PB February-March
February-March 47
By Suzie Mélange
Journosaurs
The main problem with Irish media isn’t newspaper
closures it’s lack of investigation, narrow-ranged
reporting, big tech, and feebleness
OPINION
Closures
The family-owned company that operates
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said on 7 January
that the newspaper would cease publication
in May, signalling the end of a paper whose
origins date to 1786. It cited mounting losses
— $350 million — and labour constraints.
According to the New York Times, since
2005, more than 3,500 US newspapers
have shuttered. On average, two close every
week. 45,000 reporting and editing jobs
have been lost since 2005. In Ireland, the
Northern Standard, Co Monaghan’s oldest
newspaper, published for the last time just
before Christmas after 186 years. The Down
Recorder died in November after 189 years.
Dublin’s Northside and Southside People are
gone. The Fingal Independent is gone.
Bob Hughes of Local Ireland told The Irish
Times in 2022: “The number of employees
among local publishers has halved over the
last two decades and, since 2008, 17 local
newspapers have ceased publication”. The
roll call has continued. Hughes welcomed
the Government’s decision to zero-rate
newspapers (though not news magazines),
noting that it could not compensate for
a 150 per cent rise in newsprint prices in
just eighteen months. Digital sales do
not compensate for fewer shop sales. For
example. The Irish Times sold over 120,000
copies in 2001 but now does not report
shop sales. It does, however, have, 143,000
subscribers, though the vast majority pay
much less than formerly: for digital access
only. Shop sales for all are moribund and,
for example, the number of shops with
‘newsagent’ remaining on their fascia is
infinitesimal.
Some news deserts
A 2024 report by Eileen Cullotty for Local
Media for Democracy found most places in
Ireland reasonably well served for news but
warned that “the rapidly growing suburbs
of Dublin city are at most immediate risk of
being news deserts”. The erosion of local
journalism is among the gravest democratic
losses. Much Irish governance occurs at local
level, where power is diuse and under-
scrutinised. Without consistent reporting,
planning controversies, procurement
irregularities, and regulatory failures remain
invisible.
Objective perspective:
economic fragility
International assessments underscore the
stakes. The 2025 World Press Freedom Index
places Ireland seventh of 180 countries, with
an overall score of 86.92 — an improvement
on 2024’s eighth-place ranking. RSF
describes Ireland’s press environment as
positive but highlights economic fragility as
a major threat to press freedom here and
worldwide. The Index’s sub-scores show
strong political and security conditions but
weaker legislative protections. The Index
still notes concerns about media funding,
including ongoing questions about the future
of public broadcasting support (e.g., for RTÉ).
Its concerns about concentrated ownership
have been alleviated by the exit of Denis
O’Brien from the market, though the National
Union of Journalists (NUJ) retains concerns
about ownership of local newspapers.
Core functions in decline
Yet it is not merely disappearance that
signals decay. It is weakening before
extinction. The National Union of Journalists
(NUJ) told an Oireachtas committee: “Fact
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The word ‘newsagent’ takes you back, then further back
checking, investigation and cross checking
are essential skills regardless of platform.
Fewer journalists and less investment
in reporting has implications for quality
journalism. The implications for democracy
of diminished coverage of public bodies and
courts cannot be ignored in any debate on
misinformation”. The thinning of institutional
memory is measurable. The NUJ reports that
newsroom employment in Ireland has fallen
by approximately 40 per cent since 2007,
with the sharpest declines in regional and
local titles though the NUJ doesn’t push
the issue of investigative decline as much
as it might. Newspapers no longer report
the courts properly, or the law at all. They
do not follow up on what emerges from
tribunals. They have no dedicated art or
theatre correspondents. They make little
eort to report local authority proceedings
or the decisions of the Standards in Public
Oce Commission or Press Ombudsman/
Council. They avoid republishing work from
Ditch, Village, the Dublin Inquirer or even
the Irish Mail, especially where attribution
would be required. Commentary replaces
investigation, and much of it is banal. As a
result, the country knows less about itself
than it once did.
Fewer Investigations
In ‘The Impact of Changing Work Practices in
Journalism in Ireland’ (2023), Emer Connolly
records that journalists consistently reported
a “reduction in time available for verification,
source development and investigative work”,
adding that “time-intensive journalism,
particularly investigative journalism, is
increasingly dicult to sustain within existing
organisational structures”. One respondent
told Connolly: “You are constantly aware of
what you cannot do”.
