Type Daily newspaper Publisher Julie Inskeep | Format Broadsheet Editor Craig Klugman | |
Owner(s) The Journal Gazette Co. Founded 1863
(as The Fort Wayne Gazette) | ||
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. One of its longtime partners was Democratic Governor Paul V. McNutt, who obtained his interest in the newspaper while Indiana governor.
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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 Kunkel , who established WKJG (William Kunkel - Journal Gazette) broadcasting stations. Kunkel died in 1949 while in his office with his son.
Fort Wayne newspapers
In 1950, The Journal Gazette entered into one of the first joint operating agreements for competing daily newspapers in the United States. 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.
Circulation
As a regional morning newspaper, The Journal Gazette has been more successful than many newspapers in minimizing the circulation drop affecting most big daily newspapers. Since 1981 circulation has been essentially flat from 57,000 to a current Audit Bureau of Circulation average daily circulation of 56,187. However, part of what the Journal Gazette includes as weekly circulation was the result of the newspaper including delivery of a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday newspaper with every "Sunday-only" subscription.
Since Sunday is payday for newspaper publishers, The Journal Gazette's Sunday ABC reported circulation of 102,861 is especially lucrative. It is a drastic drop, though, of nearly 24,000 Sunday subscribers from just a few years ago.
Perhaps as an illustration of the effects of declining circulation for 2011, The Journal-Gazette broke its long-standing tradition of hosting a Christmas reception at the Fort Wayne Country Club.
Of all Indiana newspapers, only The Indianapolis Star has a larger Sunday circulation.
The Journal-Gazette is one of the larger newspapers in the United States to have never been owned by a newspaper chain.