The "Irish Times" and the case of missing domestic investigative journalism

72sheep

Examiner and other outlets break domestic stories frequently. Pretty sure I could find examples from the Indo too. To reinforce the reputation of our 'newspaper of record':

What are examples in last 10 years where the IT broke a domestic current affairs story of significant public interest? (That means: not investigations into another outlets initial story, no analysis of human rights breaches in foreign war-zones, no historical retrospectives where there's no accountability, no international syndication "collaborations" (Panama, Uber), no tackling of issues that only impact a tiny % of the population.)

Is it that we should not ever expect the IT to uncover a story like the (alleged) going's on's at ABP?

skimpydoo

Don Henley described it best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2wg_h4928M

Padre_Pio

Journalism in general is going down the toilet.

There's many reasons but really the basics are that people don't want to pay for it, people don't have the attention span for it and honestly I think that people would rather a juicy take on an event instead of a factual, well researched account.

That's pretty much where mainstream journalism is heading right now.

brokenangel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058259856/the-irish-times-and-the-case-of-missing-domestic-investigative-journalism

Don’t like it, don’t read it 👍

Should we only read the media that you say is ok?

It would seem a certain section on online supporters want to question and try shut down media they deem not friendly to the party they support

It really is a worrying time for people in Ireland, we are seeing a clear targeted campaign.

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119508827#Comment_119508827

True to some degree, but I think there are more fundamental changes happening. Like I suspect fewer people buy one newspaper (in print or online) and read it from cover to cover. The internet allows people to read many different publications from around the world every day. Until recently, I had two online newspaper subscriptions and neither of them were Irish. Recently, I got a premium subscription to the Indo because it was good value and easy to cancel. The IT is just a bit pricey when it’s only one out of three or four news outlets I’m going to read every day.

Having said that I still buy a print copy a couple of times a week and that would cover the cost of the most basic online subscription. So, there's more to it than just bottom-line cost. Their online marketing is just too unsophisticated compared to say the NY Times. I'd say not many people are enticed by a "one month for €1" offer, but I was sucked into the NY Times by one year at €8 per quarter, which then slid into €8 per month, which is still cheaper than the IT, but more than I would have paid for the NYT a year ago.

Padre_Pio

I suspect few people under 40 buy one newspaper,let alone read it cover to cover.

I think newspapers are going the way of museums. People who are interested in detailed analysis are getting it online through specific websites and channels. So newspapers have to dilute their content to cater for the casually interested.

Journalists have adopted a style thats less factual and more opinion based and (my biggest gripe) are getting these opinions from whoever is trending on twitter.

brokenangel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119510160#Comment_119510160

To be honest a lot of the article shared here and on the web the people sharing don't even bother to read. Some papers are famous for it, write a juicy headline, the person see it and makes up their own mind what is in the article, shares it to find out what is in the article had very little to do with the headline!!!

72sheep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119508827#Comment_119508827

Other papers manage to break some domestic stories holding the people in power to account. The IT doesn't appear to do so. Right now the IT are aggressively pretending not to notice that so many people have noticed this. Perhaps one day they'll remember their charter.

I noticed the Editor announced his retirement today. As a retiring hardboiled newsman, surely his outgoing reflections will focus on the public service stories that the IT championed during his tenure (e.g. housing, health) and not on social issues affecting only tiny % of the population. Let's see ;-)   

AndrewJRenko

I wonder if they are planning to drop the physical paper version anytime soon?

Danno

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119510760#Comment_119510760

I noticed the Editor announced his retirement today. 

When does his new position in FG get offered to him? Any day now, surely?

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058259856/the-irish-times-and-the-case-of-missing-domestic-investigative-journalism

Investigative journalism is expensive. Lifestyle and opinion journalism is cheap and doesn't require skilled journalists. With investigative journalism, it can take weeks or months to develop a story and then it might end up getting spiked. The IT is really a provincial Irish newspaper playing at being a national newspaper. Its glory days, as with much many of the other dailes are long gone and many of those readers now get their news from TV, radio or the Web. The IT may get the odd scoop but the newspaper business has changed and the attention spans of people have also become shorter. About ten years ago, the IT was selling about 100K copies a day. Before Covid, it was down to around 50K.

Regards...jmcc

xxxxxxl

Unless its a woke feels investigation no one seems to want to go near in the bigger outlets. Climate change, LGBT rights and alike have replaced investigative journalism. Now it's ever increasing copy paste Opinion pieces. I mean my spelling can be bad. But have seen stuff printed online that never went near an editor. Do they even have them anymore.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119513293#Comment_119513293

I thnk that a few years ago when some of the larger newspapers were trying to save money, the sub-editors were let go. The problem with publications going Woke is that they frequently end up broke.

Regards...jmcc

AllForIt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119513307#Comment_119513307

The problem with publications going Woke is that they frequently end up broke.

Like The Guardian begging for donations every time you visits it's site.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119513326#Comment_119513326

The Gruaniad does some good investigative journalism. Ignore the Woke stuff and it is a good newspaper.

