IRISH LOCAL NEWSPAPERS : A GEOGRAPHICAL STUDY

Transcription

1 IRISH LOCAL NEWSPAPERS : A GEOGRAPHICAL STUDY By J. P. HAUGHTON Local newspapers are of interest to the geographer as they help to show the area for which a town or village acts as a centre; an analysis of the contents gives some indication of the social and economic life of the region. In Eire, seventy-one newspapers are published, of which sixty-three appear weekly or bi-weekly, and eight daily. To acquire the material contained in this article, a letter was sent to each of the editors asking for information, on his paper, including its date of foundation, its history, and the area in which it circulates in large and small numbers. Approximately 55 % replied and the information they gave was checked as far as possible, and supplemented by an analysis of the contents of the papers themselves. The local advertisements and the news from villages were used as the main lines of evidence to determine the area served by a paper; it is, however, possible that some local news has beeo deliberately incorporated in order to stimulate sales in particular districts. Most of the newspapers were founded in the latter half of the nineteenth century but a few; such as the Kilkenny Journal and the Limerick Chronicle, are very much older. In general, the local newspapers are marked by a serious and informed approach to local matters and by an absence of the ridiculous personal items that are so often associated with this kind of paper. In the Dublin daily papers, a large proportion of space is devoted to national or international news: but most of the local papers concentrate on reporting the life and activities of the people in the more restricted areas where they circulate. In an effort to appeal to all members of the community, they do not now take a strong political line though many of them were founded for political purposes : in any case, they cannot hope to compete with the Dublin or Cork dailies in political influence. Every town in Eire with a population of 5,000 or over has its newspaper, with four notable exceptions: Dun Laoghaire, and Bray, near Dublin; Cobh, near Cork; and Killarney. The first three towns are so close to larger towns that none of the many attempts made to run newspapers in them has met with permanent success. It is less easy to understand the absence of a paper in Killarney where one, in fact,'flourished 52

2 Map of Loca (Dublin papers not shown) '? Afeas served by Newspapers o io lo MILES if Westportjin I VC V & V r ç s d sjiajsl- Jl v (A o 1 v*- J/ SU- ^Omagh..yy» / : Covol i ^-i 'H S 1 Oundalk > LU J ) SaiwayC* / '-' 1 *! ; : MO ^ 7 i r-» í 1. / I / )ublln olwicklow / nckt A y t./ /y iord u f i ^v^tork A > r Mcdi urn 0 Smal - dooo*) '«0 FIG. 1. The towns in which one or more newspapers are printed are shown by dots or circles : the areas where the newspapers circulate in large numbers are enclosed by broken lines. Note especially (1) the contrast between the central lowland and the western seaboard; (2) the wide circulation of newspapers published in Dundalk, Wexford, Waterford, Kilkenny, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Ballina, Sligo. <

3 for a considerable time: the town, however, depends partly on a seasonal tourist trade and the most significant market centre of the region is Tralee, which has two active weekly papers. The four major towns of Eire, Dublin, Cork, Limerick, and Waterford, have three or more newspapers : two other towns, Galway and Kilkenny, have three weekly newspapers. Dublin supplies daily papers to all parts of the country: Waterford and Cork are regional capitals with extensive agricultural hinterlands. Limerick, also a regional capital, now has a new and successful weekly paper which brings its total to four: this may be an indication of the growing power of Limerick as the " Chief City of the West," due to the development of the port as a grain centre and also to the proximity of Shannon Airport, the Irish terminus for trans-atlantic aircraft. By contrast, Galway, though it has three newspapers and serves a wide area, has far less vitality than its neighbour and rival to the south. Kilkenny is the only inland town to have three papers; of these one is a small mid-week edition with a city circulation only. The map (see Fig. i) shows the areas where local papers circulate in large numbers. If several newspapers are published in a town their circulations are combined in order to give a composite picture. Some sections of the map are more accurate than others, as more data was available; but the general pattern is substantially correct. The Shannon "basin is of interest for its large number of weekly papers with relatively small circulation areas. The river, in many ways a barrier rather than a highway, has some significant crossing places: from Athlone and Carrick, for example, papers circulate on both sides of the river. Most of the papers in the west of Ireland have big circulation areas and the Western People of Ballina, with a weekly circulation of 32,000, is the largest of the local papers; the Kerryman of Tralee has 26,000. These large circulations indicate first, the extremely wide areas served by the towns in this part of Ireland which gives them an importance out of all proportion to their size; and second, the advantages of distance from Duhlin which reduces the competitive power of city newspapers, as local journals can more adequately express western opinion and give western news. Cork, the major regional capital of the south-west, is the centre of lines of communication using the east-west synclinal valleys ; other market towns in Co. Cork are declining. Cork's papers circulate over an area extending to the Atlantic coastline ; the existence of an independent newspaper at Skibbereen in the extreme south-west suggests a weakening of Cork's 54

