The Irish Times: financial difficulty

[Factorem]

And it's not surprising either:

- €50m on a failed property website
- over budget offices on Tara Street (selling their souls in the process)
- dwindling advertising revenues
- dwindling sales (I've heard the practice of giving free copies of the Irish Times to civil servants has been stopped)

And good riddance. Time to remove this pimple from Irish society. They were cheerleaders for the boom, engaged in compromised political commentary throughout and it wouldn't take much to pass off a property advert as "journalism".

It's the few (very few) decent journalists I feel sorry for. They were dragged down by the mess. It's high time Madam resigned.

[Bobert]

No, as loath as I am to say, the times shouldn't be allowed go under. Granted, Kennedy should be thrown through the window of Tara Street, quickly followed by Keena, Smyth, and a few others. But I do enjoy most of it's contributors.

[H.R. Haldeman]

Apparently several major newspapers in the US are also teetering on the brink. I think this is probably an approaching problem globally.

[Factorem]

Long live free internet media and subscription-based niche publications whose focus is on quality.

I would hope the mass-media (read brainwashing) has had its day. But this is not the case: it's worse. We've replaced it with celebrity politicians/TV stars, PopIdol, soccer tribalism, video games and ever-more intrusive public space advertising.

[kerrynorth]

God I hope the Times goes belly up before Lisbon 2. It is not a PLC so it cannot raise conventional capital. If its bankers are unwilling to fund it longterm it will have to slash spending. Although I suspect with its fixed overheads so high (Tara St offices, prinitng operation etc) that it will not survive a prolonged recession. The current management spent like drunken sailors as if the boom was going to last forever.

[Factorem]

Mind you, I'd say there are plenty of financiers cum philanthropists out there who'd jump at the chance to influence the chattering classes of Ireland.

[cyberianpan]

Creative destruction ... I'd have hopes that from the ashes of the IT we'd get a decent paper ... the current one is low grade trash. That said I'm not sure that the fact of it being low grade trash correlates with reasons for its commercial peril ... so not confident that we'd get something better back.


cYp

[Factorem]

Creative destruction ... I'd have hopes that from the ashes of the IT we'd get a decent paper ... the current one is low grade trash. That said I'm not sure that the fact of it being low grade trash correlates with reasons for its commercial peril ... so not confident that we'd get something better back.


cYp

The letters to the editor was once the "blog of Ireland" if you like. That role has been taken over completely by the internet.

And sure the IT is out of date by the time it's printed.

There's simply no future for a mass-produced newspaper that appeals to people's intellectual faculties. The IT have put up a good facade these last few years. Anyone who still thinks they're sophisticated cos they read the IT are deluded in the extreme -- the very worst of the chattering classes. (almost as bad as the ones who buy the Sindo for the "glitz and glam" of the Living & Leisure section).

I subscribe to about 3 or 4 top quality niche publications for my intellectual stimulation. If I want to read mass-media trash, I'll buy the Daily Mail and sit on the jacks or at the bar. There's a certain purist honesty about that.

[H.R. Haldeman]

Long live free internet media and subscription-based niche publications whose focus is on quality.

I would hope the mass-media (read brainwashing) has had its day. But this is not the case: it's worse. We've replaced it with celebrity politicians/TV stars, PopIdol, soccer tribalism, video games and ever-more intrusive public space advertising.

I hate to tell you this, but "free internet media" and "subscription-based niche publications" are just as big a bunch of whores as the traditional mass-media, and their "brainwashing" just as corrosive.

Same shi*, different course I think they call it in golf. Human nature won't change and neither will its propensity for vulgarity.

[Factorem]

The IT's biggest problem is its "airs and graces".

It's been "living off the legend" in recent years and now that the modern version of the IT has been exposed as but sorry shadow of its former self, it's time to get the coffin out.

All this sentimental crap about a bunch of cushy IT writers who think they've "made it" when they end up with their own office looking out over Tara Street.