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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— April – May 2013
B
ORN out of the ashes of Hibernia mag-
azine and the Sunday Tribune Mark I,
the Phoenix magazine which a few years
ago quietly passed from John Mulcahy
to a new CEO, his son Aengus, celebrates its th
anniversary this year.
Modelled on Private Eye in the UK, the mag-
azine produces a fortnightly diet of cartoons
and satire, smutty and sexist schoolboy humour,
financial analysis, and news with an insider slant
from the worlds of security, politics, media, arts,
and law. Like its UK counterpart, the Phoenix
presents itself as lying outside the mainstream
consensus in Ireland. Phoenix editor, Paddy
Prendiville, has said, “their current affairs cov-
erage relies more on humour than we do”. As with
Private Eye, contributors remain anonymous.
Prendiville has said “there’s no thought-out rea-
son why we don’t name journalists other than
what you read is more important than who writes
it ”.
With a sparse website, containing little beyond
an invitation to subscribe (to the paper as well as
online product; only overseas subscribers can
avail of an online-only option) Phoenix takes an
approach to the brave new world of internet pub-
lishing close to that of French satirical weekly Le
Canard Enchaîné, whose website consists simply
of a single page apology for the lack of online con-
tent, and an invitation to buy the paper edition.
Even Private Eye, with its notoriously loyal read-
ership, has bowed to pressure to put at least some
of its leading columns online for free.
The Canard is a special case however. It has
always refused to take advertisements, relying
solely on newspaper sales, and positions itself as
the most objective publication in France on this
basis. Perhaps accidentally, that policy insulated
it against the downfall in revenues throughout
the newspaper world in the last decade. While
circulation has fallen, the Canard never enjoyed
advertising boom, and so isn’t suffering because
of the current slump.
Meanwhile, the Phoenix finds itself with just
over , readers at the end of , accord-
ing to ABC audited figures, down from over
, a decade ago.
However, the raw number doesn’t tell the
complete story. As its own advertising material
points out, Phoenix is the ‘leading business and
current affairs’ magazine in Ireland and boasts
an impressive % of its readers in the ABC
category, beloved of advertisers.
In a market where the combined pressures
of recession and online competition are eating
into the sales of all publications, the Phoenix
still manages to stay the course. Despite compe-
tition from new online ventures like Politico.ie,
its mix of business and political coverage – plus
the attraction of glossy print - continues to bring
in advertising revenues that newer ventures can
only dream of.
Unsurprisingly, as a magazine which positions
itself as not-quite-mainstream, Phoenix attracts
both supporters and detractors.
In in an extreme instance convicted
fraudster, John Carway, who felt he was being
“hounded” by Phoenix printed two editions of
Commercial Life magazine which contains a
-page article attacking Phoenix then publisher
John Mulcahy for his secretly-taped attempts to
sell his British magazine The Digger for £,
which he wanted paid into an off-shore account,
for tax reasons.
“If you’re asking me what the Phoenix is, I’d say
it’s a vehicle for [editor] Paddy Prendeville to say
what he thinks about people every week”, says
public relations consultant John McGuirk. “In
other words it’s a glorified personal preachy blog,
that’s my kind of feeling on it”.
“But I think it’s kind of harmless at the same
time, I’m not aware of many careers that have
been ruined by the Phoenix magazine, or indeed
any major stories of national consequence that
were broken by the Phoenix magazine. It’s
The Phoenix –
almost serious
The great magazine survivor divides commentators
gerard cunningham
smutty, sexist schoolboy humour
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something to read on the bus, don’t take it that
seriously, that’s my view of it”.
“They get tidbits from people that fit the side
of the story that certain individuals want told,
and publish them. Are they fair? No, they’re not,
but I think an informed reader will know that’s
not the intent, you’re reading it essentially to get
gossip”.
“I think it would be ridiculous for anyone to
say that a source in the Phoenix is an authorita-
tive, fair and balanced account of what is going
on within an issue”.
“The profile published of me during a USI presi-
dential election, I don’t think it was designed by
the people they spoke to to be flattering. I think
most people recognise that, and I think it’s the
same in nearly everything they do”.
“By and large profiles are designed to create an
impression, and I think in fairness to the Phoenix
what they would say in terms of the profile of me
is, ‘well this is a controversial person, and we’re
trying to convey the controversies’”.
