About Us
The Daily Journal and its sister publications — all operated by Journal Inc. — seek to build community and enhance the quality of life in Northeast Mississippi and throughout the state.
For more than 140 years our company has followed the vision of our founder George McLean to promote economic development, education and a better region for all people.
Our mission is to help inform the public about life around them to assist in better decisions for the future of our region with the best local information. Each day we do that with our staff of reporters, photographers, editors, advertising consultants and other parts of our team. Our staffs have been recognized as the best in what they do in print and online in several contest, and our site regularly is viewed by the most people in Northeast Mississippi.
Journal Inc. publications
In addition to the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Journal Inc. owns and operates:
- Mud & Magnolias Magazine
- Itawamba County Times
- Monroe Journal
- New Albany Gazette
- Pontotoc Progress
- Southern Sentinel
Our mottos and goals
When George McLean bought the Daily Journal, it carried on its front page the motto "Be just and fear not." They are wise words that have always guided the reporting at the Daily Journal and its other publications. We seek to be fair, to be honest, to present the truth, to not ignore the good for the salacious. At the same time, we must be fearless, holding accountable those who are entrusted with leadership of our communities and institutions.
Eventually McLean and the Daily Journal adopted a guiding principle, a declaration of what the Daily Journal is and a statement of its mission: "A locally owned newspaper dedicated to the service of God and mankind."
Both of the sayings have graced the front pages of our newspaper over the years, but they were mostly absent from our website. That changed in 2022, when they were given the prominence they deserve.
Tupelo and the Daily Journal
Telling the story of Tupelo is difficult without also telling the story of the Daily Journal. The two have been deeply each a part of the other’s story almost from the beginning.
The roots of the current-day Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal go right back to the founding of the town itself. The paper passed through different hands, changed numbers numerous times, and then in 1934, an out-of-towner named George McLean purchased the ailing publication.
And then, every thing changed.
Not all at once, but McLean was possessed of an unusual depth of vision and capacity for energy. He embarked on a community-building project that would cast the newspaper he owned into a vital companion and partner in the city of Tupelo’s social and economic vision – sometimes prodding, sometimes pulling, sometimes cheering. McLean’s editorials became not just the voice but the conscience of a community.
Whether working directly with farmers and business leaders, promoting education or touting the virtues of community self-reliance, McLean would become uniquely associated not only with the newspaper he owned but the community he came to call home.
The Daily Journal’s role in the creation and sustenance of the local community continued after McLean’s death. Since 1979, the Daily Journal has paid millions of dollars in dividends to the non-profit CREATE Foundation, which owns the newspaper.
The story of the Daily Journal is not exhausted, however, by the story of McLean. The reporters who have written the thousands upon thousands of words that have filled the newspaper’s pages over the years have made their own marks, with journalism that has helped pass the state’s open meetings laws and helped solidify provisions of the open records act, all while tirelessly chronicling the community’s successes and struggles with persistence.
The Good Newspaper
Among the written expressions of the principles that guide the Daily Journal applicable today is the essay “A Good Newspaper Builds Community,” written by George McLean, the Journal’s owner and executive editor for almost 50 years before his death in 1983, excerpted below.
The good newspaper should be a catalyst in its community, oiling the efforts of widely varying groups to achieve a reasonably smooth, balanced flow of progress. It seeks to provide coherence to scattered and sometimes conflicting objectives, enabling its community to get a better view of priorities and ways in which joint efforts may prove better than splintered activities.
The good newspaper is its community’s encourager which by making known what groups and individuals are doing brings mutual support for each other’s projects and invites still greater personal initiative. It is a community’s semi-official provider of pats on the back through news stories, pictures or editorials. The good newspaper can contribute perhaps more than any other institution to development of an active, mutually serving citizenship.
The good newspaper seeks to promote a spirit of neighborliness, by the features it carries on the activities, the hopes and concerns of the “average” citizen. The good newspaper knows most life is lived by small people and their activities deserve a word, however brief, in reporting the news. It seeks ways to say “yes” rather than “no” to requests from its readers or the general public. It is warm, not cold; flexible, not rigid, in meeting each day’s challenges.
The good newspaper should be a friend of its community, limiting criticism to needs for improvements rather than condemning shortcomings.
The good newspaper carries stories about progressive undertakings and methods, which can be profitably imitated by its own community, recognizing that the good example of others is frequently effective; creating the impression that “if others can do it, so can we.”
The good newspaper will not merely report but will enlighten, recognizing that the typical citizen may be limited in his understanding of government, economics, human relations, etc., but frequently is eager for broader understanding when the information is presented in an interesting, credible manner.
