Newspapers: Digitisation Project

We are pleased to announce that the digitisation of our newspaper collection is now complete.

29 newspaper titles dating from 1784 to 1959 are now available for consultation online on the Société Jersiaise website.

The project to improve access to our collections and preserve our heritage for future generations started in 2020 with the digitisation of 145 years of the Chronique de Jersey newspaper. The newspaper published between 1814 and 1959 was Jersey’s last French-language newspaper.  The first part of the project, completed in 2022, was supported by The Jersey Community Foundation and funds from the Channel Island Lottery and the Association of Jersey Charities. It is now being accessed worldwide with particular interest from France and Canada.

In 2023, the digitisation of newspapers, held by the Lord Coutanche Library, continued with the digitisation of another 28 titles. This collection documents a period in which Jersey underwent significant and repeated transformations to its economy, population and societal values, making it an invaluable record of our cultural heritage.

The collection includes Jersey’s first newspapers, Le Magasin de l’île de Jersey (1784-1785) and Gazette de l’Île de Jersey (1786-1835) issued by Mathieu Alexandre, a Jerseyman who returned to the Island in the year 1784 after learning the craft of printing in England.

In the 19^th century, newspaper and magazine publishing was flourishing. Sixty-five titles in French or in English were printed in Jersey in the fifty years between 1820 and 1870. Nearly everyone on the Island, could read one language or the other.

Some papers, like la Nouvelle Chronique (1855-1916), Jersey Independent and Daily Telegraph (1858-1863), or L’Homme, Journal de la Démocratie Universelle (1853-1856), a newspaper to which Victor Hugo contributed during his exile in Jersey, issued by the Proscrits (exiled French socialists), have now been digitised.

Newspapers digitised by the Société Jersiaise