Sinn Féin effectively close down Irish language newspaper

[LiamORaiste]

First of all, Pino, let me apologise for the vulgarity in my previous post. I'm afraid it's a pathological reaction to the 'Tiocfaidh Ár Lá' comment which you made in all innocence and, no doubt, with the best of intentions. It didn't deserve my witless retort.

However I am intrigued by your comment:
Isn't fair of you to suggest different reasons (vengeance?) behind this decision. We care a lot about the First National Language ad we do all in our power and possibilities to promote it... still... we don't have the government, so we cannot be held responsible for the way the Language is treated. Keep hoping: Tiocfaidh ár lá!

After all you are in government in the North and, importantly, you have nominated members on the board of Foras na Gaeilge, which made this decision which I think is retrograde not alone for Lá*****Nua but for Irish language literature in general.

Lá Nua was selling when I left approximately 1,500 copies per day - it's readership beyond that was in the order of 5,000 people probably. Add in daily downloads of the PDF and reading online at L Nua – Promh Leathnach, let's say somewhere in the region of 7,000 daily readers.

That's not good when compared to English language publications but in the case of the readership of Irish, it's significant and not to be lightly discarded.

Now I understand your problem - you're learning Irish but you've nowhere really to use it, to place it in a modern context. Lá was such a place - it's quality had declined dramatically in the last six months due to the stretching beyond the bounds of reason of a dedicated but underresourced staff. But still it was such a place.

Because of the decision to axe Lá taken by the Foras board, including its four SFers, pledged, as they claim, to protect and promote the language, Irish journalism and literature will be poorer and the readership of Irish takes another hit. Guess who's responsible for the promotion of Irish language literature. Foras na Gaeilge. On its best day ever, an Irish language book would only dream of getting the readership Lá*****Nua had.

Now the problem is that there's less places to read Irish and this will create its own negative dynamic. And on top of that the valuable work Lá Nua did, in providing the best literary supplement anywhere on Irish, Faoi Chaibidil, will mean that there will be less reviews of Irish language literature and therefore less demand.

Thank you SF for that and thank you Foras na Gaeilge....

[pino]

It’s ok Liam, no need to apologise. I do understand that there are expressions that I take and use for their face value but for an Irish person they can have a different value because of the background history which I, as Italian, ignore (this too is a way to learn for me ).

I didn’t have the figures, so thank you for telling me, those are quite explicative. From a budgetary point of view I do now have a better understanding of the decision that has been made. Even if I do fully agree with your cultural point of view, I have to tell in fairness that 1,500 copies sold every day cannot justify a contract for a daily newspaper. Actually I don’t know how lasted, but that’s politic I guess.

Don’t take it wrong: I fully agree with you about the fact that is not fair count just those 1,500, still that’s the way it works when it comes to the money, even in structures of the kind of Foras na Gaeilge.

Now, by the way, I see that FnG has also launched a competition for a weekly newspaper with web diffusion (just like Lá Nua). I think that Lá Nua has already the structure and the knowledge, so adding a weekly issue could be a way to get at least that contract. For Lá Nua the only actual cost would be printing and distribution so they can win the contract in a blink and the 400,000 Euro per annum can be a quite good way to keep the daily edition alive. I guess that the board of FnG cannot avoid agreeing that even if they got better offers, the cultural value of supporting Lá Nua (in this way making it wider instead of closing it down) to keep serving the 7,000 daily readers. This cultural value (I’m sure) will be taken in very serious account.

About SF being in government in the 6-counties… well, you are intelligent enough to know how that works. You know about the Irish Language Bill… you know that in the last six months the executive power didn’t even met because the DUP is trying its best to make us break the St. Andrews’ Agreement. You know SF cannot sign a bill alone. The situation stalled since the day one, but never because of SF, and this is the greatest political victory (I think) since a very long time.

Anyway I’m sure that Lá Nua will not close and I’m sure that will get the new weekly contract if they go for it (I strongly hope so).

Slán
Pino

[Catalpa]

I used to work with Lá Nua - don't anymore since last March.

As for the young SFer who thinks the party is doing its bit to help the language and to suggest it's unfair of me to claim the move to closure is a vendetta due to Lá Nua, when I was its editor, standing up to SF and exposing its lack of action on the Irish language, tough. SF is all gong and no dinner about its concern for the Irish language....

Par for the course for Nua SF I'm afraid!

After their vote in LH this week gone by to give Irish bankers a hand nothing surprises me anymore about this lot!

They seem to be down a pair of gongs these days all right!

But their day will come...

[lostexpectation]

so how much money was it losing, or in terms of budget how far off its targets was it.

[Keith-M]

how much is la nua losing as it operates?

Have we had an answer to this question, as without it there is no real context for the thread.

[Joeyjoejoe]

Lá Nua was selling when I left approximately 1,500 copies per day

1,500 per day! that's shocking, I buy the paper but never knew the total was so low.
(Given that figure I can almost see where the Foras are coming from although at the same time I think Lá Nua is providing a public service to the Irish speaking community so should get support).
I know it's not the greatest paper but still you'd expect more than 1,500 copies to be sold per day.
Anyway what this all means is that Ireland can't even support one daily Irish language paper, but can buy 200,000+ copies of English papers per day!?
Plus 57,000 people can appear out of nowhere to buy the Daily Mail when it was launched. WTF?

What a sad sad country Ireland is, maybe we should just dispense with the charade and rename the place Little England?

Finfacts Ireland Blog: Irish Newspaper Readership 2007

[Darren Mac an Phríora]

This might sound hard to believe but it was more of a 'paper for the Irish language movement than for the Irish language community generally e.g. it didn't even sell many copies in Gaoth Dobhair in Donegal although they have an office there.

I sometimes found them editorially to be extreme but they did have/have some good journalists.

Without Lá Irish would not be an official language of the EU. The 'paper played a very encouraging part in that Stádas campaign. That will be it's only legacy as a daily I reckon. It is encouraging for those working full-time (i.e. 9-5) promoting Irish that they could always get some publicity for various initiatives but given that the official Irish language movement is mostly a failure (in the Republic anyway) having "our own" daily 'paper is not that encouraging given the road of the official Irish language movement is (mostly) a cul-de-sac.

Overall the 'paper was too Northern focused. I expect Foinse to get the new contract next year and hopefully some of the good journalists in Lá can write for that 'paper.

Like most of us I don't know whether Concubhar Ó Liatháin is right in relation to the Shinners but I respect his strength in putting it up to them. I doubt they will care though as the 'paper will cease funding as a daily next year and then the education section of the 'paper on a Tuesday (or whatever day it is) will not longer be used in some (many?) schools in the North. Thus the influence of Lá Nua will be marginalised although they could try to go it alone as they did for many years and publish as a weekly.

There was another thread on the issue of the new contract here on Slugger O' Toole recently.

[Joeyjoejoe]

1,500 copies per day out of the 1,600,000 people who claim they can speak Irish, that's less that 0.1% market share!
The main complaint I've heard about the paper is that it's too small, 12-16 pages a day, but I've seen Polish papers that are that small, it must be harder to please Irish speakers.
I'm sure the people who do read it will be pissed off if it closes, just as I will, but a subsidy can only go so far, there has to be some level of demand in the community for the product, and 1,500 a day just isn't good enough.