[DeclansKidney]

Originally Posted by Fishooks12

The majority of it is not journalism, in fact the sports section is embarrassing, nothing about actual college sport and mostly self-satisfying articles on The Premiership. the design is fairly pedestrian too

Fishooks12,
The sport this year was an embarrassment to An Focal. Fair enough for them to cover Premiership stuff, rugby (we're in a massive rugby area), even American Football as there is an increasing level of interest in the sport.

The two areas that really annoyed me was the lack of UL sport and coverage of baseball.

1. An focal is a college paper and should be focusing on the achievements of UL students, and the sports section be focusing on UL athletes. UL vikings and the ladies soccer team have been miles ahead of the rest of the country since I've been in college but it's nigh on impossible to keep up with them.

2. Baseball? Baseball? Come on like? I can understand that people may be interested in the sport. Don't get me wrong. But is there enough of an audience in an Irish university interested in baseball.
This is especially striking compared to the coverage given to college sports (as raised in my 1st point)

[DeclansKidney]

Oh I'll make a third point....


Somebody get Tomas McCarthy back for a masters or something so he can take over running the Sports section.

BRING BACK MOSSY!

[DeclansKidney]

Also, I think An Focal should go back to the tabloid style layout, rather than the current broadsheet incarnation. The paper was perfect for students to read on the go. It's just awkward now.

[shabouwcaw]

tabloid style layout

It's Berliner format? It's only marginally bigger than tabloid.

[DeclansKidney]

Originally Posted by shabouwcaw

It's Berliner format? It's only marginally bigger than tabloid.

It's not the size I mean, it's the ease of access. It's very difficult to read and focal in it's current style whilst walking for example.

[MajesticDonkey]

Originally Posted by needacchelp

Also, have the unique figures been taken from a stat like 'uniques this year'? Or have they been added up from figures for the uniques each month? Cause there's a big difference there...

For some reason the host has disabled viewing of stats by year, only on a monthly basis.

Robots only add up to just over 34,000 hits in total out of the ~1.7 million.

Anyhow, here are the stats for this year so far.