Rite and Reason

The Irish Times

Front page of The Irish Times, 21 November 2016
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner(s)	Irish Times Trust
Editor	Paul O'Neill
Founded	29 March 1859
Political alignment	Social liberalism Unionism in Ireland
Language	English Irish
Headquarters	24–28 Tara Street, Dublin
Circulation	90,633
Website	www.irishtimes.com

The Irish Times is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Paul O'Neill who succeeded Kevin O'Sullivan on 5 April 2017; the deputy editor is Denis Staunton.The Irish Times is published every day except Sundays. It employs 420 people.

Though formed as a Protestant nationalist paper, within two decades and under new owners it had become the voice of Irish unionism. It is no longer considered a unionist paper; it is generally perceived as being politically "liberal and progressive", as well as promoting neoliberalism on economic issues. The editorship of the newspaper from 1859 until 1986 was controlled by the Anglo-Irish Protestant minority, only gaining its first nominal Irish Catholic editor 127 years into its existence.

The paper's most prominent columnists include writer and arts commentator Fintan O'Toole and satirist Miriam Lord. The late Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald was once a columnist. Senior international figures, including Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, have written for its op-ed page. Its most prominent columns have included the political column Backbencher, by John Healy, Drapier (an anonymous piece produced weekly by a politician, giving the 'insider' view of politics), Rite and Reason (a weekly religious column, edited by Patsy McGarry, the 'religious affairs' editor) and the long-running An Irishman's Diary. An Irishman's Diary was penned by Patrick Campbell in the forties (under the pseudonym 'Quidnunc'), by Seamus Kelly from 1949 to 1979 (also writing as 'Quidnunc'), and more recently by Kevin Myers. Since Myers' move to the rival Irish Independent, "An Irishman's Diary" has usually been the work of Frank McNally. On the sports pages, Philip Reid is the paper's golf correspondent.