News Letter

Last updated

News Letter
Thebelfastnewsletter.PNG
Type Daily newspaper
Format Tabloid
Owner(s) National World
Founder(s)Francis Joy
EditorBen Lowry
Founded1737
Political alignment British unionism [1]
Language English
HeadquartersBelfast city centre / Portadown
Circulation 6,623(as of 2023) [2]
Website newsletter.co.uk

The News Letter is one of Northern Ireland's main daily newspapers, published from Monday to Saturday. It is the world's oldest English-language general daily newspaper still in publication, having first been printed in 1737. [3] [4] The newspaper's editorial stance and readership, while originally republican at the time of its inception, [5] :134–164 is now unionist. [1] Its primary competitors are the Belfast Telegraph and The Irish News .

Contents

The News Letter has changed hands several times since the mid-1990s, and is now owned by National World. It was formerly known as the Belfast News Letter, but its coverage spans the whole of Northern Ireland (and often Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland), so the word Belfast does not appear on the masthead any more. [6]

History

Francis Joy Francis Joy.jpg
Francis Joy

Founded in 1737, the News Letter was first printed in Joy's Entry in Belfast. It is one of a series of narrow alleys in the city centre, and is currently home to Henry's Pub (formerly McCracken's) – named after Henry Joy McCracken, an Irish Presbyterian and a leading member in the north of Ireland of the republican Society of the United Irishmen, and the grandson of the News Letter's founder.

The Joy family were of Huguenot descent and were very active in the life of 18th-century Belfast, being noted for compiling materials about its history. Francis Joy, who founded the paper, had come to Belfast early in the century from the County Antrim village of Killead. In Belfast, he married the daughter of the town sovereign (mayor), and set up practice as an attorney.

In 1737, in settlement of a debt, he obtained a small printing press and used it to publish the town's first newspaper in Bridge Street. The family later bought a paper mill in Ballymena, and were able to produce enough paper not only for their own publication but for the whole of Ulster. [7] [5]

The earliest available edition of the News Letter that survives is from 3 October 1738 (which is equivalent to 14 October in the modern calendar). [8]

Samples from that antiquated edition include reports about a highway robbery (where a bandit "took from a Sardinian Gentleman a Purse of Guineas and a rich Scimitar", among other things) at Newbury and the theft of a horse ("Four Years Old, and about Fourteen hands high") at Ballyhome.

Over the centuries, the News Letter's reports have spanned the rule of 77 different prime ministers and 10 monarchs. [8] It is one of the few newspapers still in business which reported on the US Declaration of Independence (carrying the news in an edition in late August 1776). [4]

Originally published three times weekly, it became daily in 1855. Before the partition of Ireland, the News Letter was distributed island-wide.

The Troubles

On 20 March 1972, the newspaper's offices, then in Donegall Street in the north of the city centre, were bombed by the IRA. The paper reported at the time that "two false alarms were phoned in about another bomb just around the corner in Church Street; people were evacuated – towards the real bomb". [9]

It detonated at 11.58 am, three minutes after an accurate warning had been given about the bomb's whereabouts. Seven people died, and over 140 were injured (with some staff among the wounded). Nevertheless, the paper came out the next day. [9] [10] [11]

One of the recurring motifs of the News Letter's editorial line today is to remind people of the scale of the paramilitary bloodshed during the Troubles, with the vast bulk of crimes being unsolved. [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]

Today

In recent years, the paper's business model has focussed on increasing subscriptions (home delivery and collection for the print edition, mobile devices/laptops for the digital one). A paywall structure is in operation online, allowing people to read five articles per week without subscribing (though some content is purposely kept behind the paywall). In the second half of 2016 the News Letter was the fastest-growing regional news site in the UK. [19]

Historical copies of the News Letter, dating back to 1828, are available to search and view in digitised form at the British Newspaper Archive. [20] There are also historic copies of the News Letter available for public access in the Belfast Newspaper Library, at the north end of the city centre, attached to the main Belfast Central Library. [21] Back copies of the physical newspaper can be bought, going back three months.

