The Phoenix is no more!

I used to print it and it was coming a while.

As is often the case nowadays, I see something is closing down that I used to patronise but haven't for a long time and realise that's the reason it's closing down.

Ocean? Bell? Irish?

Had got really, really bad over time however there is an element of journalism that will likely just end up not happening without it there. Ranging from occasional actual investigative journalism down to doing useful hit pieces on blowhards (Young Turks stuff - the one they did on John McGuirk decades ago is hilarious)

I stopped buying it ages ago, because the good content was being outweighed by repeated jokes, weird business coverage and more unhinged political content.

Will check with the bank.

Started reading Private Eye when a housemate had a subscription over 10 ago. Only during Covid times did I decide to check out the Phoenix to see if the Irish "equivalent" was as good.

To me it was definitely a mixed bag. It had little bits of insider info that were always interesting to read, and profiles of people I didn't know much about. Also despite being a blatantly left wing publication they didn't subscribe to all the dogmas of the Irish left; I didn't see much emphasis on identity politics in anything I ever read in it. Same can't be said about papers such as the Irish Times which the Phoenix would regularly label a Tory paper.

The fact they weren't a member of the Irish media circuit allowed them to say things that are never said in other Irish media for fear of being ostracised, like the idea that calling yourself an artist/creative doesn't just entitle you to an endless stream of Government income, or that handing out enormous tax credits to foreign film companies to film here isn't in the best interests of the country.

Its 2nd biggest weakness to me wasn't so much political bias as its laziness in hiding it. They were clearly chuffed with themselves the first time they ever called a female Fine Gael TD "Thatcher" because they kept doing it for every female FG politician they ever wrote about.

Its biggest negative was their deranged conspiratorialism regarding foreign affairs. Apparently the Irish establishment were scheming to secretly sign us up to either an EU army or NATO, depending on the story of the day, and Irish citizens were going to be conscripted to battle Russia alongside Ukrainian Nazis.

All in all an interesting publication; not many places you'd see talk of atrocities in Gaza one page, horse racing news on the next page, and advice on buying gold on the next. I didn't think I bought that many, but upon hearing this news a few days ago I looked at my stack of old issues and there's easily 30 editions and an annual there so I must have read a good bit over the years. None recently tough-sorry Goldhawk!

Gone since 2019, when you had to ask for it rather than have it dumped at the door.