St Andrews Citizen

About St Andrews Citizen

The St Andrews Citizen is a weekly local newspaper serving St Andrews and north-east Fife in Scotland. With archive editions dating to 1872, it is one of the oldest weekly titles in the county, chronicling life in Scotland's most famous university and golf town for more than 150 years. It is part of the Scottish weekly portfolio of Iconic Media Group, the publisher formed from the former National World business. Its office is at 5A Greyfriars Garden, St Andrews, and its website is fifetoday.co.uk.

Founded in 1872

The St Andrews Citizen was founded in 1872, in the Victorian era of the Scottish provincial press. Archive editions survive from 1872–74 and then continuously from 1892 to 1998 — some 74,836 pages — in the British Newspaper Archive and Findmypast collections, making the Citizen one of the best-documented Victorian weeklies in Fife. Those early editions capture St Andrews in the era when golf was becoming the town's defining identity: the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, the Old Course, the beginnings of the town's transformation into the home of the sport. Through the later nineteenth century, two world wars and the twentieth century's transformation of the town into a global golf and university destination, the Citizen has been St Andrews' continuous printed record.

St Andrews: The Home of Golf

Few towns give a local paper a more distinctive patch than St Andrews. The town is universally recognised as the home of golf: the Old Course, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club (founded 1754), and the town's cluster of championship links draw golfers and tourists from around the world. The Citizen covers the golf beat as no other weekly can — The Open Championship when it returns to the Old Course, the amateur championships, the club competitions, the tourism economy that golf sustains. But St Andrews is more than golf: it is Scotland's oldest university town, home to the University of St Andrews (founded in the early fifteenth century), whose students and scholars give the town a cosmopolitan, youthful character. The medieval cathedral and castle ruins, the harbour, the West Sands beach and the town's festivals complete a civic identity unlike any other in Scotland — and give the Citizen an extraordinarily rich reporting territory.

The North-East Fife Patch

Beyond the town itself, the Citizen serves the villages and countryside of north-east Fife: the rural parishes toward Cupar, the coastal villages of the East Neuk fringe, the farming communities of the Howe of Fife and the settlements along the Eden estuary. This is a district of rich farmland, historic villages, country estates and the university's wider community. For these communities the Citizen is the paper of record — the only publication that will report the community council, the primary school, the village gala or the curling club in the depth they deserve.

Ownership History

The Citizen has spent its modern life within the Johnston Press empire and its successors. As a Johnston Press weekly it sat within the company's Fife portfolio alongside the other county titles. Johnston Press went into administration in November 2018 and its assets were taken over by JPIMedia; David Montgomery's National World acquired JPIMedia for £10.2 million in 2021. In May 2025 Media Concierge, the Irish media group headed by Malcolm Denmark, acquired National World for £65.1 million, and in October 2025 the business was renamed Iconic Media Group. The Citizen now sits within Iconic Media's Scottish portfolio, whose editorial strategy is overseen by a group editorial director for Scotland.

Publication Details

The St Andrews Citizen is a paid-for weekly newspaper. Retail listings give its cover price as £2.00, with the paper listed under the Iconic brand for Scottish weeklies. Its office is at 5A Greyfriars Garden, St Andrews, KY16 9HG — in the historic heart of the town, a stone's throw from the cathedral ruins — with telephone 01334 473464. Its website is fifetoday.co.uk, the group's Fife news portal, which also serves the Fife Free Press, the East Fife Mail and the other county titles. The paper is sold through newsagents and retailers across St Andrews and north-east Fife.

Editorial Coverage

The Citizen covers the full St Andrews beat: Fife Council business, the St Andrews community council, planning — a constant in a town balancing world heritage, a growing university and intense tourism and housing pressures — the university court and town-gown affairs, court reports, schools, health services and the voluntary sector. Golf coverage is a specialism: the professional tournaments, the R&A's affairs, the links trust, the club golf of the town's many clubs. Sport beyond golf includes the university's renowned sporting clubs, the town's football and rugby, and the coastal outdoor life. Community content — the Kate Kennedy procession and other student traditions, the town's festivals, charity fundraising, school achievements, church news, obituaries, the what's-on guide and readers' letters — fills the paper's community pages.

Town and Gown

The relationship between the university and the town is one of the Citizen's great standing stories. The University of St Andrews — Scotland's oldest university and one of the world's leading academic institutions — dominates the town's economy, culture and demographics: students make up a large proportion of the population during term time. The paper covers the university's affairs, its expansion, its research triumphs and its sometimes tense relationship with townsfolk over housing, development and student behaviour, with the even-handedness a community paper must maintain when its two great constituencies disagree. The student traditions — the Kate Kennedy Day procession, the Gaudie, the May Dip — are covered as town events, which is what they are.

The Open Championship

When The Open Championship comes to the Old Course — most recently in 2022 for the historic 150th Open — the Citizen is the local paper at the centre of world golf's greatest event. Its coverage spans the championship itself, the vast logistical operation, the economic impact on the town, the community events around the tournament and the memories of Opens past. For the paper's journalists, an Open in St Andrews is the professional highlight of a career; for its readers, the Citizen's Open editions are souvenirs of a week when their town becomes the centre of the sporting world.

Digital Presence

The Citizen publishes online at fifetoday.co.uk, with news updated through the week and promoted on social media. Like its sister titles in the Iconic Media portfolio, its digital journalism sits within the group's shared platforms, reaching readers across Fife and the global St Andrews diaspora — the graduates, golfers and former residents who follow the town's news from every continent. The group's digital strategy has extended the Citizen's reach far beyond its weekly print edition.

Community Role

For more than 150 years the St Andrews Citizen has been the town's weekly mirror and its community forum. In a place where global fame — the Open, the university, the history — could easily drown out local voices, the Citizen keeps the town's own conversation going: the community council's view of the development plan, the harbour users' concerns, the school's fundraising target, the golf club's medal winners. That is the quiet, essential work of the community weekly, performed in St Andrews since 1872.

It recorded the Victorian golf boom, the university's expansion, the wars, the Open Championships, the town's evolution into a global destination — and the ordinary weekly life that continues beneath the world fame: the school concerts, the community council debates, the harbour news, the student pranks. In a town known to millions who will never live there, the Citizen serves the thousands who do — and keeps their story in their own hands.