[2] After contributing to various publications,[2] including the Scots Magazine,[1] for a number of years, in 1816 he joined with Charles Maclaren, his elder brother John Ritchie and John Ramsay McCulloch in founding The Scotsman newspaper, the first number of which appeared the following year, Ritchie having suggested the title.

[1] During the fourteen years of his editorship, Ritchie himself contributed over one thousand articles to the newspaper, ranging across the law, biography, the theatre, literature and the natural world.

[4] In his The Newspaper Press James Grant wrote the Scotsman rendered greater service to the cause of reform than all its Scottish liberal contemporaries taken together.

[5]In 1824 Ritchie published Essays on Constitutional Law and Forms of Process[1] and in 1827 was appointed a commissioner under the Improvements Act.

[1] After his death Charles Maclaren wroteHe possessed in the highest moral and physical courage, and while immersed in the common cares and business of life, he retained an elevation of sentiment worthy of a hero of romance, united with the purity, delicacy, and gentleness, which is rarely found except in the other sex.