Donegal Democrat

The Donegal Democrat is a twice-weekly local newspaper, covering County Donegal, Ireland. The paper was traditionally based in the town of Ballyshannon in the south of the county, but now has offices in Donegal Town (southern edition) and Letterkenny (northern edition). The Donegal Democrat is the largest paper focused solely on County Donegal, and its current editor is Michael Daly. The paper was the only one published in south Donegal from the mid-twentieth century on, and so has gained a reputation of being the local paper of record for that part of the county. Its main rivals in the north of the county are its stable-mate, the Derry Journal as well as the Letterkenny Post, and the Donegal Post and Finn Valley Post in the south. It had a combined ABC circulation for its Tuesday and Thursday editions of 23,792, for the first half of 2007.

Since its launch, the paper has been published weekly on a Thursday in broadsheet format, and in recent years has become part of a chain of titles that are published three times per week in the county. The paper is now almost entirely integrated with the Donegal People’s Press, a paper published on Tuesdays in a Compact format. The People’s Press was traditionally a north Donegal paper and so, with minor alterations, is published as a Tuesday edition of the Donegal Democrat in the south of the county.

In March 2004, the Sunday Democrat was launched as an edition of the Sunday Journal, it changed its name later that year to Donegal on Sunday and is still the only local newspaper published in Ireland on a Sunday. The Donegal Democrat group is owned by Johnston Press through the holding company Derry Journal Newspapers, who publish several other titles in counties Donegal and Londonderry.