This is not abstract: there is little
coverage of government departments,
state institutions, big corporations, the
professions; and there is a pervasive
smugness, especially from those that do not
follow up the conclusions of SIPO or state
inquiries and tribunals, that corruption has
dissipated over the last generation
The Irish Times, once the country’s paper
of record, is the clearest case study in cultural
retreat. I have argued before in Village
that it has always and increasingly served
to suppress scandals rather than break
them. It is absent from the deep structural
investigations that define public value,
drifting instead toward safer commentary,
lifestyle content, and trivia. A charitable view
is that it has lost its nerve: economic caution,
managerial defensiveness, and a subscriber
model that privileges bland palatability over
probe.
Investigation is a democratic function.
What is not examined is not understood,
or then contested. Scandals surface late or
not at all. Decisions appear as events, not
patterns. Entire sectors become opaque not
because they are well managed but because
journalism lacks the capacity to interrogate
them.
Insufficient interest in
substance
The shift from advertising-funded print to
digital subscriptions has not reinforced
journalism’s foundations. Attention is treated
as fragile, so gloss replaces substance. If you
find your newspaper unedifying, it may be
because there is only one idea per article; you
learn as much from scanning as from reading.
Digital newsrooms operate under real-
time metrics: clicks, dwell time, conversions.
These reward commercial performance, not
civic value. Investigative journalism performs
poorly by such measures. News desks now
compete internally with native advertising,
sponsored content, events, podcasts, lifestyle
verticals, newsletters, and data products.
Journalism becomes merely one product
among many. Within newsrooms, journalism
now competes internally with commercial
ventures that appear less risky and more
scalable i.e. profitable. The Commission on
the Future of the Media in Ireland (2022)
notes that “news organisations increasingly
rely on non-journalistic revenue streams
— events, branded content, partnerships
and data services — to cross-subsidise core
news functions”, while warning that this “can
distort editorial priorities over time”. Long-
term investigative reporting does not fit easily
into this model.
Particular media
The Irish Times Group doubled profits to
€4.05 million on turnover of €115.6 million in
2024 not through reinvestment in reporting
but through eciencies and diversification.
Radio stations, property platforms,
recruitment websites, and the acquisition
of RIP.ie confirm that journalism is now one
pillar within a broader corporate ecosystem.
Subscriptions may, impressively, cover the
cost of journalism, but they no longer define
the mission.
Mediahuis, owner of Independent News &
Media, operates on centralisation and cost
discipline. The result is predictable thinning
of local coverage. In 2024, Mediahuis Ireland
cut about 10 per cent of sta, including
roughly 30 editorial jobs. Reach plc followed
in 2025, placing around 20 Irish journalism
jobs at risk. Investigative bandwidth shrinks
again.
Digital-native outlets such as The Currency
show what disciplined, subscription
journalism can achieve. Profitable, focused,
but small and inherently limited, they cannot
fill the vacuum left by weakened national and
regional papers.
Noteworthy (at TheJournal) experiments
with crowdsourced, project-based
investigations, but irregularly and under
constant funding strain. The Phoenix
continues to act as a necessary thorn in the
side of power, but its scale limits its capacity
for deep, multi-month investigations.
Broadcasting oers no cure. RTÉ
Investigates remains one of the last
substantial investigative units in the country,
but fewer investigations, editorial caution,
smaller teams and a shrinking margin for
legal risk suggest it is in unspoken retreat.
As institutional journalism retreats,
ideological imitators expand. Operating with
minimal verification and maximal outrage,
they thrive in the gaps left by depleted
newsrooms. The public inherits a marketplace
of narratives rather than facts.
Government intervention needed to
counter threats and promote opportunities
Regulation
Regulatory structures are poorly equipped.
The Press Council of Ireland handles
individual complaints but cannot compel
investment or enforce systemic standards. Its
requirement that member publications meet
editorial standards is a potentially powerful
tool but in practice has functioned as symbolic
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NUJ proposals of
economic boosts for news
• Windfall tax of 6 per cent on the tech
giants, to provide immediate funding
to reinvigorate the news sector –
with an ongoing digital tax to provide
sustainable future funding
• Jobs for Journalists tax credits
and interest-free loans – a 3-year
targeted programme to bolster
frontline newsgathering roles that
protects trusted journalism as
generative AI is deployed
• Strategic investment in government
advertising, including the hyperlocal
sector, involving central and local
governments and the HSE
• Tax breaks, rate relief and other
financial support for innovative
public interest journalism, with
targeted help for local social
enterprises and journalistic
cooperatives taking over titles from
major regional operators, running
them as not-for-profit enterprises,
with particular regard to areas at risk
of becoming news deserts, with no
newspapers operating at all
• Business rates relief for local titles
• The establishment of a Journalism
Foundation, set up by a government
grant, to invest and innovate public
interest journalistic projects, to
encourage new funding models and
start-ups, encourage philanthropic
donations, and promote diversity
and media literacy
• Free vouchers for online or print
subscriptions to all 18 and 19 year-
olds and tax credits for households
with subscriptions to news outlets
to boost engagement and fight back
against disinformation
Winners but losers, at the Irish press awards
reassurance than actual enforcement. In this
edition Village goes all in on this, suggesting
a delinquent publication should be forced
out.
