Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
46 March 2015
MEDIA
Also in this section:
Mobile journalism 48
No longer a poor country cousin the solid but Munster-
identified
‘Irish’ Examiner
has a poor website and is
financially. By Gerard Cunningham
The
Examiner
examined
March 2015 47
Landmark
announced
a €700,000
loss in the
nine months
to the end
of 2013 and
outstanding
bank loans
of €19.5m
“
T
HE pre-pack receivership of
Thomas Crosbie Holdings
(TCH) was intended as a rescue
package for the group, most
well-known as the home of the
Examiner newspaper. Two years on, cir-
culation figures at the Irish Examiner,
the crown jewel in the TCH empire, now
rebooted as Landmark Media Invest-
ments, continue their downward slide.
However, if the group can live within its
means, it may find a path to survival in
the contracting media market. This is
important as the Examiner is no longer
the poor (country) cousin of daily news-
papers, being less agenda-prone than the
Irish Independent and fresher than the
Irish Times. Latest circulation figures
for the flagship title show a seven percent
year-on-year drop for the period July
to December 2014. The title has fallen
by forty percent since its peak circula-
tion a decade ago, and currently stands
at 34, 422. The paper’s lack of “bulks”,
discounted copy sales distributed to
hotels, colleges and the like, make its
circulation figures look even more bleak
in contrast to the Irish Independent and
Irish Times, both of which distribute up
to 12% of their copies as bulks.
The former Cork Examiner was once
satirised among newspaper folk with
the fictional headline ‘Cork Man Killed
By Dublin Train’, and despite retitling as
first the Examiner then the Irish Exam-
iner, its provincial focus remains. Its
readership is overwhelmingly Mun-
ster-based, and this is reflected in its
outlook. This is not always a bad thing.
The Irish media landscape is suscepti-
ble to a narrow consensus, and having
an editorial office outside the capital (or
rather in the Real Capital) does give the
paper a different perspective. To give just
one instance, the Examiner is the only
broadsheet not to engage a columnist
from Lolek Ltd, better known by their
trading name, the Iona Institute.
AIB – and hence the State – was the
main lender , and took a financial hit
when Thomas Crosbie Holdings (TCH)
collapsed in March 2013, when circula-
tion stood at 42, 083. Despite this, the
bank backed the restructuring of the
company.
Under the “pre-pack” re-structur-
ing, most of the assets of the group
were bought from the receiver, Kieran
Wallace of KPMG, by Landmark Media
Investments Ltd. Father and son Ted and
Tom Crosbie, both shareholders in TCH,
backed the new company.
In addition to the Examiner, titles
in the group include the Evening Echo,
the Carlow Nationalist, the Kildare
Nationalist, the Laois Nationalist, the
Roscommon Herald, the Waterford
News and Star, the Western People, and
the Wexford Echo. It also includes share-
holdings in radio stations Beat 102 FM,
Red FM and WLR, and the Breaking-
News.ie and Recruit Ireland websites.
The chief effects of the reorganisation
were to close the TCH printing works,
and to hive off the Sunday Business Post.
The latter was not a voluntary disposal,
and Landmark was among the initial
bidders to buy the Sunday Business Post
from the receiver, though it had to drop
out of the running.
The paper is now printed at the Irish
Times print facility in City West, as a
result of which the rebirth has ben-
efited not only the Examiner and its
sister titles, but also the bottom line of
the Irish Times. However, it has not been
easy. Just one year on, in April 2014,
Landmark Media announced 50 lay-offs
divided between its Cork and regional
operations, as part of a “business re-en-
gineering project through work practice
changes and centralisation of services”.
In December 2014, the company
announced a €700,000 loss on turnover
of €36.9m in the nine months to the end
of 2013, its first financial result since the
restructuring. The accounts also show
outstanding bank loans of €19.5m at
the end of 2013.
Online, the Irish Examiner seems
unsure of its identity. It offers free con-
tent on its website, yet also asks readers
to pay for an “e-paper”, which may
explain why its website feels unrespon-
sive and ill-suited to smaller phone and
tablet screens. Former chairman Alan
Crosbie once complained the internet
and new media had the “capacity to
destroy civil society”, and that same sus-
picion may be behind the dated look and
feel of the group’s online presence.
If the newspaper’s identity, despite
its name change, remains more the
Cork Examiner than the Irish Examiner,
online, geography is not a strong identi-
fier, but the Examiner is always going to
struggle against the Independent group
for a national audience, and is unlikely
to pivot quickly against the web natives
at Journal Media.
It is the geographic loyalty of its read-
ership base, even in decline, which will
provide it with the means to navigate its
way to a nancially secure future. •