Other publications

The paper publishes the agricultural supplement Farming Life on Wednesdays and Saturdays, included within the newspaper itself. It publishes a weekend supplement on Saturdays, containing features and commentary and TV guide. It also publishes a supplement for the Twelfth of July celebrations.

In addition to the News Letter's coverage of the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal from 2016 to the present, a book entitled Burned: The Inside Story of the 'Cash-for-Ash' Scandal and Northern Ireland's Secretive New Elite, by its (now former) political correspondent Sam McBride (a frequent media commentator on Northern Irish affairs), was published in 2019 by Merrion. [22] [23]

Year (period)Average circulation per issue
2005 (July to December) [24]
28,616
2007 (January to June) [25]
26,803
2008 (January to June) [25]
26,199
2011 (January to June) [26]
23,492
2013 (January to June) [27]
19,550
2016 (January to June) [28]
15,475
2017 (January to June) [28]
14,900
2018 (January to June) [29]
13,374
2018 (July to December) [30]
12,499
2019 (January to June) [31]
11,829
2019 (July to December) [32]
11,076
2021 (January to June) [33]
9,505
2021 (July to December) [34]
8,958

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ulster Unionist Party</span> Political party in Northern Ireland

The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded as the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule movement. Following the partition of Ireland, it was the governing party of Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972. It was supported by most unionist voters throughout the conflict known as the Troubles, during which time it was often referred to as the Official Unionist Party (OUP).

<i>The Irish News</i> Northern Irish newspaper

The Irish News is a compact daily newspaper based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is Northern Ireland's largest-selling morning newspaper and is available throughout Ireland. It is broadly Irish nationalist in its viewpoint, though it also features unionist columnists.

<i>Belfast Telegraph</i> Northern Irish newspaper

The Belfast Telegraph is a daily newspaper published in Belfast, Northern Ireland, by Independent News & Media, which also publishes the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and various other newspapers and magazines in Ireland. Its editor is Eoin Brannigan. Reflecting its unionist tradition, the paper has historically been "favoured by the Protestant population", while also being read within Catholic nationalist communities in Northern Ireland.

Daily Ireland was an Irish daily newspaper which existed from January 2005 to September 2006 to cover news stories from an Irish republican viewpoint. It was linked to the Belfast local newspaper, the Andersonstown News. In September 2006, the newspaper announced it was ceasing publication, with the 475th and last issue published on 7 September.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Joy McCracken</span> Irish republican (1767–1798)

Henry Joy McCracken was an Ulster-Scots, Irish republican executed in Belfast for his part in leading United Irishmen in the Rebellion of 1798. Convinced that the cause of representative government in Ireland could not be advanced under the British Crown, McCracken had sought to forge a revolutionary union between his fellow Presbyterians in Ulster and the country's largely dispossessed Catholic majority. In June 1798, following reports of risings in Leinster, he seized the initiative from a leadership that hesitated to act without French assistance and led a rebel force against a British garrison in Antrim Town. Defeated, he was returned to Belfast where he was court-martialed and hanged.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paddy Devlin</span>

Patrick Joseph "Paddy" Devlin was an Irish socialist, labour and civil rights activist and writer. He was a founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), a former Stormont MP, and a member of the 1974 Power Sharing Executive.

The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) (Irish: Cumann Cearta Sibhialta Thuaisceart Éireann) was an organisation that campaigned for civil rights in Northern Ireland during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Formed in Belfast on 9 April 1967, the civil rights campaign attempted to achieve reform by publicising, documenting, and lobbying for an end to discrimination against Catholics in areas such as elections (which were subject to gerrymandering and property requirements), discrimination in employment, in public housing and abuses of the Special Powers Act.

Ivan Averill Cooper was a nationalist politician from Northern Ireland. He was a member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland and a founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). He is best known for leading the civil rights march on 30 January 1972 that developed into the Bloody Sunday massacre.

The Sunday World is an Irish newspaper published by Independent News & Media. It is the second largest selling "popular" newspaper in the Republic of Ireland, and is also sold in Northern Ireland where a modified edition with more stories relevant to that region is produced. It was first published on 25 March 1973. Until 25 December 1988 all editions were printed in Dublin but since 1 January 1989 a Northern Ireland edition has been published and an English edition has been printed in London since March 1992.

