Tipperarylive is a news website populated by content from The Nationalist and its sister paper, The Tipperary Star. The Nationalist is a weekly local paper that was founded in Clonmel, a town in south County Tipperary, in 1890. For most of the paper’s history, it was known as the Nationalist and Munster Advertiser; however, in 2011, it reverted to The Nationalist, its original title. The Tipperary Star is a weekly local newspaper published in Thurles, Co. Tipperary. It was founded in 1908 by long-time newspaper editor Edward Long. The Nationalist and the Star are the main media outlets serving County Tipperary in the Midlands region of Ireland.
Tipperarylive was launched in 2018 and primarily runs stories appearing in the Nationalist and Star’s print editions. Information about page visits for the site itself is not publicly available, though the ‘advertising’ section of the website claims an ‘audience’ of 65,000 across print and digital.
The decision to bring the papers under one website was made by their owner, Iconic Newspapers. Iconic Media purchased a number of Irish newspapers starting in the 2010s and immediately set about modernising and digitising those operations. All Iconic news websites now include ‘live’ at the end of their URLs. Iconic’s push for centralised local news sites aligns with broader ‘digital first’ trends in the Irish news industry. Newspaper owners in Ireland are increasingly reducing staff numbers through voluntary redundancies and layoffs. Some owners (such as Mediahuis) are planning to phase out print publications altogether due to declining print circulation and increasing costs.
The collection of local news sites under a single banner also represents another layer of de-localisation in the Irish news industry. Irish newspaper ownership has become increasingly concentrated in the 21st century, and Iconic (Media Concierge) is now Ireland’s largest holder of local and regional papers, with 18 titles. The impact of the combined concentration in ownership and web presence is that traditionally hyper-local titles such as the Tipperary Star now also share regional and national content on their websites.
Further, there is a degree of opacity around the curation of content on centralised news sites compared to local titles. For example, information regarding management of Tipperarylive and its content is not provided on the website. Indeed, there does not appear to be a dedicated editorial staff for the website itself, and contact information is provided only for the separate newspapers. This lack of editorial transparency is problematic and raises the question of whether Ireland’s online news sites will adhere to the same level of editorial transparency as in print publications.
News content appearing on Tipperarylive is free to access. However, access to the ‘e-paper’ for either the Star or the Nationalist requires a subscription. Both the Star and the Nationalist were purchased from Johnstown Press by Iconic Newspapers in a 2014 acquisition. Iconic Media is owned by Media Concierge (Holdings) Limited, which is in turn owned by The Denmark Family, with UK businessman Malcolm Denmark as the controlling shareholder.