Amanda: Irish newspapers

Newspaper readership remains high in Ireland as nine out of ten Irish adults read newspapers on a regular basis, according to the nonprofit organization National Newspapers of Ireland. The country’s two main daily newspapers consist of The Irish Times and the Irish Independent, which attracted a readership of 336,000 and 535,000 people in 2006, respectively.

With an average circulation of more than 116,000 in late 2006, The Irish Times lags behind the Irish Independent that reached nearly 164,000 in the timeframe. The Irish Times was established in 1859 after a short stint earlier that century. Its first edition was published on Tuesday, March 29, but did not become a daily paper until June 8 of the same year. It remains the only surviving paper of the ten available at its debut. The view of the paper has changed with each owner. It began as a new conservative paper with founder Major Lawrence Knox only to soon enforce new unionist policy. It has since secured an independent political viewpoint after a trust was developed to avoid any outside control, yet leans slightly toward a more liberal agenda. The paper now costs 1.60 Euro and Geraldine Kennedy is the current editor.

The Irish Independent succeeded the Daily Irish Independent in 1905. The paper, which is printed in both broadsheet and tabloid forms, was founded by William Martin Murphy, an Irish nationalist. The paper held a conservative, nationalist viewpoint throughout most of its history until it was taken over by Tony O’Reilly where the paper became more of a libertarian paper. The paper is also responsible for the Sunday Independent, the largest circulating Sunday paper with 287,750 papers as well as the Evening Herald, which is the only remaining evening paper in Ireland and has a circulation of 85,756. The paper is now lead by Gerry O’Regan after longtime editor Vinnie Doyle left in 2005. It sells for 1.70 Euro.

As for the content, both papers varied between two and in comparison to American papers. The front page of The Times on Monday, July 9, 2007 focused on some political stories followed by some extensive coverage of Oxegen on the following pages. The Friday, July 13, 2007 edition of the Independent had full coverage of the O’Reilly trial on the front page as well as some subsequent pages.

Both papers were not nearly as bulky as a typical American paper with at least five sections. The Times had a main section which included its national and world sections among others. Only its sports section was a separate section. While both seemed to have a greater focus on world news than any U.S. paper as well as a keen sense of ongoing events in Britain, The Times seemed to be more formal than the Independent with a New York Times style of using ‘Mr.’ or ‘Mrs.’ with the exception of sports stories. The Times also tends to lean more toward the harder news with the exception of the Oxegen festival coverage. Both papers vastly cover their various Irish sports. Overall, neither is really all that different from a typical U.S. newspaper.