Regards...jmcc

72sheep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119513278#Comment_119513278

The other papers appear to allocate some resources for investigations but the IT is not even bothering to pretend! The only area where they're resourceful and energetic is in demonising that section of society that dares to disagree with any of the FFG sponsored consensus. (Not unexpectedly the "talent" they are attracting is mirroring more and more closely that at the BBC i.e. strange people.) We can look forward to a merry dance when SF come into power ;-)

Truly a sign of the times that nobody here has even attempted to mount a defence for them.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119513293#Comment_119513293

If you think the Times has done anything other than import the UK culture war against trans people in recent years, I really don't know what to tell you.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119514732#Comment_119514732

The IT went down the rabbit hole of "opinion" in the 1990s. It was cheaper than real news and journalism. It became more of a viewspaper than a newspaper. As for the technology section back then, it had some good journos initially but really declined after those journos moved away from covering technology. The cheerleading for the DotCom bubble was only ever going to end one way. As for the property bubble, the IT became a bunch of property ads separated by some news and opinion pieces. The IT did some good investigative journalism in the past. The problem is that the Irish situation is incredibly hostile to good investigative journalism and the first reaction of the subjects is generally the threat of defamation proceedings. It still has some good journalists but Irish journalism isn't quite like journalism in other countries. The decline in the print newspaper model has made newspapers incredibly dependent on advertising and one of the biggest advertisers in recent years was the government. The last thing that newspapers want to do is to piss off their largest advertisers. Some of the smaller publications like The Village Magazine and On The Ditch have put the larger publications to shame in the way that they have broken major stories in recent years.

Regards...jmcc

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058259856/the-irish-times-and-the-case-of-missing-domestic-investigative-journalism

They own the Examiner. There's deliberate differentiation between them. They have never been an investigative paper

SuperBowserWorld

The Guardian is depressing to read. Really, it's awful what's happening in the world. They've got the balls to cover it. It's fantastic journalism at times. Wide and deep. Often it goes so woke you'd puke. It's all free, so they're not making any money there. Really I'm a bollox for not paying for a subscription.

Not sure any Irish Journalism exists anymore. It's all property porn and lifestyle stuff that's been scraped off the Web. RTE should be doing more since they have a ton of money from license payers and advertising revenue. But we mostly get property porn and lifestyle stuff from them too.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119518153#Comment_119518153

There was a world of difference between the way that the Guardian covered the Snowden revelations about NSA/GCHQ spying on communications and the way that the IT covered it. At least the IT had the sense to get Bruce Schneier to write an article about it. It was a very complex topic and the IT's journalists were not capable of dealing with it. The Guardian also did some very good reporting on the Cambridge Analytica story.

The problem, when it comes to tech reporting, is that most of the people in non-specialist Irish journalism who cover it don't have any in-depth background in Technology or the business of Technology. When stories pop up that require expertise, they just can't accurately cover them. As was seen with the Abu/SF database story, technology -- even simple technology -- baffles non-technology people. Apart from all that, the Guardian has a large circulation. The IT, and most of the Irish newspapers don't. They are aimed at a much smaller market. Their focus is actually extremely local.

Regards...jmcc

72sheep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119518009#Comment_119518009

As times gone by those viewpoints, especially the syndicated ones, have become more dogmatic and creepier. Those FF defamation laws from over a decade ago are a disgrace, I thought FG had promised to amend them by now ;-)

72sheep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119518030#Comment_119518030

Depressing. I'd just presumed that further back in time the IT had done more to hold power to account. A newspaper without any investigative teeth is nothing more than a means of oppression.

maceoin.D.

They did a great report on how 10 billion euro found its way out of the Irish economy back in 2020, due to the lack of cyber-security and protocol.

They have also done some investigative stuff surrounding the Covid 'bonuses' that the GP's were getting for every triage back when the pandemic was in full swing.

They also had some figures on how much the cyber attacks from 2021 were costing the country, that I have not seen reported anywhere else.

To be honest, I think they're fairly good at following the money in domestically dubious stories.

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119518362#Comment_119518362

Well cavete need to be who's involved tbh.

72sheep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119518362#Comment_119518362

Thanks for those. My worry is that there were zero repercussions from those stories though i.e. nobody being made accountable for issues where you or I would be fired immediately. 

The cybersecurity pieces smack of IT preparing the ground for forthcoming govmt announcements - think the Defence Forces were recently talking about budget allocation for establishing a cybersecurity unit. (And that fantastical charade performed by our politicians/media/pwc about the miraculous appearance of the Russian decrypt key, well... ;-) 

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119518262#Comment_119518262

Did Schneier write an article for the IT? Or did the IT pick up an article that Schneier had written?

Karlin Lillington did lots of good articles on data protection matters over the years.

maceoin.D.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119519776#Comment_119519776

Yeah that is always the worry. I feel as though the whole 'zero accountability for anybody who works for the state' thing, has reached a point where something will give and things will change. You can only afford to abuse power for so long before you are weakened and become vulnerable. That's the way things are going in politics- and if that weren't enough, a general rule of thumb is if the politicians are letting go of money, you know something is gone wrong!

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119522078#Comment_119522078

I think that the IT asked Schneier to write it. Even if it was syndicated, it was well above the usual quality of the section.

Regards...jmcc

skimpydoo

The IT has some great journalists and as a fellow hack I would trust the IT way over the Indo. The IT may have slightly lost its way but it still has great journalists such as Karlin Lillington, Fintan O'Toole, Ronan McGreevy and Ciara O'Brien.

72sheep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119522190#Comment_119522190

Thanks for chipping in here, especially as a hack.

To us outsiders, we are suspicious of the IT as it rarely/never challenges authority. On top of that, it patronises the public whenever they are hesitant to believe what they are being told. (The international syndications are also quite dubious.) Do you think those higher quality journos at the IT would recognise this sentiment?

OT: where do you think the IT fit into an Ireland where SF are in power?

Thanks again.