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THE IRISH NEWSPAPER industry has shown another fall in sales, with all of the country’s native papers showing declines in the year to June.
The figures, carried in today’s ABC reports, show a loss in sales across the board for Irish papers.
The one-time paper of record leads the declines in national papers, with sales of The Irish Times dropping an even 9 per cent on last June’s figure, averaging 84,201 sales per day.
Almost 10 per cent of that number is not actively purchased, meaning that they are given away in places such as hotels and cafes.
Almost one in eight copies of the Irish Independent fall into this category, with 87.6 per cent of their sales classed as actively purchased.
The Independent reported an average daily sales figure of 121,120, down 3.9 per cent on the year. That is despite the paper carrying arguably the year’s biggest story, the Anglo Tapes.
The Herald, the sister paper of The Independent is also down, losing 4.3 per cent of its sales and coming in at 58,545 per day.
Sales of the Irish Examiner, whose parent company Thomas Crosbie Holdings went into receivership earlier this year, is down to 37,897 sales per day, a drop of 5.8 per cent.
Sundays don’t fare much better, as the Sunday World and Sunday Business Post recorded losses of 6.9 and 6.7 per cent of sales respectively.
The Sunday Independent remains the biggest selling paper on Sunday, with 232,494 sales. However, this is a drop of 2.6 per cent and only 95 per cent are active purchases.
Corrected for active purchases only, there is just 2,700 copies in the difference between the Sunday Independent and the Sunday World.
In Cork the Evening Echo, which was also part of the Thomas Crosbie stable, has lost nearly an eighth of its sales, with 15,397 people picking it up.
The figures for British papers in Ireland were released last month and showed a fall in sales for the Mirror, Sun and Sunday Times. The Daily Mail grew by 0.7 per cent.
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Papers in Ireland are expensive compared to England
I very rarely buy a paper now.with social media and online news giving up to the minute news.the papers are a day late with the news
Tbh I don’t buy a paper at all now and mainly read the journal for the comments. Some of them make my day.
;)
If it named itself the UK Times at least it would be honest.
That Sunday independent is survey after survey. The biggest waste of money by far. Stopped buying it years ago!
Papers, especially tabloids, are cheap in Britain because the brits use them as recruiting agencies in wartime and propagandist rags at other times.
I stopped buying newspapers a long time ago when I got sick of how they manipulate stories to suit their own agenda. I know that internet news sites do the same but at least I’m not paying to be lied to.
So many people do not realise that an opinion piece in a paper is the opinion of just one person. They think opinion writers are gods when in fact they are opinionated propagandists.
It’s not just opinion pieces. They also manipulate facts and figures. Imagine if there was only one heroin addict in Ireland in 2012 and in 2013 another poor soul became addicted. The newspaper headline would scream “100% increase in heroin abuse”, instead of “Heroin abuse remains incredibly low”. Everything is negative in newspaper land.
Noel Whelan, Roisin Ingle. Complete drivel. If you are going to have people writing opinion pieces and blogs (and who needs more of them but anyway) christ, get somebody with something worthwhile to say!
Media manipulation would never happen on the internet of course.
Two cheeks of the same arse, folks.
The liberal agenda at the IT has gone into full swing these last few years. But it’s been total overkill since Savita. It’s also incredibly formulaic. Usually it’s 1 or 2 columnists articles a weeks on gay rights, 5 or 6 on abortion between the timeframe of Savita’s story breaking in the IT and the actual seanad many months later. 1 on Catholicism, 4 on women. And none on men,
One-time paper of record? It’s circulation is down, but I believe the Times is still regarded as the nations paper of record.
For now: Paywall etc., will beckon in time. Free online access will become a relic in itself, bar fringe publications.
That said, there was a fair bang of schadenfreude off that phrase alright.
Newspapers, this decade’s vinyl
Why does the Indo charge nearly €2 for a morning news paper when most of their articles are from the previous day and yet the Herald, a sister of the Indo charges a €1 for the same stuff
Ah Newspapers, very retro.
Papers turned off the public when they became mouthpieces for government and big business. No proper journalism is being done. It’s either some tossers opinion or a press release rehashed to make it seem like news. They trumpet so called good news when behind the headline the truth is very different.
I suppose, with stories on news sites like “22 pictures of Miley Cyrus’ Open mouth” who’d need a newspaper?…
I used to be an avid newspaper buyer. At least one every day and often two. And on Sundays maybe three but at least two. Not anymore and not for at least a couple of years now. I find all the news and comment I need online. I still buy the Sindo or the Sunday Times on the occasional Sunday but with the ST I tend to read only the Culture section and a few of the columnists and consign the rest to the bin unread. I’ve become so used to using the web for news and comment that I find physical newspapers a throwback to the technology of the past.
toilet paper is cheaper and has the same use
Papers are too expensive these days. The amazon guy paid $250 million for one!
Agree with most of above, but would like to add the ‘negative’ agenda being pursued by a lot of Newpapers/Radio/TV etc, the Times included. The old adage that only bad news sells is a load of aul codswallop – has anyone ever tried selling ‘good’ news ? A case in point was when Ireland went BACK into recession, and most people, including many on this site, did not know we had come OUT of recession – why ? cos it wasn’t reported ! People are now sick to the teeth of bad news, so they don’t buy newspapers (as well as news being so readily available elsewhere)
good point,
my first thought on reading that we had come out of recession was exactly what you said, ‘when did we come out of recession’?
