Sunday is the day for newspaper reading. In fact, Irish Sunday papers outsell Irish dailies by an average of 300,000 each week.
In international terms, Ireland and Britain are unusual: our Sunday newspapers are distinct titles, with their own names, designs and separate journalistic staffs - even if they share an owner, a building or part of their name with a daily counterpart; in most other countries Sunday is just another day, though the Sunday editions will generally be beefier than, say, a Tuesday paper.
Perhaps more than most, we take our Sabbath - at least, the rest part - very seriously. The days of constitutional walks after Mass and trips to the rellies seem to be on the wane, in favour of a day spent lounging about on the couch wading through the Sunday paper. It can be literally wading. Your average Sunday has at least three sections. The heftiest buy here is The Sunday Times, which contains 13 sections.
In terms of content, most Sunday papers would have an editorial emphasis appropriate to the needs of typical Sunday slobs - opinion columns, gossip, celebrity news and general features. There are hard news sections in the Sunday papers as well. But the Sundays tend to go to print with their first editions earlier than dailies, so front-page news stories are more likely to be, say, the result of the paper's investigation into an issue, rather than a late-breaking news story.
These front pages, however, can end up changing a lot from first editions - which are on the streets on Saturday evening (for the true slob who would look on going outside the door to the shop of a Sunday as equivalent to putting in a few hundred bench presses at the gym) - to the last editions, which may go to press in the early hours of Sunday morning. An example of how this affected coverage was the death of Princess Diana. The car crash in which she died didn't happen until midnight on a Saturday, and her death wasn't confirmed until hours later. The early editions - which includes nearly all British papers sold in the Republic - didn't contain a word about it, since they were printed while it was still daylight on Saturday. So if you bought your paper early that week, or if you rely on British titles, you might have had no knowledge of the biggest news story for quite some time.
The headline story of any paper says a lot about it and its readership. At one end of the market, the Sunday Business Post, read by wealthier business people and professionals, ran with a story this week about Michael Bailey, a builder who tried to negotiate a huge loan with Anglo-Irish Bank. The story relates to the Flood tribunal and, while its relevance might be bewildering to some, it would certainly intrigue the more hardcore tribunal junkies.
The Sunday World, on the other hand, carried the headline, "£1M drug traveller fined £100". A substantial amount of the Sunday World's coverage centres on crime and criminals. In addition to the economic differences among readers, there are geographic and gender differences too. According to recent research, the Sunday Business Post sells the vast majority of copies in urban areas, while the Sunday World has a strong rural readership. The research, also shows that, despite (or maybe due to) its emphasis on sexual misbehaviour, the Sunday World has slightly more women readers then men. The Sunday Business Post describes itself as "Ireland's financial, political and economic newspaper". This is reflected in its editorial content, with a strong emphasis on business news.
Uniquely, the paper has no sports section. In fact, it confines its sports coverage to one column, which must say something about Sunday Business Post readers. The Sunday Independent, which vies with the Sunday World, neck and neck, for the title of Ireland's biggest selling paper, has come in for heavy criticism over the years both for its emphasis on gossip and its tendency to take a strong line on certain issues. For example, during the early days of what become the "peace process", many of the paper's columnists regularly and sometimes viciously criticised John Hume for his talks with Gerry Adams.
When the newspaper's current editor, Aengus Fanning, was appointed in the mid-1980s, the intention was to develop the Sunday Independent as a quality paper in opposition to the Sunday Tribune. In fact, it is now often described as a "broadsheet tabloid". It offers quite a few opinion columns, a lot of social gossip, and what has been described as of "a mix of sleaze and prurience". What does the success of this and the Sunday World say about our Sunday reading habits?
Meanwhile, the British Sunday Times has a busy office here which prints an edition aimed at the Irish market. It outsells Irish papers such as Ireland on Sunday and the Business Post. Although the Irish edition does carry a substantial amount of Irish news, sports and culture, the coverage is predominantly British, while Ireland on Sunday is entirely aimed at the Irish market.
Both publications cost £1, but the Sunday Times has 10 sections more than Ireland on Sunday. Maybe because it looks more impressive, people feel they are getting better value for money with it - and more reading time. The Sunday Tribune has a very similar readership to the Irish Times - largely urban and members of the middle-to-upper-class "ABC1" social groupings. With six sections, it comes in way ahead of the other Irish Sundays in terms of quantity. News and an analysis of the main news events of the week feature strongly. Of course, there is also a section on "life, living and all that . . ." called People - which does the Sunday food, gossip, health, fashion and celeb thing . . .
