Irish News

Interview with Noel Doran as Irish News widens circulation gap with Belfast Telegraph

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Every six months, the Audited Bureau of Circulations publishes figures for newspaper sales. The July-December 2012 were released at lunchtime. A newspaper might sum up the results in simple terms: it’s a good day for the Irish News, an okay day for the News Letter and bad day for the Belfast Telegraph. Other surveys will suggest figures for the number of readers (ie, heads not copies) each newspaper has on a daily or weekly basis, with an in-built margin of …

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Micheál Martin: “If the Executive is not making progress on child poverty, or economic inactivity, or sectarianism”

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Okay, so one of the good things about a political crisis in Northern Ireland that it draws a multiplicity views on our general situation (riots will always divide opinion). Not all of that has been bad by any means. Allan Massie in the Scotsman is generally sanguine about Northern Ireland’s future, if not David Cameron’s. But it’s brought the leader of Fianna Fail back on the local news pages too. In an op ed in today’s Irish News Micheál Martin …

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Respect?

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[click here if image doesn’t show] From today’s Irish News (h/t to @Short_Strand). Doesn’t really need much more comment. Sorry to rain on anyone’s parade, but you know what us Fenian bastards are like. At least in the case of the bandsman urinating on the church gates, the Grand Secretary of the Orange Order was quick out of the blocks this morning to the BBC: Mr Nelson said the incident was “outrageous and unacceptable”. He apologised unreservedly to the priest and parishioners of …

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Irish News now sells more full price copies than Belfast Telegraph

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local paper mastheads Belfast Telegraph Irish News News Letter

The latest set of audited circulation figures for Irish newspapers were published yesterday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. While the ABCs show some minor growth in portions of the local industry, they still highlight an overall year on year decline. The most startling finding is that the Irish News has overtaken the Belfast Telegraph in terms of the number of copies sold each day at the full ‘basic cover price’. However, the Belfast Telegraph’s circulation has not plummeted as …

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Local papers and journalists getting UK-wide recognition at Regional Press Awards

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John McGurk (Sunday Life) - winner of Daily/Sunday Reporter of the Year 2011

Running alongside the build-up to and finals of the Eurovision Song Contest, it’s the season of newspaper awards. With fifteen nominations shortlisted across eleven categories in the Society of Editors’ Regional Press Awards, how did NI papers do at Friday’s award lunch when examined against the best of their regional counterparts right across the UK? Daily/Sunday Reporter of the Year John McGurk – Sunday Life – WINNER Bimpe Archer – Irish News – HIGHLY COMMENDED Ciaran Barnes – Sunday Life …

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Local papers well represented in the Society of Editors’ Regional Press Awards shortlists

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Some local newspapers and journalists appear in the shortlists for the Society of Editors’ Regional Press Awards that celebrate the best of UK regional newspaper journalism in 2011. Good to see the local weekly The Ulster Herald making the list alongside Belfast Telegraph, Irish News and Sunday Life success. Given the entrance fee, some local publications may chose not to nominate. However, with only five names in each shortlist, Northern Ireland journalists and titles clearly dominate some of the categories …

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Belfast Telegraph to drop evening edition, while News Letter may (not) go weekly?

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Six weeks ago I posted about the continued decline in the circulation of local newspapers. Amongst the stable of Belfast dailies, the ABC figures for July-December 2011 showed that the Belfast Telegraph had lost 8.1% (4,270 copies) compared to the same period in 2010, and 9.4% (5,548 copies) when compared to the first six months of 2011. In fact, when free and discounted copies were taken out of the figures – eg, the copies that you find in hotels, airline …

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Dead tree circulation continues to decline – Belfast Telegraph dropping at nearly twice rate of News Letter & Irish News

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Table showing circulation decline for Belfast Telegraph, Irish News, News Letter and Irish Times - up to date with second half 2011 figures

Looking at the latest set of newspaper circulation figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) – July to December 2011 – it is once again a story of decline. You’re unlikely to read anything about this in today’s papers! For the last few years, the Belfast Telegraph has performed better in the first half of each year. However, its overall trend is still down. With an average audited circulation of 53,771 copies in the second half of 2011, the …

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Dead tree columnist prejudices public’s perception of bloggers?