Papers are negative, good news does sell but papers have aGENDA.
*gone back in to recession*
I hope your happy with yourself theJournal.ie look what you have done to the poor paper.
I’m still happy to pay for actual news (as opposed to interns writing about what happened on twitter today) and informed opinion that doesn’t come at issues with preconceived agendas and shoddy “research” which is often little more than personal prejudice.
tll: You’re in my head again-voicing my very thoughts :D
Mine too.
As soon as a paper is printed it’s out of date these days
What’s a newspaper…..?
I’m not picking on you for a moment-but when I read the entire thread, the phrase reverse hipster came to mind!
Again, no personal malice intended :)
They’ll probably require a bail out from the tax payer!
Actually the Indo group is getting one through a debt write down from AIB as part of it restructuring. So it is getting a bail out from the taxpayer as we own 99% of AIB.
Only non eccentric newspaper left
When the indo and sindo go I’ll be delighted.
Why? Do you get a kick out of people losing their jobs?
Briny, the sindo is a rag that gives opinion not news and try to sway the electorate with their bias news reading. F them
You’re right, it is a rag. But just keep on not buying it, rather than wish it closes down. The majority of people who work there have nothing to do with the paper’s agenda. They just go in, do their jobs, and go home. Why wish unemployment on them?
briny,
leave the people who make ammo keep their jobs, sure they’re not fighting a war……..
john,
i’m with you. Filthy rags.
Can’t say I’d lose much sleep if the gorgeous Barry Egan lost his job
west brit rag .AT THAT
If things weren’t already bad enough for the IT, its online revamp this year was disastrous. Many of its online users jumped ship at that point too.
including moi, I only went online for it’s letters page and they’ve fcuked that up big time.
Why fix a letters page that was perfect………….to be like some other rag.
Me too Gallopin. I walked in the last few weeks. Couldn’t take it anymore.
You’d wonder how that vacuous gom sleeps at night-the sh1te he puts out.
“And then, this humble scribe made his way to Lillie’s, in the company of John Rocha, and a lady who shall remain nameless, where we partied the night away.”
In other words, you bumped into Rocha, and some uninvolved bird while you were staggering i the door, and once inside, attempted to engage the former in conversation, and failing that, the latter in courtship, whereupon they both independently, and with varying degrees of good manners, told you to fvck off, you ginger leech.
hahaha!
I stopped buying papers as I found them to much ‘agenda driven’ and not enough factual information. Seems like newspapers are trying to push a particular point of view, or issue.
Even the news on some TV channels is out of date these days! Sometimes even on the 24-hour news sites! Weird isn’t it? I get the Irish Times app in my email every day and it’s free. Why would I spend €12.00 a week on day-old news?
I stopped buying newspapers a few years ago when I realised my weekly spend was over €10 for what was effectively expensive recycling waste (used to buy weekend papers & maybe one daily and never have time to read them in full). These days I catch up news online and treat myself to an occasional book instead.
On the way out smartphones have finished them and the Irish Newspaper industry have not moved quickly
I stopped a lifelong habit of buying the Irish Times, following the Kate Fitzgerald case.
If you no longer have faith in a paper, how can you trust anything it says …
Newspapers – yesterday’s news on dead trees.
Pricing is the biggest issue with Irish newspapers. They went up annually during the good times & have not came back down again.
I agree smart phones & 24 hour news channel have made news instant & less need for a daily paper.
However all these other news sources require the daily papers for content. Sky, Bbc news & Rte all have today & tomorrows papers as a core portion of their content. As has sites like the journal by the way.
Linkage between the different medias is the future but here in Ireland the price issue needs to be addressed.
Why is “per cent” written out when there’s a perfectly good % symbol?
Even more so, why do Irish newspapers insist on using “pc” instead of “%”?
Or E instead of €
% is not pc. :)
people say the internet is winning out to paper media but if i could pick up a paper knowing it wasnt a mouth piece for the rich, property speculators, establisment politicians and corporations regurgitating non fact checked press releases then i would buy it. instead we get cover stories of house prices rising in the capital while not sataing how many are bought through cash from speculators etc.
They need to focus on more features and in depth content rather than printing yesterday’s breaking news. Their weekend supplements/magazine are very poor and mostly just tedious fluff.
They might be better off switching to a Sunday paper schedule.
Overall the writing is pretty poor. Sure they have a few soapbox types like Fintan etc., but they need far more of the US style feature writing that is less opinionated but goes in depth on subjects.
They should be using more photography and illustration as well to raise the quality of the product beyond text on newsprint.
I can understand how hard it is to turnaround a container ship like the Irish Times but their last re-design didn’t really do much IMHO as far as overall strategy.
their website re-design is not great – they say it is responsive but in reality it is mobile biased with small images and it isn’t properly responsive with larger images for desktop or ipad. And navigation is not great.
The papers need to build more apps across all platforms then they can advertise in apps it’s working well for Facebook etc and current news feeds
So the journal take note and stop favouring android and iOS.
Yes! The journal must forthwith start publishing its content in BASIC, raw binary, and morse.
Is it any wonder
The print run is downs s the etimes is over priced
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