Journal Gazette
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Journal Gazette is the morning newspaper in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It publishes seven days a week, and with several outlying bureaus, contends for circulation and advertising in a 15-county area. The Journal Gazette is independent, but it was aligned with the Democratic party until 1973, and it continues to endorse liberal candidates and issues on the editorial page.
[edit] History
The Journal Gazette traces its origins to 1863, to the foundation of The Fort Wayne Gazette. In 1899, The Fort Wayne Gazette merged with The Journal. The Journal Gazette has always been a privately owned newspaper, and the family of the current publisher has controlled the paper since 1930 Publisher Richard Inskeep joined the newspaper in 1949; his family bought the newspaper in 1930. The paper was previously published by William Kunkle who established WKJG (Will Kunkle - Journal Gazette) broadcasting stations. Kunkle died in 1953 returning to the newspaper from the television station.
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[edit] Fort Wayne Newspapers
In 1950, the Journal Gazette entered into one of the first joint operating agreements for competing daily newspapers in the US. Under the arrangement, the Journal Gazette and The News-Sentinel have independent editorial staffs and management, while a jointly-owned corporation sells advertising, handles circulation, prints the newspapers and, since 1958, has been landlord to the newspapers' staffs. Initially, the Journal Gazette owned 45% of Fort Wayne Newspapers.
In 2003, the companies agreed to extend the joint operating agreement to 2050, with the News-Sentinel paying $42 million to increase their stake from 55% to 75%. Fort Wayne Newspapers is expanding to the west of their current location at 600 West Main street, and expect to be using a new TKS (USA) Color Top 7000CDH 4-by-2 press in 2007 to replace the Eight Goss Mark I letterpress units and four MAN Roland flexographic units now in use. The Goss units were installed in 1958, when the current building was erected.
[edit] Circulation
As a regional morning newspaper, The Journal Gazette has been successful in fighting the circulation drop affecting most big daily newspapers. Since 1987, their circulation has grown from 57,000 in 1981 to a current circulation of 73,058. Since Sunday is payday for newspaper publishers, the Journal Gazette's Sunday circulation of 126,988 is especially lucrative.
Of all Indiana newspapers, only the Indianapolis Star has a larger Sunday circulation.
The Journal-Gazette is one of the larger newspapers in the US to never been owned by a newspaper chain.