Action against lunching social media
Facebook, Google and AI have eaten the
lunch of content producers by diverting
advertising revenue and not paying content
providers. According to the Reuters Institute
Digital News Report (Ireland edition),
between 2012 and 2022 print advertising
revenue declined by more than 70 per cent,
while the share captured by Google and Meta
rose to a dominant position. According to the
NUJ: “Publishers that hitched themselves
to these platforms have become further
undone as Meta pivots away from news, and
the rollout of AI Overviews on news-related
Google queries has resulted in a loss of links
to publishers’ original stories”.
A windfall tax would ensure the tech
platforms and their oligarch owners pay for
material from which they extract profits.
Australia forced the tech giants to negotiate
terms with news organisations for the content
they use though the power to force payments
has not been used. The UK government
announced in 2021 that it was to set up a
Digital Market Unit, ensuring Google and
Meta don’t abuse their dominant position
though it too, in a Trumpian world, has not
forced payments.
Funding
In ‘A Future for News’ (2024), the NUJ
argues that journalism must be rebuilt as
public infrastructure, not left to the market’s
diminishing returns.
Coimisiún na Meán was instigated in 2023.
Unlike the NUJ and the Press Council it is
State-funded and does not have member
publications.
It is allocating around €10 million in the
latest round, announced on 29 January,
focused on local democracy, courts and
public-interest journalism for which Village
obtained some funding. Some, mostly right-
wing publications, claim dealing with the
state is compromising. Village disagrees.
Funding is allocated through open,
competitive calls assessed by expert panels
and approved by Commissioners. Journalism
schemes alone support around 100 reporting
posts per round. Yet Coimisiún na Meán
concedes that this cannot replace the
structural capacity that has been lost. It is a
plaster on a structural fracture.
Defamation
A 2023 report from School of Communications
at DCU showed that 34% of Irish journalists
had faced legal action arising from their work
over the previous five years. Defamation
proceedings, regardless of outcome, can be
enough to kill a story. The NUJ has complained
that the law: encourages forum shopping,
is used strategically by wealthy individuals
and corporations, fails to protect journalists
investigating public-interest wrongdoing.
leaves truth and fair comment defences
still risky, does not provide for eective
public-interest defences comparable to
post-Leveson UK and does not insist on “real
harm” to the alleged victim. But media are
not interested in pushing the boundaries and
often misinterpret the law. Often they defer
to lawyers for whom there is absolutely no
benefit in permitting even calculated risks.
The remedies are known: regulation of
media that spread hatred of vulnerable
minorities. expanded public funding
especially for local, courts and investigative
reporting — aided by big tech, defamation
reform. All are feasible.
A future
A Reuters report on journalism trends 2026
captures the upside: “Publishers will be
focused this year on re-engineering their
businesses for the age of AI, with more
distinctive content and a more human
face. They will also be looking beyond the
article, investing more in multiple formats
especially video and adjusting their content
to make it more ‘liquid’ and therefore easier
to reformat and personalise. At the same
time, they’ll be continuing to work out how
best to use Generative AI themselves across
newsgathering, packaging, and distribution.
It’s a delicate balancing act but one that – if
they can pull it o – holds out the promise
of greater eciency and more relevant and
engaging journalism”. And there are new
models. A recent piece in the New York
Times notes that as the Pittsburgh Post-
Gazette has shrunk, nonprofits and the
public radio station WESA have stepped in.
A chapter of the news-focused philanthropy
group Press Forward was recently founded
in the city. The number of local nonprofit
news outlets in the benighted US more than
doubled from 2017 to 2022, according to the
Institute for Nonprofit News. Journalism has
not vanished, but its institutional nervous
system has been compromised. Old models
are as fragile as the egos of their current
protagonists. It all foreshadows a crisis of
democracy, and yet...
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