Navy News

Navy News

Front cover, December 2009
Type	Monthly newspaper
Format	online and compact
Publisher	Ministry of Defence (UK)
Editor	Mike Gray
News editor	Richard Hargreaves
Opinion editor	Heather Lane
Founded	1954 (1954)
Headquarters	HMS Nelson, Portsmouth, United Kingdom
Circulation	Print up to 30,000 copies per month
ISSN	0028-1670
OCLC number	70249744
Website	https://www.navynews.co.uk

Navy News, the official newspaper of the Royal Navy, is produced by a small team of editorial and support staff and is published by the Ministry of Defence on a monthly basis.

The content of the newspaper is varied, ranging from information for all serving personnel of whatever rank or specialisation to Sea Cadets and former shipmates. Members of the public with an interest in the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and the Fleet Air Arm also have access to the newspaper.

The newspaper is distributed free to serving personnel (ratio 1:5), and is available to members of the public through subscription or through a newsagent. Up to 30,000 copies are printed each month.

Navy News includes sections on news; special features; sport; book reviews; association news; people; charity work; Fleet Focus (where the ships are deployed); 2-6 (for serving personnel); letters and the very popular noticeboard (on which readers can search for old shipmates, notify deaths and reunions or ask a question).

In 1998 it was decided to create a website and it has been running ever since. It always includes regularly updated news stories as well as notifying readers about reunions; people searches and other features.

In April 2007, the first free digital edition of Navy News was launched on the website, and each edition since then has appeared giving free access to readers worldwide; to date over 300 editions have been uploaded In recent weeks, new features have been added and further are planned.

Another popular innovation is the recording of sections of the Navy News, initially recorded onto 90-minute tapes, but now recorded digitally onto memory sticks with no restriction on length of time. This is then distributed by the Portsmouth Area Talking News to visually impaired persons for free, through the ‘Articles for the Blind’ scheme all over the world.

The paper was founded in 1954 (with £300 from the then Victory Barracks (now HMS Nelson) pigswill fund, the proceeds of 'gash' food from the mess sold to local farmers!) purely to serve the Portsmouth Command, after all Plymouth had its own ‘Guzz Gazzette’ and Chatham had its own ‘Chats’. Within a few months Navy News' success allowed it to expand to cover the whole of the Senior Service. Today it is estimated to have more than 100,000 readers worldwide, possibly many more, as there is of evidence of how individual copies are passed around whole ship's companies, ex pat communities and ex Service associations who use its columns to keep in touch with present developments and old shipmates.