Website Of The Week – Irish Times
Of all the UK & Irish newspapers now publishing on the web, the Irish Times must surely be recognised as having delivered one of the most comprehensive, balanced and, according to recent audit figures (see Irish Times Website Scores Over 6 Million Impressions) popular services to date.
Irish-Times.com covers a number of recognisable editorial areas: latest news, current affairs, social and economic debates as well as general lifestyle events, sports and miscellaneous features (weather, crosswords and so on). Irish-Times.com is, however, more than a simple online replica of the Irish Times newspaper. Through the clever use of hypertext links and archive storage facilities, Irish Times.com can quite comfortably document the chronological development of all the major social, economic and political issues in Ireland, in a way not available to its offline sister broadsheet.
There are, for example, separate areas of the site devoted to the Good Friday Agreement (The Path to Peace) and the launch of the Euro (Eurotimes). Each of these sections incorporates latest news and analyses as well as visitor guides, discussion forums, and substantive links pages.
Visitors to the Path to Peace section of Irish Times.com can read of all related news stories in the run-up to, and in the wake of, the Good Friday Agreement. This includes a quantitative breakdown of voting patterns in both Referendums and the Northern Ireland Assembly elections. It also includes general historical overviews of key events in the 400 years prior to the Troubles and a welcomed navigation through Northern Ireland’s over-abbreviated political party system (Alphabet Soup).
Eurotimes is an equally authoritative guide to Economic & Monetary Union (EMU), coupling the latest European politics news with frequent updates on European stocks and currencies. It is extremely user-friendly with a high degree of navigability. The journalism is refreshingly accessible and responsible (no mean feat given the knee-jerk editorial comment often written on this topic elsewhere). For the gadget-friendly there is an easy-to-use Eurocurrency converter.
Dublin Live, as a what’s-on guide to Dublin, is perhaps the weakest part of Irish-Times.com. Whilst most relevant event information is contained in a general piece of editorial, the section lacks much of the functionality found on other parts of the site. A little thought, time and effort should be put into developing this side of Irish Times.com, given the high general standard of other sections of the site and the quality of other online newspaper what’s-on guides (the London Evening Standard‘s ThisIsLondon.com, for example). Thankfully, this is the only mediocre part of the site. The online appointments section, whilst following the design of the traditional Friday jobs pages, is both comprehensive and easy-to-use. Of course, being online means the scanning of available vacancies is quicker than normal.
Whilst the Irish Times was one of the earlier players to dip its toe into electronic newspaper publishing it has continued to provide a commendably well-rounded online paper, rightly exploiting many of the archive and discussion forum opportunities which simply are not available in the traditional newspaper format. Irish-Times.com’s design, feel and growth continues to be thoughtfully planned and nurtured. Put simply, this is the best Irish newspaper online. Start here!