4 influence in this area: Skibbereen is the centre of a small but well-defined natural region consisting primarily of the Hen valley which is surrounded by relatively bare uplands and leads to a ria coast-line. This extreme south-west belongs to the Atlantic seaboard of Ireland and is an area far poorer than the rich valleys of the Lee and the Bandon. Waterford, like Cork, looks west rather than east, where its hinterland extends only to the tidal estuary of the Nore and the Barrow; and Waterford papers hardly circulate at all on the Wexford side of the river. On the west, Waterford 's influence extends at least as far as Dungarvan : Waterford shops advertise in the Dungarvan papers but the Cork shops do not. It is surprising to find so small a town as Dungarvan with two newspapers, but this is partially explained by the fact that it is the administrative centre of the county. South-east Ireland is clearly separated from the rest of the country by the Leinster chain of mountains and the Barrow estuary. This separation is reflected in the circulation areas of the Wicklow and Wexford papers which hardly penetrate outside the region ; and the town of Baltinglass, in the county of Wicklow, but lying to the west of the mountains, is more easily served by papers from Naas or Carlow. Four of the six papers published in the south-east belong to one company, a feature not found elsewhere in Ireland. The Central Lowland, an area of ill-defined natural boundaries, shows a number of overlapping circulation areas and it is difficult to draw limits for any particular paper. Many of them circulate in relatively small numbers and most of them are neither so old nor so firmly established as those in the west. There are exceptions to this, notably the Leinster Leader of Naas, with a circulation of over 20,000, which serves a rich agricultural area in the middle of the river Liffey basin. The great drumlin-drift belt which extends across Ireland and sets a northern limit to the Central Lowland, has its western outlet in Sligo and the eastern outlet in Dundalk: both these towns have flourishing newspapers. Inland, the towns of Boyle, Carrick, Cavan, and Monaghan, have newspapers which serve smaller areas and, in places, also circulate across the Border. Co. Donegal has newspapers published at Lifford (opposite Strabane) and Ballyshannon, but it also receives papers published in Northern Ireland, either at Derry or at Omagh, Co. Tyrone : the Derry People, Omagh, has a strongly nationalist tone. It was found possible in some instances to use newspapers as an index to the relative importance of neighbouring towns. Westport and Castlebar, market towns ten miles one from 55

5 another, in West Mayo, both have newspapers, yet the shops of Castlebar advertise widely in the Westport paper and clearly attract custom from that part; the reverse does not happen, In this case, Castlebar, the administrative centre of the county, is increasing in population and trade (4,826 in 1936, and 4,949 in 1946) but Westport is declining (3,409 in 1936, and 3,238 in 1946). The contents of the papers are, in themselves, of some interest to the geographer. An analysis of five newspapers from different parts of the country showed remarkable uniformity. On the average about 50 % of the space in a newspaper is occupied by advertisements and the great majority of these are provided by local shops, cinemas, social events, auctions, sales and needs such as farm labourers or equipment for home and farm. All these help to indicate the circulation area of a paper: advertisements of farm or land auctions and government and county council notices to farmers are especially illuminating. The second largest proportion of space is given to the reporting of county council and other meetings (15 %) : these are usually reported in full and throw considerable light on the problems and activities of the region. In one issue of a typical southern weekly there were full reports of the meetings of two urban district councils, the County Home, the County Committee of Agriculture, and the County Board of Public Assistance. The remaining 35 % is devoted to court cases (1-10 %), local news of a general type (10 %), sport (1-5 %) letters and magazine material (10 %). The main conclusions of this article are: first, that the circulation area of a newspaper bears at least some relationship to the market area of the town in which it is published. So far, almost all the newspapers are owned either by individuals- or small groups of people : the success of a newspaper depends to some extent on the editor; but the indications of hinterlands are at least worthy of consideration. Second, the newspapers show clearly the intense interest in farming and housing, both of which are vital issues among a rural community. Third, in several cases, the limits of newspaper circulation areas are county boundaries: this indicates that even if a county boundary bears little relation to any division on a basis of natural regions it has an administrative significance that has given it some social and economic importance. In passing it may be remarked that Irish country people have a strong measure of county patriotism and that the relative enterprise of each county in education, sport, hospital services, road making and other ways is discussed with enthusiasm by large numbers of people. Finally, it is clear that 56

6 towns advance or decay, and that a strong local newspaper is an asset to a town. Market areas may expand or contract, and newspaper study is only one of several possible methods of investigation of this problem. NOTE Several important studies of local newspapers have been made during recent years in America but they are primarily social investigations of a non-geographical character. The following contain interesting information on methods of analysis : Reuss, Carl F. Content of Washington Weekly Newspapers. Agricultural Experiment Station, Pullman, Washington. Bulletin No. 387, Hoffer, C. R. Interests of rural people as portrayed in weekly newspapers, Agricultural Experiment Station, Michigan State College, East Lansing, Special Bulletin No. 298,