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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 September 1737. The newspaper's editorial stance and readership, while originally republican at the time of its inception, is now unionist. Its primary competitors are the Belfast Telegraph and The Irish News.
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.
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.
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).
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 reports have spanned the rule of 77 different prime ministers and 10 monarchs. 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).
Originally published three times weekly, it became daily in 1855. Before the partition of Ireland, the News Letter was distributed island-wide.
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.
One of the recurring motifs of the News Letter 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.
Historical copies of the News Letter, dating back to 1828, are available to search and view in digitised form at the British Newspaper Archive. 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. Back copies of the physical newspaper can be bought, going back three months.
In addition to the News Letter 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.
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