Sunday Tribulations

There has been room in the Irish Sunday newspaper market, for a long time, for what is called a quality paper. The English quality papers accentuated, rather than filled, that gap: their coverage of Irish news was scanty and sporadic; their interest in Irish cultural affairs was confined to reviewing occasional Irish books and paying an annual, wide-eyed visit to Dublin for the Theatre Festival. Then, three months ago, the Sunday Tribune made its appearance.

The Irish reader who wanted a good deal more substance and far more depth in their Sunday reading than they were getting from the two existing broadsheets and two tabloids must have looked forward with great expectation to the arrival of the Tribune. Unfortunately, these hopes have not been fulfilled.

The first edition of the Tribune came late off the presses and was riddled with misprints. It still comes late on the streets on a Saturday night - much later than its rivals - and still has far too many misprints for a weekly, even in a country in which typesetting and proof-reading standards are appalling. Presentation apart, the initial impression the reader got was of a paper that took a serious approach to the news; indeed, its seriousness often spilled over into solemnity, so that less than earth-shattering stories were dressed up to look more important than they were. But the reader waited to see in what ways the Tribune was going to be different from the other Sundays - different from the two broadsheets, first of all, but especially different from the Sunday Independent, from which it would steal the higher AB readership.

Disappointingly, for those who looked forward to a Sunday paper with a fairly high intellectual profile and a level of journalism well above the trivial, the Tribune has been a failure so far. The reason for this is that it seems unable to make up its mind as to what kind of paper it ought to be. Before the paper was launched, it was thought that the editor, John Mulcahy, and perhaps to a lesser extent the publisher, Hugh McLoughlin, were after the AB readership - those who interest the advertisers of luxury goods, bank services, executive appointments and suchlike - the discriminating readership with high earning power and money to spend. But the style and content of the Tribune so far do not confirm this strategy.

In its first three issues, the Tribune ran front-page lead stories accompanied by a political off-lead. In the fourth issue, a lead story about a Dail row over boatyard sales was "balanced" by a trivial off-lead about RTE losing the services of Rod Stewart, the pop singer - typical Sunday World chaff. On the following Sunday, the lead story - O'KENNEDY TO GET SOCIAL AFFAIRS JOB (then, hardly hot news) - was "balanced" by an off-lead saying "Joan Baez Goes West", This "balance" (i.e., inability of the paper to decide whom it is addressing) is believed to have been introduced at the behest of Hugh McLoughlin, who, of course, created the Sunday World, and who is said to be arguing strongly for a cheesecake cutie on the front page every Sunday. (Caption: "Miss Ballyhoo 1981 says she's voting for Charlie because she likes the cut of his jib.")

In chasing the markets of the Sunday Press and Sunday Independent, while at the same time trying to look like the other two tabloids, the Tribune has so far failed to establish a clear-cut identity of its own. The Sunday Independent has a readership of 280,000 and 72 per cent of the AB market. The Sunday Press has 57 per cent of this market, and the Sunday World 35 per cent. Because the Sunday Independent bases its appeal on such a broad base - it must to maintain a readership of 280,000 - its hold on the 72 per cent of AB readers must be weak and its editorial quality suggests that this is so.

The Tribune ought, therefore, to try to cream off the top of the AB readership, and not try to compete with the Independent for the broad mass of readership. Hardly any readers wanted yet another Sunday newspaper that tried to sell equally well in Killiney, Ballyfermot and Tullamreo. Those who looked forward to an Irish Sunday newspaper that would stretch their minds and extend their horizons must be seriously disappointed as they turn over the pages of the Tribune.

When John Mulcahy lost Hibernia, through a series of libel actions that could have been editorially avoided, he attracted much liberal/intellectual sympathy. His paper had been more adventurous than most other Irish publications and he had often pursued stories that others avoided. The news that he was to launch a Sunday "quality" paper was welcomed, though the welcome was tempered with justified apprehension when it was learned that his financial backer was to be Hugh McLoughlin, a man not highly regarded in the publishing world, and a man known to the informed public as a fast-buck merchant with standards that tended strongly towards the lower meretricious end of the journalistic scale. The Sunday World in particular was there to prove it.

Even before the Tribune was launched, rifts in the Mulcahy-McLoughlin alliance were noticeable. The answers given by each man to journalists' questions were not reassuring. The Tribune, it was feared, might turn out to be a chalk-and-cheese mixture; now, it seems to be so. The Tribune has done nothing, at any level, in the first three months of its existence to entitle it to be called distinctive. In its third issue, it ran a story saying COLLEY HOLDS VETO ON KEY CABINET JOBS. That story had been in the August issue of Magill and in the January 1980 Magill Digest. The Cearbhall a Dalaigh story in its very first issue was not only old news but ineptly handled, and the Irish language extracts from O'Dalaigh's diary were misprinted and mistranslated.

In appointing Jim Farrelly as news editor - a key position in any newspaper - Mulcahy showed naivety beyond the bounds of belief. Farrelly came from the instant news school of Independent Newspapers, where getting the story into print is more important than getting the facts right. If there is a place for such a journalist who shoots from the hip, and Farrelly was the best of the Irish Independent gung-ho brigade, it is not in a "quality" Sunday newspaper, which is expected to approach the news with circumspection and deliberation. Another key appointment in a serious newspaper is that of political correspondent; this was given by Mulcahy to Geraldine Kennedy, relatively unproven in this area but beginning to show her mettle of late with some good pieces on T. J. Maher, the chaos within Fine Gael, etc. It is noteworthy indeed that no journalist with a solidly established reputation moved over to this "quality" publication when it was being set up.

A newspaper supposedly aimed at an AB readership ought to have an interesting, varied and penetrating features section; this the Sunday Tribune does not have. None of its features so far readily stands out in the memory. Tom McGurk's pieces have derived too often from RTE files and gossip-shops, and he has tended, both in his feature pieces and in his television column, to settle too many old scores with R TE. In acquiring him. Mulcahy may have thought that he was laying his hands on many inside. television stories. Apart from a useful re-working of the story of the operation of Section 31 in RTE, what he has got so far has been less analytical and distinguished - and less accurate - than one would expect in a quality newspaper.

Everything in the features section of the Tribune seems tightly squeezed. though not always tightly written. This may or may not be the result of Mulcahy's and McLoughlin's opting for the tabloid format. This first issue had 64 pages; the next four, 56; after that, it dropped to 48 pages, except for one issue, which had only 40. Forty-eight pages in tabloid format is the equivalent of 24 pages in broadsheet size; this is small by the standards of quality Sunday papers, whose readers have become accustomed to large features sections and lengthy, in depth treatment of topics.

The books sections of a quality newspaper ought to be lengthier, more wide-ranging and more critically acute than is that of the Tribune. Admittedly, it leaves both the Sunday Press and Sunday Independent leagues behind, but that is saying nothing, as neither of those publications runs a book page acceptable to a literate human being.

It is estimated that the Sunday Tribune is losing about £8,000 per week. It could recover from that position, as all new publications budget for a loss in the beginning. The important question is not the extent of its present weekly loss but how long Hugh McLoughlin will tolerate it before pushing the paper still further down market and thus ruining its chances of survival as the only literate alternative to the mass-circulation Sunday papers.