The Echo, formerly known as the Evening Echo, is an Irish morning newspaper based in Cork. It is distributed throughout the province of Munster, although it is primarily read in its base city of Cork. The newspaper was founded as a broadsheet in 1892, and has been published in tabloid format since 1991.

William Frederick Frazer was a Northern Irish Ulster loyalist activist and advocate for those affected by Irish republican violence in Northern Ireland. He was the founder and leader of the pressure group Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR). He was also a leader of the Love Ulster campaign and then, the Belfast City Hall flag protests. In 2019, from evidence gained in a police report, journalist Mandy McAuley asserted that the Ulster Defence Association had been supplied weapons, in the late 1980s, by the Ulster Resistance and that Frazer was the point of contact for those supplies. She asserted that multiple sources also confirmed this to be true. Those weapons were linked to at least 70 paramilitary murders.

Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR) is a non-governmental organisation founded in 1998 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Based in Markethill, it describes itself as a "non-sectarian, non-political organisation" that works "in the interests of the innocent victims of terrorism in South Armagh."

<i>Sunday Life</i> (newspaper) Northern Irish newspaper

The Sunday Life is a tabloid newspaper in Northern Ireland and has been published since 23 October 1988. It is the sister paper of The Belfast Telegraph and is owned by Independent News & Media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Hewitt (poet)</span>

John Harold Hewitt was perhaps the most significant Belfast poet to emerge before the 1960s generation of Northern Irish poets that included Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Michael Longley. He was appointed the first writer-in-residence at Queen's University Belfast in 1976. His collections include The Day of the Corncrake (1969) and Out of My Time: Poems 1969 to 1974 (1974). He was also made a Freeman of the City of Belfast in 1983, and was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Ulster and Queen's University Belfast.

Henry Patrick McDonald was a Northern Irish journalist and author. He was a correspondent for The Guardian and Observer, and from 2021 was the political editor of The News Letter, one of Northern Ireland's national daily newspapers, based in Belfast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tullyvallen massacre</span> Mass shooting near Tullyvallen, Northern Ireland

The Tullyvallen massacre took place on 1 September 1975, when Irish republican gunmen attacked an Orange Order meeting hall at Tullyvallen, near Newtownhamilton in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The Orange Order is an Ulster Protestant and unionist brotherhood. Five Orangemen were killed and seven wounded in the shooting. The "South Armagh Republican Action Force" claimed responsibility, saying it was retaliation for a string of attacks on Catholic civilians by Loyalists. It is believed members of the Provisional IRA carried out the attack, despite the organisation being on ceasefire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teebane bombing</span> 1992 IRA attack in Northern Ireland

The Teebane bombing took place on 17 January 1992 at a rural crossroads between Omagh and Cookstown in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. A roadside bomb destroyed a van carrying 14 construction workers who had been repairing a British Army base in Omagh. Eight of the men were killed and the rest were wounded. Most were civilians, while one of those killed and two of the wounded were British soldiers. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) claimed responsibility, saying the workers were targeted because they were collaborating with the "forces of occupation".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donegall Street bombing</span> 1972 IRA attack in Belfast, Northern Ireland

The Donegall Street bombing took place in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 20 March 1972 when, just before noon, the Provisional IRA detonated a car bomb in Lower Donegall Street in the city centre when the street was crowded with shoppers, office workers, and many schoolchildren.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth McCracken (Irish writer)</span> Irish unionist suffragette and author (c. 1871–1944)

Elizabeth "Lisbeth" Anne Maud McCracken, was a women's suffragist and—under her maiden name L.A.M. Priestley—a feminist writer, active in the north of Ireland. Although unionist herself, with other members of the Belfast Irish Women's Suffrage Society she joined the Women's Social and Political Union in declaring a direct-action campaign against Ulster Unionists for their refusal in 1914 to honour a votes-for-women pledge. After the First World War and the achievement of the vote, she continued in what was now Northern Ireland to campaign on issues of domestic violence and sex discrimination.