“Phoenix operates on the no smoke without fire
principle, they publish the smoke and leave you
to imagine the fire, that’s what they do. They find
all the smoke they can, they billow it up in your
face, and they say ‘if you look closely, you’ll find
the flame in here somewhere. And sometimes
you will, and sometimes you won’t”.
It is often said that people who have not fea-
tured in The Phoenix are more inclined to believe
all of what is written there than others.
“People complain that The Phoenix isn’t always
accurate. Maybe so, but who else is publishing
things?” says Jason Walsh, Ireland correspondent
of the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor
currently researching for a PhD in philosophy
centred on the newspaper.
“There’s a real hue-and-cry at the moment
about the need for investigative journalism –
often at the expense of, in my opinion, equally
important humdrum daily reporting – so per-
haps people should put their money where their
mouths are and buy The Phoenix”.
“I’ll give you an example: with the notable
exception of Vincent Browne, I can think of
no-one else who probed the Workers Party and
Official IRA. Even now, you’d think that with ex-
Workers’ Party people in government and the
rump party publishing Look Left, a Sticky maga-
zine that everyone on the left has orgasms about,
people would bother looking into that, especially
during the Sean Garland extradition hearing.
They haven’t”.
“In fact, the only person I’m aware of in the
national media who ever brings it up is Marc
Coleman, and he’s clearly grinding his own con-
servative axe”.
Broadcaster Éamon Ó Catháin is one who has
mixed feelings about the magazine. In he
presented one of several specialised evening pro-
grammes which lost out when RTÉ Radio One
poached John Kelly from TodayFM (then Radio
Ireland). The Phoenix broke the story.
“The word the Phoenix used was ‘shafted’”, Ó
Catháin recalls. “ I lost my programme, that’s part
of the risk in the world of freelance broadcasters.
I was a bit miffed that they didn’t check with me
first before using my name, obviously I wasn’t
very happy with it, but they were kind of being put
out about it on my behalf. I felt they were putting
words in my mouth and in the mouths of the oth-
ers involved”.
“I was told at the time that RTÉ had actually
bandied about the notion of making me five
nights a week, John Kelly was on Radio Ireland, -
TodayFM - at the time, and somebody within the
meeting said ‘No, let’s just buy the competition’,
and so they waved a chequebook. Fair enough,
that’s the name of the game”.
“Phoenix got wind of something, obviously
from an insider position, and decided to blow
the whistle on it, which is a bit much given that
we hadn’t even been told at that point. It was all
very strange. I did go to a senior producer at the
time, my producer said ‘I found out in Phoenix
as well’”.
“As much as I hate to be boring, I am, on the
record, an admirer of Phoenix”, says journalist
and DIT lecturer Harry Browne. “I’m in the rela-
tively rare position of having had a byline there,
when it literally donated space to a convention-
ally presented ‘supplement’ about the Goldstone
report on the first Gaza war: I wrote the cover
piece for that”.
“On a whole range of issues, including that one,
I find it the most politically sympathetic main-
stream publication on the market. Only Village,
in both incarnations, has come close to its cov-
erage of Corrib, for example. I’ve just finished a
book on Bono, and the Phoenix archives are the
only place in Ireland to find consistently astute
and critical coverage of him -- not merely ‘criti-
cal’ in a broadly rhetorical and political way, but
detailed, careful and accurate about U’s various
companies and their business activities”.
“There have been a couple of occasions, of
course when I’ve seen Phoenix get a story wrong
with which I was familiar or follow a particu-
lar agenda a bit too transparently: some of the
inside stuff from the anti-war movement back
in - comes to mind. You might argue
that it’s in its nature, but I think the idea that its
chosen style -- overt riskiness, rudeness, ano-
nymity of journalists and sources -- is intrinsically
more error-prone than the conventions we teach
in journalism school is not supported by the
evidence”.
Browne points to the story of Dervish, a tra-
ditional music group who pulled out of a tour
of Israel last year, as an example of the kind of
story the Phoenix excels at. The Irish Times
coverage of the story led to complaints to the
press ombudsman from the Ireland-Palestine
Solidarity Campaign about misleading cover-
age of their campaign for a cultural boycott of
Israel. The complaint was later rejected by the
ombudsman.
“You’ve probably seen my Politico piece on
the Irish Times’ Dervish story;” Browne says.
“Phoenix were way ahead of me on that, getting it
right with good journalism, when the Irish Times
was digging in”.
They publish the smoke and
leave you to imagine the re
