Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
June 2017 3 7
L
AUNCHING A new newspaper is a tricky
proposition at the best of times, but in
the middle of historic declines in print
circulation, as titles struggle to manage
the transition to digital first publication,
it seems downright bloody-minded. Yet that’s
what News UK’s Dublin outlet has decided to do,
with a daily print product following the model of
the Sunday Times.
While the Sunday Times has been producing
an Irish edition for several years, print readers
have had to settle for the international edition of
The Times since the 1990s, when an Irish version
of the paper was printed by the Examiner. How-
ever, in September 2015 a daily digital Irish
edition was launched, building on the back of the
Sunday paper, with ‘editions’ available for down-
load to phone and tablets.
But the newspaper market has changed dras
-
tically since the 1990s, both in Ireland and
internationally, and the internet, then a novelty,
is eating news. In the last decade in particular,
the internet has moved off desktops and into
everyone’s pockets with the introduction of
smartphone technology, at the same time that
advertising revenues were scaled back due to
the Great Recession; and concentrated away
from newspapers due to the rise of Google and
Facebook.
In this environment, where most titles have
lost up to half their peak circulation at the height
of the boom, launching a new title might seem
downright reckless. But Richard Oakley, editor
of the Ireland edition of The Times, thinks they
have identified a gap in the market.
“Our reader is someone interested in quality,
they have a broad outlook”, says Oakley:
“The Times is for people who want news at
fixed times. We’re not pandering to the breaking
news agenda. Our readers are not slaves to
breaking news.
We’re well suited to business people, people
with an interest in sport, people who want qual
-
ity reading on politics and a worldview. We are
more outward looking than any Irish paper, we
have an office in London, correspondents around
the world.
We feel there isn’t a newspaper like this in the
marketplace at the moment, with strong cover
-
age of things like Brexit and Trump from people
on the ground, from the number of correspond
-
ents on the ground
We’ve been printing the international edition
in Ireland, and we looked at that and asked our
-
selves, why not add our Ireland content into that
newspaper, along with UK and international con-
tent, producing an Ireland edition in print to go
along with the digital edition”.
The new Irish print edition will, however,
involve more than simply adding existing Irish
digital output to the international edition. The
online product required about 20 to 25 articles
per day, while the print product could require up
to twice that number.
Paradoxically, this may actually serve to
increase subscriptions to the online edition,
since it now offers an expanded product because
of the needs of the print newspaper. The print
launch may also have another promotional
effect, whether unintended or not. Morning Ire-
land’s “It Says in The Papers” segment does not
as a rule include the stories broken by the digital
Times Ireland edition, something that may
change when the reviewers have a physical copy
of a paper to peruse.
“Roughly the first seven pages will be Irish,
then Irish opinion and Irish sports spreads, plus
six to eight Irish business stories”, says Oakley.
“It will take a similar shape to the digital edition,
with an Irish splash unless there’s a massive
international story, then Irish news, UK news,
world news, and with Irish sports, business,
opinion sections”.
News UK won’t discuss its circulation or rev
-
enue targets for the newspaper, so it’s not
straightforward to define what might be consid-
ered a success. The Times international edition
manages less than 3,000 copies daily, on a par
with the other English titles, the Guardian,
Express, Telegraph and the Financial Times. By
contrast, the English titles creating dedicated
Irish content, the Mirror, Daily Mail, and the Sun,
as well as the Irish Daily Star, jointly owned by
Independent News & Media, manage 30-60,000
copies daily.
The Examiner, the lowest performing domestic
daily title, also hovers at the 30,000 circulation
mark, ten times the circulation of the Times inter-
national edition. Catching up with the Examiner
might seem an ambitious project for the new
daily Times Ireland Edition - and it certainly
would pose a target that could not be achieved
overnight - but it would provide some benchmark
for what might be possible. However, even if the
print edition does manage to capture advertising
revenues not available to the digital edition
through supplements, inserts and other fea
-
tures, this is still a brave and high-risk product
launch in a market facing long-term decline.
The London Times goes
Irish in pursuit of a gap in the
market for quality outward
looking news and opinion
by Gerard Cunningham
Time for
more Times
Currently The Times international edition sells fewer than 3,000
copies daily, as do the Guardian, Express, Telegraph and Financial
Times. The Mirror, Daily Mail, and the Sun, as well as the Irish Daily
Star, manage 30-60,000 copies daily
