When the first issue of the Northern Standard was rolling off the press in March 1839, the list of prisoners awaiting trail in the towns jail at the Spring Assizes was published. For a fleeting moment, just after the paper was founded, Charles Gavan Duffy was its editor, on the way to great editorial achievement with the Nation. Gavan Duffy was a native of Monaghan. Gavin Duffy went on from The Northern Standard to become editor of the Belfast Vindicator. 

In 1872 The Northern Standard was bought by the Swan family and ran under their ownership until 1924. The paper was ran by Phillip McMinn, grandson of William Swan. In the 1920’s, religious differences between Catholic and Protestants still ran deep in Monaghan. McMinn ran the paper along strictly Presbyterian lines: no advertisements for dancing, no coverage of Sunday sport. So to general surprise in 1924, he appointed Joe Turley as editor, Turley was a Catholic and the paper was Orange  by inclination. Under Turley’s influence, the paper began to broaden its outlook, becoming one of the first Unionist papers in the new Irish Free State to adapt and survive. The Newspaper office of the Northern Standard caught fire in 1930 and for period the newspaper was printed at the Belfast Telegraph.

The Northern Standard is the longest established newspaper circulating in County Monaghan and it has been telling Monaghan's story every week since 1885.

Edition Count	Page Count	Years
		1885-2018
5,541	76,217	*Out of print