[3] Wickes, who had cut his teeth in journalism as a printer's devil at a previous Dover paper in the early 1880s, was on the inaugural staff of the Delaware State News.
[4] George Willets Parker purchased the paper from Wickes' estate in January 1946, then sold it half a year later to J. Hampton Barnes Jr.[3] Bernard "Jack" Smyth, a newspaper owner in Renovo, Pennsylvania, purchased the Delaware State News and a competing weekly in 1953 for $40,000 (equivalent to $455,522 in 2023), with the intention of turning it into a daily newspaper, after learning that Dover was the only state capital without one.
His son Joe Smyth bought out his siblings' shares in the 1970s, establishing Independent Newspapers Inc. and expanding his holdings into Arizona and Florida.
[6] The Delaware State News is the East Coast flagship publication of Independent Newsmedia Inc. USA, a company founded by the Smyth family and now owned by a nonprofit trust.
[1] The Dover newsroom publishes four monthly community papers covering specific cities and regions in Delaware:[1] Independent Newsmedia also owns three weekly newspapers nearby on the Delmarva Peninsula:[1]