The Irish-language Internet magazine Beo! has had its contract to produce a monthly on-line journal renewed. The new contract from Foras na Gaeilge, worth €210,000, will run from January 2010 until December 2012. Speaking in Irish, one of the founders of Beo!, Mr Liam Ó Cuinneagáin, said that he was very happy that Beo! had won the contract once again; the victory was due recognition for the editors and writers who had been with the magazine since its foundation.

Beo! originally appeared in pilot form in 2001 and contains a wide range of articles on politics, current affairs, the arts as well as interviews. Ó Cuinneagáin said that Beo! has about 10,000 single users every month and over 30,000 page impressions. The magazine is read through out the world and treats Irish as the language of a global linguistic community. There was much to do, he said, to upgrade the magazine to make it compatible for Twitter, Facebook and blogs. It was an on-line magazine, he said, and not a web site as such. The standard of the articles was the most important thing.