The Irish Times

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The Irish Times
The Irish Times logo.svg
description national daily newspaper
language English
publishing company IrelandIreland Dublin
First edition March 29,  1859
Sold edition 66,251 copies
Editor-in-chief Paul O'Neill
editor Ruth Barrington (CEO)
executive Director Liam Kavanagh
Web link www.irishtimes.com

The Irish Times is an Irish national daily newspaper , founded on March 29, 1859 in Dublin . The editor is Paul O'Neill , who succeeded Kevin O'Sullivan on April 5, 2017 . The Irish Times is published every day except Sundays.

Orientation in the (inter) national newspaper landscape

The Irish Times is the Irish newspaper with the largest number of foreign correspondents , including in Washington , Moscow , Beijing , London , Central and South America , Africa and other regions of the world.

The Irish Times is in fierce competition with the daily Irish Independent , which is also published in Dublin and is currently reaching a higher circulation. While the Irish Independent is regarded as an economically liberal press organ and relatively populist-nationalist (Irish reunification issue), the Irish Times marks the orientation towards left-liberal welfare state ideas. While the newspaper is relatively neutral on the Northern Ireland issue, it supported, for example, Mary Robinson's presidential candidacy (which was sensational for Ireland at the time) , the legal release of contraception, divorce and moderate abortion laws against the bitter resistance of the once very influential Catholic church representatives.

The solid columns, the cartoons , the particularly tricky crossword puzzles and the journalistic quality of the contributions by the Irish Times are popular with the paying audience .

Development history

The Irish Times was founded in 1859 as the mouthpiece of the Irish Unionists who at the time wanted Ireland to be and remain a full member of the United Kingdom . When Ireland broke away from Great Britain at the beginning of the 20th century and even from the Commonwealth in 1949 , the daily changed its line according to the new circumstances.

After the death of the founder Major Lawrence Knox in 1873, the capital paper was taken over by the Arnott merchant family, who held the majority and thus control until the 1960s. Even after that, Arnott's great-grandson remained the newspaper's London editor.

The Irish Times in the interwar period saw itself as the mouthpiece of the remaining Anglo-Irish, usually wealthy landowners ( Ascendency ). It was practically the only one of the five Irish daily newspapers that regularly reported extensively from abroad.

Censorship 1939-1945

After censorship had already existed in the conservative Śaorstat Éireann 1922–1938, the freedom of the press was after the rapid passage of the Enabling Act ( Emergency Powers Act ; the war-related "state of emergency" existed since 1976 on a changed legal basis until 1995) of September 3, 1939, and the implementing regulations repealed. Not only potentially useful to the warring parties, such as weather reports, but any term that could have represented an assessment of the belligerents was forbidden. The Anglophile editor RM Smyllie was a staunch opponent of all censorship and tried to circumvent it. Gunshot wounds to Irish soldiers who served in the British Army (which were generally not allowed to be reported) were described as “lead poisoning”. A man sunk with the HMS Prince of Wales survived his "water sports accident". This led to the fact that the newspaper's galley proofs from December 29, 1942 until the end of the war. The humorless controller of censorship Thomas J. Coyne and Smyllie fought sharp words over the entire period.

present

In 1974 a legal construction was found with the foundation Irish Times Trust , which is supposed to guarantee the publishing independence and independent line of the newspaper against economic desires. Critics blamed this Irish Times Trust for the newspaper's worst existential crisis in 2002. Existing financial reserves were invested in the construction of a new printing plant , which led to considerable bottlenecks in ongoing operations. After a large number of internal restructuring and savings , including the cancellation of journalist positions and local parts, after a loss of three million euros in 2002, a profit was made again in the following year.

In January 2005 the newspaper announced that it would move from D'Olier Street, in southern Dublin city center, to Tara Street, a hundred meters away. In May 2005 the newspaper launched a new international edition, available in London and South West England. The current edition had previously been brought to the major British cities by airliner so that it was usually available at lunchtime. The new edition will be printed in the Newsfax factory in Hackney , using the Financial Times' distribution network .

Well-known columnists

Its most prominent columnists included former Sunday Tribune editor Vincent Browne, leftist writer and art critic Fintan O'Toole and former Irish Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald . Internationally known personalities such as Harold Pinter and Bill Clinton have presented their views of current events in editorials . The columns are an integral part of the daily newspaper

  • Drapier , which offers the insider background commentary on the political events once a week without signing a name .
  • An Irishman's Diary , formerly a regular from right wing commentator Kevin Myers (now with the Irish Independent)
  • Rite and Reason , the weekly religious column, contribution from Patsy McGarry, the editor for religious affairs
  • Locker Room is the headline for the glossary of the sports section, written by Tom Humphries, of which, due to its popularity, has occasionally been published in books
  • Cruiskeen Lawn was the biting and satirical column by Myles na Gopaleen , who is much better known internationally under his other stage name Flann O'Brien - Cruiskeen Lawn is the Anglicized version of the Irish expression cruiscín lán , which means "the full pitcher". Cruiskeen Lawn first appeared in the 1940s and appeared for 20 years.

Literary prizes

Every two years between 1989 and 2001, the Irish Times awarded the Irish Literature Prize for Irish writers and the International Fiction Prize for foreign authors.

literature

  • Thilo Schulz: The picture of Germany in the "Irish Times" 1933–1945. (= European University Theses Series 3, History and its auxiliary sciences). Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-631-34925-4 . (also: Hamburg, Univ., dissertation 1998)
  • Fintan O'Toole: The Irish Times Book of the Century: 1900-1999 . Gill & Macmillan, Dublin 1999, ISBN 0-7171-2749-4 .
  • Elgy Gillespie (Ed.): Changing the Times: Irish Women Journalists 1969–1981 . Lilliput Press, Dublin 2003, ISBN 1-84351-018-9 .
  • Dick Walsh: Remembered: Selected Columns from The Irish Times, 1990-2002 . Townhouse, Dublin 2003, ISBN 1-86059-196-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. Circulation July - Dec 2016 , accessed July 17, 2017.
  2. ^ Paul O'Neill appointed new Irish Times editor. Retrieved September 20, 2019 .
  3. September 13, 1939: Emergency Powers (No. 5) Order 1939, tightened August 15, 1942 (full text in Ó Drisceoil (1996), app. January 3, January 28, 1941: ... No. 67 also included foreign journalists.
  4. Irish Times. December 17, 1941.
  5. Donal Ó Drisceoil: Censorship in Ireland, 1939-45. Cork 1996, ISBN 1-85918-073-6 . (Cork University Diss. 1996)
  6. 1939-41: assistant ...; Ó Drisceoil (1996), p. 17.
  7. ^ Correspondence received in: National Archives, Dublin; Department of Justice: File group "R" and unnumbered Controller's Correspondence.
  8. List of winners , accessed on July 17, 2017

Web links