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pixelated Irish News masthead

Allison Morris made a number of contributions to this morning’s Irish News. As well as the front page article about the alleged security breach when a police officer’s personal mobile fell into the hands of dissident republicans (and its contents were subsequently passed to the Irish News), she also writes a curious opinion piece on page 19. Trapped behind a paywall, it only seems fair that her column gets a wider reading. Rambling online twits prejudice trials at will Kicking …

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Robinson reaching out to nationalists … just not through the Irish News

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Peter Robinson has “declined every request for an interview from The Irish News over the past two years” In an editorial titled “Robinson ways contradictory”, this morning’s Irish News [behind a paywall] accuses the DUP leader of speaking with forked tongue when he calls for votes from the Catholic and nationalist tradition to maintain the link with Britain. The first minister said that the time had come for all our citizens to stop seeing everything through the prism of religion …

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Did local media have a role in the Boston College case?

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I’ve previously noted how some local media seems to get a free pass from the PSNI over their sources/stories while others are dealt with more proactively and recently we’ve seen the press collectively oppose attempts to turn them into an evidence gathering arm of the state. The ongoing legal case to access the Boston College oral history archive may indicate elements of the media already acting in that evidence gathering capacity (hopefully unwittingly). It is impossible to know which arm …

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Irish News doesn’t always err on the side of caution

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The Irish News photo coverage of the third arrest at Thursday’s RNU protest at Alliance HQ was a tale of two halves – while they decided to hide the identities of the PSNI officers arresting a 16 year old, they didn’t give that same protection to the arrested youth. When UTV covered this story (TV coverage available via link), before the Irish News would have gone to press, they protected the identity of the minor along with those of the …

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Hold the Front Page: “Three serious daily newspapers in Belfast”

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News Letter Belfast Telegraph Irish News

To finish off what O’Neill started on Sunday night with Tele takes a hiding and the discussion around the circulation graphs, former editor Steve Dyson dissected the morning editions of the three local papers over on Hold the Front Page. With his eyes set on the Wednesday 24 January morning editions of the News Letter, the Irish News and Belfast Telegraph:am, he comments on the “calm” headlines that accompanied one of that week’s main stories, the evacuation of 100 homes …

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Newspaper sales: could the Irish News overtake the Belfast Telegraph in 2012/3?

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NI newspaper sales 2004-2010 - Belfast Telegraph, Newsletter, Irish News (and Irish Times for comparison)

To add some longer term data to yesterday’s Tele takes a hiding post by O’Neill, the graph below outlines the performance (using the six monthly Audit Bureau of Circulation figures) of the Belfast Telegraph, Irish News and News Letter. I’ve added in the the Irish Times sales for comparison. The overall trend is one of decline. However, it is significantly more pronounced for the Belfast Telegraph. In fact if simple linear trend lines are added to the graph, sales of …

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Peer review? They work for you …

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House of Lords - crowned portcullis image

On average, local peers voted in the Lords less than a quarter of the time over the last two years, while claiming on average just over £100,000 in expenses over the last four years. The most vocal third of local peers spoke an average 68 times over four years, while the quietest two-thirds only spoke an average of 11 times in four years. This morning’s Irish News (no link – article on newsstand or behind paywall) leads with Diana Rusk’s …

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The Irish News and operating profitably on the net…

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Roy Greenslade has an interesting piece on the Irish News’ firewall. Not least the money figures: If you click on the Irish News website up comes a page demanding that you pay for access to a digital edition. There is a choice: £5 for one week’s editions, £15 for a month’s and £150 for a year’s. The result? According to journalism.co.uk, since its launch in December 2009, the News’s site has secured just 1,215 paid subscriptions: 525 weekly, 370 monthly …

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