This lecture examines W.B. Yeats’s not inconsiderable body of writing for the newspapers which ranges from literary journalism to letters to the editor. Attention will focus on the tensions between his clear commitment to journalistic practice and his own avowed hostility to ‘the Ireland of the newspapers’. As well as providing Yeats with the means of publicising his literary endeavours and pleading Ireland’s cause, journalism was also crucial to Yeats’s development as a poet.