| The Courier | |
| Type: | Weekly student newspaper |
| Format: | Broadsheet |
| Owners: | Newcastle University Students' Union |
| Editor: | Gabbi De Boer |
| Depeditor: | Ross Bennett and Rachael McCreanor |
| Foundation: | 1948 |
| Language: | English |
| Headquarters: | Newcastle University Students Union, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne |
| Circulation: | 12,000[1] |
| Website: | http://www.thecourieronline.co.uk/ |
The Courier is the free student weekly newspaper of Newcastle University's Students' Union. It is entirely written and edited by student volunteers, except for the chief editor, which is a paid sabbatical officer position in the students union. Articles which are included in the 40-page print edition are also published online. The newspaper is divided into sections, including current affairs (news, campus comment, opinion, science); life and style (lifestyle, fashion and beauty, relationships, food and drink, travel); culture (film, tv, music, arts, gaming); sport and puzzles.
Established in 1948 as King's Courier, while Newcastle University was still incorporated within Durham University as King's College, the first issue was published on 18 November 1948.[2] Several of the paper's founders, including its first editor Stuart Shaw and business manager Allan Marsh, had previously helped to set up Palatinate, a newspaper for students at both the Newcastle and Durham divisions of the University, but poor sales in Newcastle prompted Palatinate to refocus as a Durham-only publication after just three issues.[3] [4]
The paper was initially published fortnightly but became a weekly paper in 1960, when the name was shortened to The Courier. The paper expanded through the 1990s and 2000s and is currently 40 pages long. In 2003 a separate culture magazine, Pulp, was launched, which later became a pull-out of the main paper and was reintegrated completely in 2009. Since then, new sections such as lifestyle, science, gaming and travel have been launched within the paper.[5]
The Courier became a free publication in 2002, and after several short-lived websites, thecourieronline.co.uk launched in 2009, giving the paper a regular presence online.
Since 1975, the editor has been elected by a cross-campus ballot of students, with the role becoming a sabbatical position in 1992, making The Courier one of the only student newspapers with a full-time paid editor.
The current weekly readership is around 18,000, mostly students at the university. The newspaper is published on a Monday bi-weekly during term-time. The current editor-in-chief for the 23/24 academic year is Gabbi de Boer, working alongside the current co-deputy editors; Ross Bennett and Rachael Mcreanor.
The Courier has won numerous awards[1] including The Guardians Student Newspaper of the Year award in 1994, 2012 and 2013.[6] In 2008, The Courier design editor Kerry Hyndman came runner up in The Guardians student media award for design for her work on the newspaper's entertainment pull-out, Pulp.[7] As part of a redesign of the paper in 2009–2010 Pulp, which was originally independent of The Courier, was discontinued and replaced by a lifestyle section fully integrated into the main body of the paper.