References

  1. 1 2 Geoghegan, Peter (9 June 2017). "Who are the Democratic Unionists and what do they want?". Politico. Retrieved 10 June 2017. ... Sam McBride, political editor of the unionist-leaning Belfast Newsletter.
  2. "News Letter". Audit Bureau of Circulations (UK). 26 February 2024. Retrieved 3 March 2024.
  3. "Research guide: Irish news & newspapers". Boston College. 13 December 2004. Archived from the original on 9 August 2007. Retrieved 25 September 2006.
  4. 1 2 Johnston, Ruth (16 October 2014). "Belfast News Letter". Your Place and Mine. BBC.
  5. 1 2 Stewart, Anthony Terence Quincey (1998). A Deeper Silence: The Hidden Origins of the United Irishmen. Blackstaff Press. ISBN   0-85640-642-2.
  6. "News Letter". British Newspapers Online. 29 July 2013.
  7. McNeill, Mary (1988) [1960]. The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, 1770–1866: A Belfast Panorama. Blackstaff Press. ISBN   0-85640-403-9.
  8. 1 2 "The earliest copy of the Belfast News Letter, the world's oldest daily newspaper, turns 280 today". News Letter. 14 October 2018.
  9. 1 2 "The 1972 bomb outside News Letter that killed seven and injured 147". News Letter. 21 March 2019.
  10. "Sutton Index of Deaths". Conflict Archive on the Internet . Ulster University. 1994.
  11. "A Chronology of the Conflict – 1972". Conflict Archive on the Internet. Ulster University.
  12. "IRA must face the scrutiny that Sinn Fein demands of others". News Letter. 5 January 2017.
  13. McGrattan, Cillian (22 August 2018). "Legacy Scandal: 'We're on verge of fostering a pro terrorist, anti state view of the Troubles', says academic". News Letter.
  14. Lowry, Ben (13 June 2020). "Ben Lowry: The far-reaching scale of the scandal on legacy still seems not to be properly understood". News Letter.
  15. Graham, Anne (23 September 2018). "Legacy Scandal: 'We are sleep walking into a Province governed by apologists for terror', says sister of Edgar Graham". News Letter.
  16. "Mum speaks out over LVF murder of her only son – 20 years after campaign declared over". News Letter. 8 August 2018.
  17. Kula, Adam (20 May 2018). "Police family speaks out for first time 35 years after IRA murdered their brother and three other young officers". News Letter.
  18. Kula, Adam (6 June 2020). "'Thousands of Northern Irish people were murdered and their crimes are unsolved – their lives matter too'". News Letter.
  19. "The Drum Awards: Online Media". onlinemediaawards.net. 2017.
  20. "Results: Belfast News-Letter". British Newspaper Archive . Findmypast Newspaper Archive.
  21. "Newspaper Library, Belfast Central Library". Libraries NI.
  22. Carroll, Rory (13 November 2019). "Burned by Sam McBride review – the inside story of the 'cash for ash' scandal". The Guardian .
  23. McKay, Susan (19 October 2019). "Burned: The story behind the North's 'cash-for-ash' scandal". The Irish Times .
  24. Lagan, Sarah (13 April 2006). "Senior editors leave Johnston amid Irish job cut fears". Press Gazette.
  25. 1 2 "Circulation of 'Irish Times' increases". The Irish Times. 22 August 2008.
  26. Linford, Paul (31 August 2011). "ABC figures: How the regional dailies performed". HoldTheFrontPage. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
  27. Greenslade, Roy (21 February 2014). "Ireland's newspapers lose print sales, but national titles hold up well". The Guardian.
  28. 1 2 McKeown, Gareth (18 August 2017). "Irish News reports increase in circulation in first half of 2017". The Irish News.
  29. "News Letter: January to June 2018" (PDF). Audit Bureau of Circulations. 23 August 2018.
  30. "News Letter: July to December 2018" (PDF). Audit Bureau of Circulations. 21 February 2019.
  31. "News Letter: January to June 2019" (PDF). Audit Bureau of Circulations. 15 August 2019.
  32. "News Letter: July to December 2019" (PDF). Audit Bureau of Circulations. 6 February 2020.
  33. "News Letter: January to June 2021" (PDF). Audit Bureau of Circulations. 11 August 2021.
  34. "Local newspaper sales UK: Latest circulation figures from ABC". 23 February 2022.