newsletter, informal publication, often simple in format and crisp in style, that provides special information, advice, opinions, and forecasts for a defined audience. Newsletters are ordinarily but not always issued regularly. Common topics covered in newsletters include business and the professions, energy, health, safety, and travel. Corporations often issue newsletters for internal communication with employees, while nonprofit organizations issue them for their members.
Forerunners of modern newsletters were the “corantos”—single-page collections of news items from foreign journals. They were circulated by the Dutch early in the 17th century, and English and French translations were published in Amsterdam. In the English American colonies, the Boston News-letter—credited also as the first American newspaper—appeared in 1704.
Roger W. Babson of Massachusetts introduced an investment advisory letter in 1904, and the Whaley-Eaton Report began in 1918. Circulation of modern newsletters varies from the modest numbers of free letters of small voluntary organizations to the hundreds of thousands achieved by subscription newsletters such as The Kiplinger Washington Letter, begun in 1923 by Willard M. Kiplinger.
The advent of desktop publishing in the late 20th century made it possible for an increased number of organizations and individuals to produce professional-looking newsletters in both print and online formats.