for-profit companies (registered 501 ( c ) 3 in New Castle County. A customized link - offering all types of correspondence from not-for-profits, church leaders and community affairs personnel is available at the bottom of DelawareOnline.com. In addition, The News Journal publishes a dedicated not-for-profit customized publication, GET INVOLVED - which is distributed in-paper on a bi-monthly basis.
Cris Barrish - His byline calls him a "Senior Reporter". Often assigned to The News Journal's biggest stories, Barrish is best known for his coverage of the murder of Anne Marie Fahey and the ensuing murder trial of Thomas Capano. Barrish later co-authored the book Fatal Embrace about the case. Cris won the 2011 Al Nakkula Award for police reporting.[6]
Norman Lockman - Lockman served as managing editor of The News Journal from 1984 to 1991.[7] After that, he became a member of the editorial board and wrote a regular column in the paper. Before joining The News Journal, Lockman won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles on race relations he co-wrote for The Boston Globe.[8] Suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, Lockman wrote his final column in late 2004. He died the following April.