Newspapers have survived and adapted to centuries of change

This week we will be serialising the earliest surviving edition of the oldest English language daily newspaper in the world — this one.
News Letter editorialNews Letter editorial
News Letter editorial

The Belfast News Letter was founded in September 1737, which means that it is now 281 years old, but the first 13 months of the paper are lost.

Yesterday was the 280th anniversary of the first surviving paper, from October 3 1738 (October 14 in the modern calendar). That means that we are the only paper on earth that is able to run a daily On This Day From 280 Years Ago column, and we plan to do just that this week.

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That first surviving paper is a remarkable document. Newspapers then were glittering new technology. They began to emerge in the 1600s, but did not properly get off the ground in anything approaching the modern format until the 1700s.

It is interesting to note how much international news is in that October 1738 newspaper. The people reading it here were clearly well informed on global events.

The very first report is one of conflict between Russians and ‘the infidels’ (Muslims). There are reports from France and Italy and Sweden and Germany and the fledgling American colonies (where, readers learn, four more families have “been murdered by Indians” in Virginia. There are royal reports and gossipy stories and factual lists of economic affairs.

You see in that first surviving paper of this historic title the seeds of all current newspapers from The Sun to the Financial Times to the New York Times.

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You see geopolitical faultlines that still exist in this age of Putin and Trump and Brexit and Islamic movements.

Who would have thought papers would survive radio, then television, and now the internet?

But they have done, indeed in many respects they thrive, partly because web and digital versions of the print editions now co-exist with the latter. The shape of the future is still unclear, but there will be a future, and this venerated newspaper will be part of it.