The staff of the good newspaper develops expertise not merely to propose progress, but to assume active leadership in bringing it about even though this involves leaving the impartial, isolated ivory tower and involves one in activities which may stir controversy.
The good newspaper is one of the hardest workers and most generous givers in civic affairs but does not seek to dominate the community in a way that causes others to say, “Let the paper do it.”
The good newspaper is an economic tool for personal and community progress. It recognizes its advertising as being of major value to the community as is its news and should try to maintain the integrity of its ads as it does that of news stories.
The good newspaper serves as an educational institution, takes up where a college degree or institutional walls may stop, teaches life as it actually is being lived without effort to conceal human frailties but seeks to help maintain faith and hope in human potential and human progress, emphasizes the good more than the bad.
The good newspaper reaches out as far as it can touch or see to bring to its readers new ideas, new approaches to life, new methods of meeting problems, and new information which adds interest or joy to life. The good newspaper recognizes that boredom is one of the great burdens in many lives; therefore it does not hesitate to provide entertainment and pleasure as well as educational material. But at all times seeks to maintain good taste throughout its columns.
The good newspaper adopts as one of its major objectives the unobtrusive establishment of a definite tone in its community built around high ethical standards, a cooperative spirit, a broadly based tolerance among all groups, a yearning for personal and community growth, a belief in God, service to man and hope for a better tomorrow.
Daily Journal timeline
1870: The Lee County Journal is established, with George Herndon as its first owner-editor.
1872: The Lee County Journal is renamed the Tupelo Standard.
1873: The newspaper is renamed again, from the Tupelo Standard to the Mississippi Journal. It will then be renamed again to the Tupelo Journal.
1877: George Herndon sells the Tupelo Journal to his brother, John. G. Herndon who, later in the same year, himself sells the paper to John Miller.
1886: Miller takes an active leadership role in the effort to win Tupelo a second railroad line, a potent economic prospect.
1892: J.H. Miller sells the Tupelo Journal to J.B. Ballard. A young editor-publisher, Ballard dies only six years later, in 1898.
1898: James Kincannon buys the Tupelo Daily Journal.
1905: James Kincannon dies, and his son, F.L. Kincannon, takes over as editor.
1934: George McLean purchases the Tupelo Daily Journal.
1936: The newspaper begins to publish more frequently and renames itself the Tupelo Daily Journal.
1947: Harry Rutherford is hired as the newspaper’s editor, a position he will hold for 30 years, until his death.
1948: George McLean is a founding member of the Community Development Foundation.
1972: The CREATE Foundation is established by George McLean as a philanthropic entity and will become the owner of the newspaper after McLean’s death.
1972: The Journal names Norma Fields as its state capitol correspondent in Jackson, making her the first woman to cover the capitol as a full-time reporter.
1973: The newspaper is renamed again, becoming the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal – which remains the name of the paper to this day.
1976: Gene Roberts is named publisher, which he remained until he retired.
1977: James Graham is named editor of the newspaper.
1979: The Daily Journal donates $1 million to launch a reading program in Lee County schools.
1983: George McLean dies, and his widow Anna Keirsey McLean becomes chairman of the newspaper board as the CREATE Foundation assumes ownership.
1984: Tom Pittman is named the Daily Journal’s editor.
1988: The Daily Journal prints its first Sunday edition.
1989: Billy Crews is named publisher.
1991: The Journal purchases the Aberdeen Examiner and the Amory Advertiser.
1992: Lloyd Gray is named editor of the Daily Journal, a position he will hold for 23 years.
1995: The Journal launches its first website, djournal.com.
1995: The Journal purchases the Pontotoc Progress.
1997: The Journal invests $750,000 in regional community development.
1998: Publisher Billy Crews named chairman of the newspaper’s board of directors following the retirement of Anna Keirsey McLean.
2000: Anna Keirsey McLean dies.
2005: The Journal purchases the Houston Times-Post and The Monitor Herald of Calhoun City.
2008: The Journal buys New Albany News-Exchange, Southern Advocate (Ashland) and the Southern Sentinel (Ripely).
2010: Clay Foster named chief executive officer of Journal Inc., having been named publisher already the year before.
2013: The Journal buys the New Albany Gazette.
2015: Rod Guajardo named editor of the Daily Journal.
2018: William Bronson III named chief executive officer and publisher of Journal Inc.
2019: Elizabeth Walters is named executive editor, the first woman to hold the top position in the Daily Journal newsroom.
2021: Sam R. Hall is named executive editor. The Tupelo native is the seventh editor since George McLean purchased the newspaper in 1934.