Blurred Keys

Today the Irish Mail on Sunday has hit the newsagents for
the first time. There has been much talk about the move by the Mail group to unite Ireland on
Sunday (Ios) and the import the Mail on Sunday, into one as the Irish Mail on
Sunday.

Ted Verity, editor in chief at Associated Newspapers Ireland,
told the Irish Times that it’s a matter of “getting synergies between both Mail
brands in Ireland”.
And that “makes a lot of sense” on those terms.

Some commentators have taken different views. With the IT
reporting that “many advertising observers believe the name change is occurring
solely because recent sales have been so disappointing” (Verity counters this
with the fact they haven’t been promoting the title in the run up to the
change), and others including the Sunday Turbine’s Tribune’s Richard Delevan have
questioned the re-brand/synergy/whatever after the “40m or so invested in
building the IoS brand”, and a while ago Adam Maguire commented "The funny thing is that the (Ireland) on Sunday is the more successful
of the two publications, so wouldn’t logic dictate that the daily
edition should be renamed in like with the IoS rather than vice versa?". More discussion at boards.ie’s News/Media.

Blurred Keys has moved to the capital (the real one, not Cork), and we have once more been left broadband-less so please excuse our even less then usual updates. We’re using this as our excuse for not reporting on the latest Irish newspaper circulation figures late last month. Here’s what Irish business site finfacts.com reported…

Irish
Newspaper circulation figures released today for the the first six
months of 2006 show that there was a 0.2% annual rise in the
circulation of the Irish Times, and sales of the Irish Independent
remained unchanged. In the Sunday market, The Sunday Business Post was
the biggest gainer with circulation up 7.8% to 55,876.

Keeping to our usual theme that the media hides important stories under the carpet; the Phoenix this week states that the treatment Independent News and Media handed out to journalists Gerry Flynn and Justine McCarthy has been underreported.

The Phoenix highlights itself and the Village as having taken an interest, then goes on to accuse the Village of an “imbalance” on the story. The magazine makes out that Village editor Vincent Browne was, at the time of their first article, trying to recruite McCarthy. Then implies there hasn’t been any coverage since because “Browne has now got what wanted – McCarthy’s employment at his magazine”. The ‘Fit to print?’ column is also somewhat obsessed with the news of Village’s financial troubles.

There is - of course - no possibility that any Phoenix coverage of Village could be seen as having any “imbalance”. While it could be misguided to switch one magazine for the other, the Village is a grownup version of the Phoenix. They may not be in direct competition, but they’re not worlds apart - at least some of their readership overlap.

The "pro-Nationalist" Daily Ireland newspaper has stopped printing as of Friday (BBC, Pressgazette.co.uk, their own words).The paper blames the move on lack of government funding and advertising, they add “Daily Ireland will continue on the web at www.dailyireland.com”.

When Daily Ireland launched on 1 February 2005, we had a realistic expectation that we would receive Invest NI start-up assistance. This was refused. We also expected to receive government advertisements on the same basis as the other local dailies. Instead, we were told we would have to receive an ABC certificate of distribution – a stipulation which never applied to any of the existing newspapers which were the beneficiaries for many years of huge amounts of government ad money. Nevertheless, we complied. However, when we duly received our first – and very encouraging –ABC certificate in July 2005 the government then announced a review of its ad spending which was to last nine months.

In part contradicting Daily Ireland’s line, the Belfast
Telegraph reports that “Lord Laird of Artigarvan said he was concerned about
the way government had pushed funding through”.

The paper was marketed as an all-Ireland title, but as Adam Maguire points out, it was focused on Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile, while not predicting the same fate, the Mayo freesheet, the Mayo Echo, is also having problems of getting Mayo County Council advertisements.

In a great example of how certain stories play out, San Francisco Bay Guardian reporter Sarah Phelan opens her article by citing the play two news items recently received on the same day they broke: In Detroit, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the Bush administration’s warrantless National Security Agency surveillance program was unconstitutional and must end. Meanwhile, somewhere in Thailand, a weirdo named John Mark Karr claimed he was with six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey when she died in 1996.

We all know which story received the most attention.

‘Thomas Kostigen’s Ethics Monitor’ on marketwatch.com (vie here) lists which he says has been ignored or downplayed in the media, the sceptical out there – including this writer – would say these stories don’t actually hold much weight until published or broadcasted in the media that are apparently ignoring the stories. 

Discotheque as normal gives sharp analyses…

The most influential sector of the Irish radio audience is turning
to Today FM for better music (more rock, less pop), empathy, better
name recognition and a better sense of fun. They’re not getting any of
that from 2FM’s current batch….

Right now, life is dandy at Today FM headquarters. They have the DJs
and presenters their target audience wants to hear and that’s very good
for the short to medium term. - Jim Carroll, the Irish Times

In other news, Jenny Huston is a 2FM DJ while Tom Dunne is apprently not a Today FM DJ. Remember it’s RTE who makes and keeps "personalities"…

Hosts
Tom Dunne and RTÉ 2fm DJ Jenny Huston will present the show from a
special RTÉ Two Green Room at Stradbally Hall Estate and viewers will
also be able to see interviews with the bands and the fans. - RTE Online news report

So much for balanced reporting.