The University Times is Ireland’s largest student newspaper, and is the current Student Publication of the Year, an award which it has won four years running. For the past four years, our journalists have won the Student Journalist of the Year award. It is also currently the best all-around non-daily student newspaper in the world, as judged by the US-based Society of Professional Journalists.
At the Society for News Design’s annual conference in Washington DC in 2015, The University Times won the award for the best-designed student newspaper in the world. At its conference in San Francisco in 2016, The University Times won six student awards, including best overall newspaper design, best overall news website and student designer of the year. In 2016, the Editorial Board of The University Times was shortlisted as one of the top 12 student newspaper editorial boards in the world by the US-based Society of Professional Journalists. In 2017, in North Carolina, the newspaper won the award for the world’s best-designed news website.
Our journalism is far-reaching, too. Online, we have an average monthly unique readership of over 150,000 readers. Every three weeks, we distribute our print newspaper to all of Trinity’s campus buildings, and locations in Dublin’s city centre.
The University Times, owing to its coverage of national student issues, developments in the higher education sector, and a wide reach among academics in all disciplines, can truly be called Ireland’s national, daily online university newspaper – one with a discerning and attentive readership.
When news breaks, we report it online immediately, and maintain year-round coverage of the important issues.
Aside from The University Times’s main “broadsheet” sections – its news, features, opinion and sport pages – we also publish The University Times Magazine, an outwardly focusing publication that looks at national and international social, cultural and political issues from a student perspective. In the magazine, we publish long, investigative and interview-based features, as well as fashion, literature, film & tv, music, and food & drink sections, which all focus on national and international trends. The same sections, in addition to theatre, society and college event coverage, feature in Radius, The University Times’s Trinity and Dublin-focused publication that aims to cover everything event-based within a certain Radius of Trinity.
Founded in 2009 by Robert Donohoe, The University Times was created to allow the unhindered exchange of ideas between its peers. The University Times aims to be the place that our readers can come to be informed about the issues that matter, and the issues that may not matter so much, but are of interest to them.
By doing this, The University Times ends up becoming a publication at the centre of a community – at the intersection of student life in Trinity, of the academic life of its teachers, where debate about student issues, higher education issues and the things that are happening converge.
In his first editorial, Donohoe pointed out that, when Napoleon said “I fear the newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets” he was not afraid of paper cuts or getting ink on his hands. Rather, he knew that a free press could hold him accountable for his actions.
Ever since then, The University Times has viewed itself as the newspaper that holds those within its remit to account, whether it is when Trinity students decide to go on a rampage on a ski trip, when the College decides to spend €100,000 on a new logo, or whether it’s when the Provost treats Board members with great disrespect.
Since 2015, The University Times, which is financially supported by Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union, has had an Editor that is independent of the Communications Officer of the union. The union’s constitution states that “The University Times shall be guaranteed editorial independence from the Union”. As such, The University Times often scrutinises the union, and views holding the union to account as much its role as it does holding the College to account.
The current Editor is Brídín Ní Fhearraigh-Joyce.
