Newcastle Journal

About Newcastle Journal

The Journal is a daily morning newspaper produced in Newcastle upon Tyne, serving North East England alongside its sister titles the Evening Chronicle and the Sunday Sun. Published by ncjMedia, a division of Reach plc, it is produced every weekday and Saturday morning and is aimed at a middle-class and professional readership, with a daily business section, sports pages, the monthly Culture magazine and the weekly property supplement Homemaker. Its history stretches back to 1832, making it one of the oldest regional newspapers in Britain.

Founding in 1832

The first edition of the Newcastle Journal was printed on 12 May 1832, and on subsequent Saturdays, by Hernaman and Perring at 69 Pilgrim Street, Newcastle. The paper was set up by the businessmen John Hernaman and Robert Perring at the request of local Tories to oppose Earl Grey's Reform Act, which reformed Parliament and extended the vote to many more men than had previously been allowed. Its original mission was thus frankly partisan; as the paper's editor Graeme Whitfield wrote on its 190th anniversary, the Journal has been politically neutral for many years, but its mission of keeping the people of Newcastle and the North East informed, championing the region's interests and holding power to account is the same as that envisaged at its outset.

Becoming a daily

Originally launched as a weekly in 1832, the paper went daily in 1861, becoming the Newcastle Daily Journal. It passed through a series of title changes over the decades: the Newcastle Daily Journal and Courant (1915-1920), the Newcastle Daily Journal, North Star and Courant (1926-1928), The Newcastle Journal, North Star and Courant (1932-1937), and the Newcastle Journal and North Mail (1939-1958), before the title was shortened to The Journal in 1957. On 12 May 2007 the paper celebrated its 175th anniversary and its 49,584th issue.

The Journal in wartime

During the Second World War the Journal achieved a daily circulation of 160,000. A famous anecdote from those years concerns the night-shift reporters' rations: a "providential misreading" of a food order meant that instead of 60 cases of tins of baked beans ordered to keep the night shift fed, 60 gross — 8,640 cases — were delivered. The works manager was stunned to see the convoy of delivery vans arriving, a management conference was hastily called, and it was decided to accept the consignment. Tins of beans were rammed into every unoccupied square foot of the building, and the Journal's staff remained, in the paper's own phrase, "full of beans" for the duration of the war.

Sister papers and ncjMedia

The Journal is published by ncjMedia, the North East division of Reach plc (formerly Trinity Mirror). It is complemented by its sister publications the Evening Chronicle and the Sunday Sun. The two dailies once complemented each other directly, with the Journal published in the morning and the Chronicle in the afternoon, though both titles are now printed overnight and are on newsstands alongside the national titles. The Chronicle, known as Chronicle Live, concentrates on local news, human-interest stories and sport, with a particular emphasis on Newcastle United, while the Journal pitches at a more business-focused, professional readership.

Thomson House and the move to Eldon Square

For 52 years the Journal and its sister papers were based at Thomson House in Newcastle's Groat Market, the organisation's home since the 1960s. In early 2018 ncjMedia moved to new headquarters at Eldon Square in Newcastle city centre, less than half a mile away. Trinity Mirror North East managing director Robert Cuffe said the move kept the business "right in the heart of our region", where it had been based since the Journal was first published in 1832. When the papers had moved to Thomson House, a commemorative booklet had declared that "the news of the North and of the whole world" would "pour in night and day".

Content and supplements

The Journal's news coverage mixes regional, national and international news, with a daily business section and a sports page. It publishes the monthly Culture magazine, covering arts and culture across the North East, and the weekly property supplement Homemaker. Coverage of farming is an important part of the paper, and it has a high readership in rural Northumberland. The paper was the named sponsor of the Tyne Theatre on Westgate Road during the 2000s, until January 2012.
The Journal's business coverage is one of its distinguishing features. The North East has undergone profound economic change since the decline of the shipyards and coal mines that once dominated the region, and the paper's business pages have chronicled the region's economic reinvention over recent decades. Its daily business section is aimed at the region's professional and managerial classes, the core of the paper's readership.

Awards

The Journal has won a string of industry honours. It was named North East Newspaper of the Year in 2007 and 2008 at the Tom Cordner North East Press Awards, and Newspaper of the Year nationally in its category in 2013 and 2014. The awards recognise the paper's combination of regional reporting, business coverage and cultural journalism.

Editor and circulation

The editor of the Journal is Darren Thwaites. The paper's print circulation has declined in line with the regional press generally: as of 2024 its circulation stood at 2,273. Its journalism is published online through Chronicle Live (chroniclelive.co.uk), the digital platform shared with the Evening Chronicle, which reaches a far larger audience than the print editions. The Journal's ISSN is 0307-3645.

The Journal and Newcastle United

Like its sister paper, the Journal covers North East sport closely, and its relationship with Newcastle United has occasionally been strained. In October 2013 the Chronicle and its sister publications the Journal and Sunday Sun were banned from Newcastle United over coverage of a fans' protest march; the ban was later withdrawn. The episode illustrated the tensions that can arise between regional papers and the football clubs that dominate their sports pages.

Outlook

Nearly two centuries after its founding as a Tory weekly opposing parliamentary reform, the Journal survives as a politically neutral regional morning paper within the Reach plc stable. Its future, like that of the regional press as a whole, depends on the digital audience it can build through Chronicle Live and on the continued appetite of North East readers for trusted local journalism.
The Journal's 190th anniversary in 2022 was marked with tributes from across the region, including from figures such as Alan Shearer, a reflection of the paper's standing in North East life. Few institutions survive for 190 years, and the paper's editors have pledged that it has no intention of stopping. Its combination of business journalism, cultural coverage and regional campaigning gives it a role that neither the national press nor the digital platforms have fully replaced.
The paper's long history is itself a journalistic resource: its archives, stretching back to 1832, chronicle the transformation of the North East from an industrial powerhouse to a modern service economy, and the paper has drawn on that archive in anniversary editions and special supplements that connect the region's past to its present. The British Newspaper Archive holds the Journal's historic editions from 1832 to 1996, a resource for historians of the region and for family researchers tracing North East ancestors.