The Journal
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner	Gannett Company
Publisher	Howard Griffin
Editor	David Ledford
Founded	1785 (as the Delaware Gazette)
Circulation	Morning: 114,435 Sunday: 131,796
ISSN	1042-4121
OCLC number	16073699
Official website	delawareonline.com

The News Journal is the main newspaper for Wilmington, Delaware and the surrounding area. It is headquartered in unincorporatedNew Castle County, Delaware, near New Castle,^[2] and is owned by Gannett.

History
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.

Coverage area
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.

Sections
Regular sections

• News
• Local & Business
• Sports
• Life
• Classifieds

Special sections

• Business Monday
• Health (Tuesdays)
• Home and Garden (Thursdays) - replaces the Life section and includes comics and Dear Abby in addition to features on gardening and home design
• Crossroads (Thursdays) - contains news about schools and other local, human-interest features. High schools in Delaware each have pick a student to write a short report about the happenings at their school for Crossroads. In April 2007, The News Journal began reprinting articles from local high school newspapers in the Crossroads section.
• 55 Hours (Fridays) - movie reviews, food reviews, and info about events occurring in the 55 hours of the weekend (and beyond)
• Auto (Saturdays)
• Sunday Life
• Celebrations (first Sunday of each month) - weddings, engagement announcements, anniversaries, and birthdays
•  

Embrace of Technology
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.

Increasing Younger Readership
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 its 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]

Other publications
Besides Spark, The News Journal Media Group is responsible for several other publications:

• Delaware Pets — Published monthly and distributed free at pet stores and veterinarian offices.
• MomsLikeMe.Com Magazine — Published monthly and distributed by mail to subscribers for free.
• Delaware Woman — Published bi-monthly and distributed by mail to subscribers for free.^[5]